privacy/security for land owners - without the need for scripts

Well, I have an idea that would put a stop to one form of griefing: heavy push.

Just allow users to click a toggle that turns off push. Period.
If they later want to use a push device, they can toggle it back on.

This is especially going to become essential now that:
1) LL allows anyone and his dog to register
2) There is no longer a way to trace PVP abuse

Just give people the ability to turn the turkey off.

Same with cages. Give people the ability to toggle whether "bullets" work against them. I don't care how fancy or powerful the weapon, that would put an end to that nonsense right there.

Since anti-push devices (or in this case, a toggle) could be used against many legitimate games (such as BattleMace), perhaps it could also be a landowner's option to set land to negate such devices (ie, even if a user has anti-push toggled, the landowner can set his land to override that). This would prevent cheating in battle sims as well.

Seems like so much of griefing would be easily preventable if someone would just make the effort. I mean, why waste inordinate amounts of time dealing with griefers shooting people? Just take away the power of their toys. ;D

There are proposals to do this here.

That operation is *already being performed* for every prim in draw distance whether it's culled or not, because it can't be culled until it's discovered, located, determined to be in a particular octree cell, and parcel attributes and ban lists are already being accessed to handle rendering of ban lines. This wouldn't change the computation cost of rendering or managing the interest list at all.

So... to translate Argent Stonecutter's words :
we can have privacy of not allowing banned residents to view avatars/objects on our parcel... without increasing lag much or at all?

I'm not quite saying that, I'm saying that the operations that maintain the culling list for O-O occlusion are the same ones that would be necessary to perform other kinds of culling, including hiding objects from avatars on land. There would be some overhead, because it's the client that performs this culling and would have to let the server know what objects the avatar wouldn't interact with and thus could be ignored by the physics engine, but it wouldn't require the kind of exponential performance hit that was postulated.

Not really, just make the "no entry" bars act as an object that occludes, like an invisy-prim (not transparent) does.

You know, I'm not sure, but I think a solution to all this just hit me out of the blue. Maybe others have had the same idea, but I've never heard it.

FACT: There is virtually no such thing as security on mainland. Most people recognize that. Land bans are ineffectual. Cameras can pass through walls. Conversations can be evesdropped.

HOWEVER... what if landowners had a SET TOTAL PRIVACY function on their land?

RESULT: To anyone on the landowners access list, they would see the land exactly as is, complete with builds, people, etc.

To anyone NOT on that access list, or who are banned from the land, all they would see on their monitors is bare land covered with nice, pretty trees. Their voices can't be heard on that land. Their chat can't be read. They cannot build or script there. Their scripted weapons won't function there. They cannot be seen by occupants and they cannot see occupants. For all intents and purposes, it's just forest to them. And to those authorized to access the land-- they don't exist.

That would prevent all forms of harassment. Cameras would not be able to peep through walls. They could not overhear conversation that occurs on that land. They could not interfere with activities there.

The good part: Land bans as we know them would cease to exist. There would still be a "ban" list... but rather than preventing entry, all it needs do is prevent ACTIVITY.

There would need to be 2 options available: 1) Restrict only those on ban list 2) Restrict all not on access list.

People might say, "Well, everyone would do this and we'd have barren landscape. Well... what's wrong with pretty forests? And of course, not everyone would use this. There would still be amusements and shopping malls and people who don't care for privacy, and lots of places available for public enjoyment.

In addition, it would cut down on prim rendering, thus reducing client lag! (Much easier to render 10 trees than 100 prims).

This idea just hit me so I haven't had a chance to think it through yet. But I can't think of a single drawback so far.

Figured it might be fun to throw it out there and see what others think.

Heh, proposals like these have been floating around for awhile. I've discussed and backed them in other topics.

Well, so they have. Then time it was done!

Agreed!

Vote for this idea now, on secondlife.com/vote proposal 703!

You still need to have the information that the prims are occluded for this agent passed back to the server from the client, so the server can ignore collisions between them in the physics engine.

this is silly lewis. i'm sorry. if we're doing something where we're afraid people might see us, we shouldn't be doing it anyway? wth, that's pretty judgemental.
so according to you, not wanting someone to be spying on you while yr...changing clothes, or are naked, or..having sex, or just sharing a private moment with someone, or hanging out with friends, or being by yourself and wanting to know that noone is watching yr every move isn't reasonable? we shouldn't be doing those things anyway? there is NOTHING wrong with wanting absolute privacy whether it be from having a wild orgy on yr kitchen floor or just dancing like a retard by yourself in yr room. not to mention an infinite list of lesser-voyeuristic interests all leading back to the fundamental human right to privacy.

in real life we can't zoom in on peoples houses and see through their walls; we shouldn't be able to do it in SL. and it's just stupid to have the no access strips when they really don't stop people from invading yr space--not truly. they are just eyesores that litter the land with a fascade of upholding individual privacy.
and in RL we don't own airspace above our land cause people can't fly, lewis. they can't bloody well fly. we expect anything and everything in SL cause it's a fantasy world and anything can be done.

the basic right to personal privacy shouldn't change on it's transistion from RL to SL, cause if you don't know that SL is more than an online game by now, you must only be thinking from your own perspective. i've only been here a short time and it's obvious to me that SL is a *hell* of a lot more than just an online game for many people.

Agreed, and I've proposed a reform of bans/access permissions to take this into account. It's posted here.