How can we really charge for access to content?

Phillip Linden has stated several times that LL thinks content creators should be taking it upon themselves to charge for access to compelling content that we create.

Pray tell, how can we do this, when the tools for controlling access to anything short of a whole private sim are so weak?

Yes, if you own a parcel, you can charge for a 'land pass' to access that parcel. But anyone can still sit on the edges and watch what's going on inside for free, even if you enclose the venue in an opaque wall. They can hear most, if not all, of it as well, if you don't have a huge buffer of empty land around your venue's parcel. They can maneuver a camera through your entire build, no matter what you do. For what then, can you actually charge? Not much, other than the right to freely walk around in the space and use any pose balls that are there. And for any venue that tries to charge for a land pass, there's a hundred out there that don't, or can't.

Walls are meaningless. Locked door are meaningless. Both can be circumvented by a ten year old with basic knowledge of the SL user interface. Parcel-level bans and security orbs are VERY limited in the number of people you can allow access to, and greatly annoy anyone who is walking or flying nearby and who is unable to fly over or through your venue just because you're trying to charge for access. And thanks to the absolute lack of any required age or ID verification, we have absolutely NO way to ensure that customers in this supposedly adults-only world are really adults.

If I wanted to actualy charge admission to an event or to a place, the only way I can see to do that is to purchase an entire sim, make it private and off the map to anyone who has no pass for admission, and then sell memberships in the group that allows access. And then, as another poster mentioned, you're asking them to buy something sight-unseen. And furthermore, I can only get 40 people in the door at a time, even if I own the whole sim! So how can I make any reasonable sort of profit off access to content?

Please explain how LL is providing tools to enable content creators to charge for access to content, other than in terms of sales of clothes and objects via vendors.

Please explain how anyone can, in a realistic manner, really control access to their 'compelling content'.

Hi again Ceera

I definitely agree that more tools for residents to control and restrict content on their land would go a long way to solving the problems you mention. Being able to restrict sound to a parcel is nice, but restricting text leaving the parcel or cameras moving into a parcel might go a ways to encourage people to pay to enter an event. Please use the feature suggestion forum and the Feature Voting Tool to make suggestions!