The tools for limiting access to builds are a joke.
Access controls, whether by Linden Labs (the "ban lines"
or third parties (security orbs) have become increasingly inconvenient and agressive. I tried flying around the Southern continent a few days ago and found several places where every path around every edge of the sim in the direction I wanted to go was blocked because the parcel on the next sim had access controls up. I tried flying along the mountain ridge on the Attol continent and was teleported home without warning several times. At one point I had to negotiate a maze of security orbs to retreive my plane.And NONE of these controls really limits access to a build, because if you can get anywhere on a sim you can get every object on the sim downloaded to your computer and drive your camera around in it. With some trickery you could even seem to *be* there.
There have been several proposals for controlling access to a build at the client level, so the sim doesn't even download protected content:
* Phantom zone... hiding avatars and objects on access-controlled land from people who aren't allowed in, and vice-versa. The objection was raised that this would produce surprising results when someone crossed the edge of the zone and "vanished".
* "Parcel Basements"... giving some kind of script call (such as llTeleportAgent with a large enough negative offset) to put you in a non-contiguous space (this could be implemented in the same sim by treating negative offsets specially or by translating the offset out of range of other private zones in the same sim... or by having a lightweight sim on the same server for basement space) that could be treated as a private area... sharing the same dimensions and prim limits as the original parcel. I don't think anyone at LL has commented on any of the threads on this subject.
* Lands... similar to the basements, but with their own terrain and dimensions and prim limits, paid for from tier as extra space attached to the parcel and accessed through some script call or volume-based "gate", running in a separate sim with a Z offset in the Region coordinates.
I believe some solution such as these seems to be pretty much necessary if residents are going to be able to meaningfully charge for access to a build, as was suggested recently. What's the Linden Labs response... is anything like this even being considered?