Security in General in Second Life

I run a small club in Second Life. I enjoy it a lot, I love the people that I work with, I love the socialization and basically having fun with my friends. It's sad, though, that because it's a club with an easily recognizable blue star with an M in it, that a lot of people with bad intensions see this as a target and decide to take it upon themselves to cause greif among my employees and patrons during events that I host. Now, mind you, I expected this when starting out. Clubs naturally bring in all types of people for good or ill. As a starting club owner, though, I'm already paying a lot out of my pocket to keep the place running with no return since the end of dwell bonuses.
An incident in particular really burns me though. A so-called "Mafia" group decided that they would storm the place and cause havoc with push bombs, penis poofers and verbal abuse to my patrons. I think these are just kids with way too much time on their hands and using daddy's credit cards to purchase script weapons. Nonetheless, when the attack happened and kept on happening, I called Live Help for assistance...their answer was, "Please fill out an abuse report." My response was, "Where's 911?".
To make a long story short and make my point is that Second Life is a society, and like all societies, it citizens are provided basic necessities and services by the government. I know that we don't need many of the things that we do in real life; but one thing that we do need in Second Life is a police force...a "911" Emergency line for these kinds of incidents. Linden Labs takes a far too relaxed attitude concerning PvP abuse in Second Life. Evidence of this is the fact that they have taken out the "View PvP" option built into the GUI altogether and we have to rely on some hacked up scripted prim sheid to tell us who shot us or bombed us. I have spent a lot of money to secure my club from attacks by script kiddies when I shouldn't have to.
I recommend that a virtual police force and a virtual court be set up in Second Life just as there is in the Real World. Details of this is beyond me; but I am tired of having to be armed and defended at all times just to do what I want without harrassment.

You, like many other customers of LL, have hit this fundamental issue. Obviously, LL doesn't care about griefing or they'd be doing something about it somewhere over the last three years. They haven't, it isn't important to them or they would have.

I think the biggest hurdle is that they are too relaxed and that's a core part of their philosophy. The irony is that they don't like vigilantes either. Human societies don't last without policing, whether it be "official" or de facto.

If you could get them to see the logical proposition "if (it is a human society) then (it has a police force)" in which case the contrapositive "it does not have a police force) therefore (it is not a human society)" has to be true. That might get The Phil to take notice, but probably not.

They crack down on things they don't need to, and leave unchecked to run riot the things they should be sorting out. Their philosophy may well be good on paper, or 'progressive liberal thinking' circles... but the simple truth is it doesn't work in reality, as anyone who playes here and trys to do anything in any seriousness can attest.

If it wasn't for the fact the name was already taken, I'd suggest we rename this game Anarchy Online.

Lewis

Set up in a private sim.

The owners of that sim will do the best they can to keep your business.

Either by having someone keep a close eye, or granting you estate management access so when you ban an avatar, it's not coming back. And yeah, you can ban avatars faster than people can sign up for them.

I ban kiddies like that all the time from Caledon; so do a few others who have estate access. We have fairly good coverage.

There are no 'trials' - if I ban someone by mistake I let them back in. Sometimes it's hard to tell who's shooting at everyone when there are 3 or 4 griefers.

Caledon is no place for your club but I'm sure some private sim would love to have you there, and could solve your problem.

Then, by this logic, "If it is not raining, then the grass is not wet," must also be true, because, after all, "If it is raining, the grass is wet."

Private sims are one answer (Love Caledon, not leaving until they drag me away...), however, private sims are not the answer for everyone.

Filing an AR report first, then getting on Live Help to follow through is *good*. The first line people are trained to walk you through filing an AR report if you haven't already, and AR reports are important to show a track history of abuse, both for that individual and as a growing trend throughout SL Getting on live help is in your best interest because, although the front line folks can't take steps, often (note I don't promise always) a Linden will step into the call and take action. Thank you, Lindens, for the times you've stepped in for me!

Creating an in-world police sounds all well and good, but there is potential for abuse there too. Others have suggested this and some have followed through, too. I'm sure they'll be contacting you in game soon. I know if I was in their line of work I would be.

Frankly, the best thing I've found yet for dealing with them is to sit on a prim and make fun of them. They want you angry, they want your customers/clients angry. They don't want to be laughed at and made fun of. When you get tired of making fun of them, if you own the land, freeze them and send them home. If they've left prims about, fill their lost and found with them. Just make sure you've AR'd them first, preferably have everyone in the scenario AR them.


Oh, and don't ever turn off 'safe' so that you can shoot the guy home... he'll get you first every time. LOL. Seen it happen. Boy was that funny. LOL.

Char

I agree wholeheartedly -- as a history reader, and a student of ancient history in particular, I learned that the establishment of cities (and what we call "civilisation" in general) was accompanied by the organisation of local military/police/guard forces. TO THIS DAY, the only reason we still have anything passing as "civilisation" is the maintenance of paramilitary forces as civil police -- whether it's in the US (as witness the breakdown of social behavior in 1968, after the assassination of MLK, or after the infamous cop acquittals in California that sparked riots in LA for several days), in Iraq (where the local police are as much a target of their home-grown "rabid raccoons" as the UN coalition forces, or in Yemen, or South Africa, or in Japan. All nations are, to an extent, police states, since without police organizations, there would be no state, no local government, no "business as usual".

Linden Labs' complete disregard for the concerns of the "taxpayers" of SL (those who are premium accounts, and own land, and create actual content in SL) is asinine, shortsighted, and self-defeating. When everyone who is NOT a griefer decides to opt out, they will be left with very little content -- unless they intend to resurrect the content "owned" by the former residents as their own property and distribute it to the griefers and useless tourists.

1. We have Group Access, right? How about Group Ban. It will make people actually think about the groups they join.

2. Freeze All Avatars in owners land dialog menu. That way you can sift through the rubble *Use cautiously.

You've just slipped in a proposition, not undermined logical calculus, but that's a wee bit off-topic.

Give LL a break! If they actually get rid of the griefers they will lose a large portion of the population density they seem to be so desperately seeking.

Hmm, do you think its not that sl does not care, but that after awhile it all sounds like background noise? I think this is a legitimate concern that sl should consider, but than again among all the useless garbage that is sent it might get lost, what do you expect?

But aren't there security forces you can hire? Just might be an option.

We have a police/security force you can hire. I have more years than I'll say, in real world, in Law Enforcement and the military, in various levels along with a few other endeavors.
I also have a consulting firm that trains, advises and consults with many entities in real world, both in law enforcement and military organizations as well as making recommendations for

On a phone call I made, not long ago, to support with SL, they said they cannot take away powers of "push" since the same physics applies to peaceful things that work in SL, example how planes fly, how elevators go up and down, etc etc. They leave it to the citizens to handle.

By all means, if your being griefed, file a complaint with the Lindens, but if you'd like some people to handle it, IM me on or offline.

I would also be willing to talk about the cultural end of it, and what can be formed, as I too believe that there should be a "SL government and police force", as any society must have. Ancient Rome did not have a police force. It's armies were designed to conquer, and wage war in the name of the leadership. It was not designed to protect the landowners, however powerful they might have been.
Each landowner had to hire mercenaries to protect their land. It didn't work well for Rome, because each landowner's police/security force was indepedent therefore isolated from working with others. When large area attacks were made, that spilled over, then there was chaos, without a unified police/security force to handle the task.

Sound familiar?

On a local real world forum I use a quote after my name on the postings, which I havn't used on here. In this case it says quite a bit.

Note: Don't be mislead by what you see on my groups. There are quite a few personnel that are part of CPD/SLMPD not shown in the groups.

Max Demar, Central Police Dept
"A society or group of people exist soley in it's ability to maintain an atmosphere of peace and civility. It's failure is directly relative to the degree of the lack of these conditions".

HI all, I too have been harrassed many times. I believe a quick easy cure would be to have a griefer once caught to have a hoverscript attached to them to alert all who interact the character of the avi. First time caught wear for 1 week, if caught again 1 month, 3rd time ban. Too many think they need to resort to the same behavior as the griefer to rid themselves of unwanted attention from these people and it causes many to adopt the same attitude as the bad guys, because we want relief and want to know that we got it. Why hiding the identity of those who would cause damage to ones business,patrons, a general sense of well being is completly beyond me. Just a thought

Would work for someone who genuinely feels bad about what they did.. but unfortunately most griefers would be honored to wear it. It would become a badge to them lol.

I for one have reported a couple incidents of griefing and checking the police blotter I always see action taken (suspended accounts, etc).

THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO ME!!!

In the game There, they had it so you could click yourself on or off as to whether you were pushable.

Yet they still have vehicles and all that, and you could still ride them!!!

It makes NO SENSE to me that they don't do that here!

Can someone explain that?

coco

There and SL don't use the same engine. I've only played There for about 5 seconds, so I couldn't really see how the vehicles work. Anyways, just because it was set up one way in one game doesn't mean it can be set up the same way in another. At least not without heavy modifications to the engine.

Oh. "Heavy modifications to the engine." I wonder how hard that would be? Cause it seems to me if this could be implimented we would be rid of one giant problem.

coco