Should people with abillity to "ban" from land have restrictions/rules?

I just re-read the original post for this thread. I thought the question was should people with banning abilities have rules or restrictions that apply to who and why they may ban anyone..........never saw or even thought of "Banlink" as the subject. I'll make an attempt to get back to OP's question and respond to comments that were addressing that question (leaving Banlink out of it).

It was mentioned (I figure in a response to one of my posts) that someone should wait before banning. The idea was that maybe the person I banned was new or on a less than optimal computer and had not fully rezzed everything.........he was "lost" so to speak. And I should have given him more time to respond to my questions if I could help him. And other mentions about maybe they accidently wandered in and just didn't know I was not a place of business. Or maybe he TP'd there on an old LM that he had before I owned the land. All reasons why I should have some rule or restriction before I banned him.

Let me lay out the whole scene as best I can remember.........after all it was a long time ago. I was on the deck I built outside my house.......my house was a "skybox" just above the normal flying height. I was probably doing something like messing with my inventory (was distracted doing something and was alone) and the avi just landed next to me. He said nothing...just stood there after landing. I asked if I could help maybe 4 or 5 times. I ejected him and banned him after about 2 mins and went back to whatever it was I was doing.

Alright now I'll tell you what he did not do. He didn't just wondered in, thinking my house was a place of business...........my house was above the max height an unaided avi can fly (barely above and you can get on the deck unaided.....but you have to work at it) and clearly a residence without any vendors or evey anything resembling a vendor. It wasn't an old LM unless that landmark was set at or just above the level of my deck..........I find that pretty hard to believe (besides he didn't just appear like one landing on a LM..............he flew down in stages like someone dropping and then adjusting the landing point). And he had plenty of time to respond to my requests to help him.....slow to rezz or not, chat is there all the time. Did he grief me? No. Did he piss me off? Not really.......but I wasn't going to wait around for some rude person to ask the inevitable "Duh, you wanna f***?" either.

So what restrictions or rules does anyone have regarding my abilities to ban on my land?
Should I wait 20 mins because he/she may not have a computer that rezzes faster than that? Should I go get "Babbler" in case he/she does not speak my language? Am I supposed to read the profile to see if they are under 30 days old? What? Give me some sensible rules or restrictions.........I want to be fair. But how? How am I supposed to know what anyone coming on my land uninvited wants?

If he/she ignores my chat and I don't know them and I did not invite them.......they are banned. It's my choice to wait 30 seconnds, 1 minute, 20 minutes or 10 hours. The only rules that apply are common decency.......if you are the intruder, you owe the explainations. Not me.

Thats what I mean. If someone bans someone and says to his friend "Hey ban so and so" then it spreads you got a problem. Theres no real rules in this game (yes I call it a game). No thing to stop people to do anything they want. its like giving a terrorist a bomb and saying "Here, you seem smart, take this and remember we trust you to NOT do evil with it."

I don't care who anyone is, everyone needs rules. Or else people can become gods and make chaos. If you disagree then you agree to this...

Lets allow hackers to access our credit card info and any other info.

What? You don't agree? You have an excuse on why thats diffrent? They pay for their connection, they pay for their PCs. So why can't they get into out info? There should be no rules for them either. Thats pretty much what I am hearing here. "We pay so we get to do what we want!". Well I pay for a car so I should be able to run people over and drive people off the road!

People seem to think this is diffrent. And anyone that says its not a game just screwed them selves over by saying they think they don't have to have rules. In the end it is still a game. Your still characters in a fake world, where you play a game pretending to be something your not. You might say "But I am really yadda yadda". So you really look like your avatar? Own that same land? Make that same money? Teleport around? Do EVERYTHING just like in SL? No you don't. Its a game. And thats why there needs to be rules. Games have rules. RL has rules.

If it was a single player game no one cares what you do. But you effect other in this world, its a game where what you do effects the person down the line. Ban him here, and someone else might see him and say "Well hes on ban list, guess I will ban him too!". And so on. Next thing you know you get banned from the game itself all because some idiot banned you because "I felt like it!".

Now can you say there needs to be no rules?

Come up with sensible set of rules, Kez. Not some ridiculous comparisons to hackers getting CC information or terrorists. Speak as an intelligent adult or be discounted..........or banned (same difference).

Oh, you are talking about Banlink..........forgot the topic. Silly me.

The whole blacklist and ban-link thing disturbs me greatly.

I don't know why people want to "improve" upon a perfect system anyway. Someone enters your land and does something you don't like--ban them. That's...ummm...perfection. Your land, your rules, your government. You are the Judge Dredd (Judge, Jury, Executioner) of YOUR land and NO ONE elses...

...So griefers exist. You know how long they manage to stay on my land? Less than 5 seconds. I eject and ban without even speaking with a griefer. If they have a problem with it, then that's THEIR problem, not mine.

However...I DO NOT want anyone I ban to be added to some blacklist or ban-link system. These people may be out for a day of retardation to blow off steam. Regardless of whether I approve of it or not, they should not be punished grid-wide for MY intolerance. My intolerance should only have effect on MY land.

But the owner can't be online all the time to ban any griefer at anytime either. It probably not a problem if your land is your home. No one else would go into your home complain about the other griefer in there anyway.

But if the land is a giant mall or public workspace sim. A grief at 3AM can mean lose of customers from the other side of the world. And if you do not have enough money to spend on a bunch of security officers. Banlink help. Well, a banlink could ban potential customers as well. It's the owner's decision to weight between the two.

In the end, it's just the owner's choice. It's their land, their imagination, and their rules. They are the god, the creator, the judge, and the destroyer of their own sim, aside from LL that is.

I do agreed, however, that the automate ban system should be seperated method from AR report. It should required a real user to confirm the report before it goes into LL monitor.

What my comparisons aren't right? Yours defy logic. You are basically saying "We become gods and nothing on earth can stop us in game!" No one should have that much power, it turns people into power hungry fools that don't know the difference between right and wrong, when to ban and when to warn.

Another example is today a friend and I were at a beach mall and the owner was there. He was real nice but then this guy came shooting everyone and caging people. The owner shot him and caged him, banned him. Fine right? Then he went around freezing everyone and shooting them for a good 10 minutes before caging everyone and banning them/us! I sent him a message saying "Um, what was that for?". His response? "You ******** did nothing to help me stop him!" So once again a reason to have rules. You say "Well just avoid that place then." or "Then it obviously isn't a good place to go".

But that doesn't change the fact that people can do this and get away with it!

Yet another example is my first ban. I was banned from a star wars RP place and the owner told his group of 100+ players to "harass" me whenever they seen me! To this say they still send me messages, grief me. I send abuse reports obviously but whos linden believing? 100 guys vs me? Land owners have the power to do anything and nothing can be down to tell them to stop abusing their power.

I think if owners were on the other side they would get it. Its easy for someone to sit there and say this and that but try being a non land owner and be banned by idiots for no reason. You'll soon start asking for some repercussions for those people.

Well, obviously our point of view isn't the same. I don't see anything wrong in that as long as they do that in their own land, they have unlimited power under LL's rule within the boundary of their land. If LL is the god, then a land owner is an emperor of a small country. They have power in their land, and they have reputation to maintain with their neighbor. If they invade other people's land, everyone else will get back at them.

Idiot with money and power is an unfortunate bad things with this system. But until a better 'government' is evolved, *shrug* I don't know there's anything LL could do with that.



Well, that's not the same anymore. It's a different topic. The land owner have absolute power within the BOUNDARY of their land. He can ban you within his own right, or shouted and yell and shot at you in his land. But outside of that, it's difference subject. Obviously he is abused the power over 'his people' by sending them out to invade someone outside of his domain and praying to 'god' so that his target will be eliminated. Thus it is now up to the judge of the 'god', assuming said god is wise and knowledgeable, it's not in the power of a land owner anymore.

Oh, I forgot that banning people from your land is a terrorist act.
/me runs off to delete all the bans he ever put in place on his website.


Yes, they are different. Someone banning you from a piece of land is nothing like someone stealing your credit card number. The landowner does not suddenly possess the ability to empty your bank account and ruin your life just because they banned you.
Do you even read the stuff you write?


Let's see. Do landowners in SL have to comply with regular laws? Yes.
If someone has kiddy porn on display in their land, they can expect a knock on the door in the middle of the night, just like any lunatic who spends their day running people over.


I think LL now label it as a virtual world rather than a game.
Even if you look at it as a game, there are rules. The rules are that when you land on my parcel, I can ban you. Did you never play monopoly? Maybe if we all received automatic payments from people landing on our parcels you wouldn't have a problem. Let's all build 4 hotels to maximise profit!


Yes, your actions affect other people. Everytime you do something on someone elses land, you risk upsetting them. If you don't like the fact that they can throw you out, don't use their land. It works exactly the same way in RL as well.


Landowners have to abide by the TOS and US laws as well as their local laws. There are rules. Your problem is that the rules don't suit you, so you want your will imposed on everyone else, which is exactly the thing you are complaining about landowners doing.


From your posts, you seem to spend a lot of time getting banned. Have you considered it might have something to do with your behaviour rather than that of the landowners?

No you shouldn't. You share the road with other people. You don't however have to share your car with just anybody. You are allowed to decide who gets to drive or even sit in your car at your sole discretion. Whether you deny them access to your car because they are lousy drivers or just because you don't like the look of them is irrelevant; your car, your rules. You also have every right to tell other car owners that you won't let so-and-so into your car, and if they then decide they won't let so-and-so into their cars: well, that is their business, their cars, their rules.

I get to decide who I will or will not let into my RL house. It's mine, I paid for it, and unwelcome guests are not allowed on the premises. I get to decide who I will or will not let into my RL car. It's mine, I paid for it, and unwelcome drivers or passengers are not allowed inside. And finally, I get to decide who I will or will not let onto my SL property. I paid for it, and unwelcome guests will be banned. I paid for the right to do as I please with that land as long as it's within the ToS. Just like you have the right to do as you please with your car as long as you follow traffic law. If I didn't have that right, I might as well set my 'home location' back to Help Island, because there would be absolutely no point in owning land. Just like there would be no point in owning a car if just anyone had the right to come by, get in and drive off with it.

I own land. I should be able to decide who has access to that land. However any banning i do should not be publicized or carried over anywhere else. That's between me and the offender. *Adds this to the list of tags we can wear on our profiles*

Yeah, banning should be a private thing, and the people who might get banned should have an option to perceive the parcel as an empty grass lot (and fly over it) as if it wasnt there, and likewise anyone in the parcel should not see them. When everyone has their red walls up against everyone, its hard to actually get anywhere, and gets irritating.

So your saying you do follow the TOS and US laws? Well if thats the case and everyone so "legal" and its just like real life then how come I can't do anything if someone bans me for no reason? In real life if someone is being an *** to me (in a game its banning) I can call the police and they can get in trouble. In SL its on sided. You get banned no questions asked! You can be 100% guilty or 100% innocent. That doesn't sound like the same thing as living in the USA to me.

And you can't so "You can only contact the land owner...yadda yadda" because what good does that do when they just mute you, file an abuse report, harass you more....etc. Like I said in this game its just a one sided world when it comes to people vs people with the ability to ban.

WTF?
In RL, you can walk into someone elses land, do what you want and then call the police on them when they tell you to leave and not come back?
For starters, I think you'll find that land owners in RL have every right to dictate if you can enter their land or not. Secondly, unless they break a law, the police are gonna give you an ass kicking for wasting their time. Refusing somebody entry to your land is NOT against the law.

As for being judged, this is not a court of law. People have the right to remove anyone they want to from their land in RL, we also have the right to block/firewall anyone we want from our virtual lives. This sense of entitlement you carry around with you wouldn't even be acceptable from my 5 year old daughter.

Um.. Kez? Y'need to calm down a little about this. Yer freakin' a little bit.

Here's the thing. If you're going to make real life comparisons, you have to make the right comparison.

In real life, if someone is being an ass to you on their property, they can kick you off that property and they are completely in the right to do so. EVEN if they're the ones being an ass.
In real life, all over the world, even in the U. S. and A, if you act up at a mall and get barred from entry, or banned from a nightclub, that's it. End of story. It's one sided, just like you accuse SL of being.
In real life, the owner of the land can ban anyone they like from that property for any reason (except in some cases, which we're not talking about). They can also allocate this power to someone else, such as a security guard or company, the police, etc.

You say"if...its just like real life then how come I can't do anything if someone bans me for no reason?" Um... if someone bans you in real life, you can't do anything. If someone throws you out of a club or mall, for whatever reason, and you call the police, they can't do anything about it.

I'm not quite sure where you're getting that it's any different in RL than it is in SL.

You say: "Like I said in this game its just a one sided world when it comes to people vs people with the ability to ban."

But you're misrepresenting the issue. It comes down to people who own the land (which, before we get into a "It's not really land, it's just data on a server blahblahblah" debate, is how we're describing the virtual space in SL...) and people who want to use that land, if you're going to simplify like that.
People spent money, sometimes quite a bit of money, to have that land and have control of that land. You didn't. They are completely within their rights to ban you, even if it's for no reason whatsoever.

The bottom line is that no matter what rules or laws are enforced, there will always be ways that people can annoy other people -- unless the rules are so restrictive that people can't even interact.

There are plenty of posts above where people are rightly indignant about being banned inappropriately. However, I haven't seen any suggestions about what would be a reasonable remedy for that. I suspect that any such "remedies" would do more harm to landowners than protection it would offer to innocent victims of inappropriate banning.

Face it: people can be jerks. There is no way to legislate around that.

In this case, any cure would be worse than the disease.

The difference basically is that in SL, it only costs $9.99 a month plus the cost of some land to be in the position where you can start banning people from places. In RL, usually only managers and senior staff can do that and they tend to be a bit more rational about it, partly because you have to be pretty rational to get into that position in the first place, and partly because they will have to explain to their boss why they threw out a potential paying customer (and potentially his/her friends, too).

Network banning can be especially nasty, and things like BanLink aren't the only way it happens. The most common problem is when someone sells some land, I believe the ban list stays with the land when it's transferred - so the new buyer will assume the people listed on it are griefers and leave them banned.

Um...I believe the banlink objects doesn't always keep all the names in the land ban list? I think they mostly just add a name to the banlist when that one showed up and then scripted-kick them away?

I don't think that's an applicable comparison. We don't work for LL, we're not paying them for the right to throw out paying customers from a store owned by LL.
We're renting server space and processor time. Regardless of customers paying for other services from LL, that little piece of server is ours to do with as we wish.

Some companies who rent out server space in the traditional manner also supply DSL lines, email services, domain registration etc. They would not enforce a rule on people renting webspace that they must allow access to anyone who happens to rent email service from them.

If we compare SL land to RL land, my local council doesn't demand that I open my house to everyone else who is renting a council property. I can throw people out of my rented house regardless of whether they are likely to become a paying customer of the councils. Anyone trying to force their way in after I told them to leave would have the police to deal with, even if I told them to leave because they look like a banana.

I'm with you on this, Yumi, but the fact remains that the owner, or those specified by them, are completely within their rights to throw someone off the land and ban them. Rationalness doesn't come into it. They aren't doing anything wrong and for the OP to intimate that they are is out of line. As has been said MANY times on the "Banlines ruin SL for me" threads, no-one has ANY right to access, save the person paying for the plot. To argue otherwise shows and incredibly overblown sense of entitlement.
I worked in a nightclub for *mumble*teen years and people used to get banned from it all the time. For no reason other than the owner, manager, staff member or security guard didn't like them. That's it. Hell, I personally had one of the owners' brothers banned!
One of the big differences is that a nightclub can ban as many people as they want. In SL, we have a limited number.

Did you then call up all the clubs and bars in town and tell them to ban them too?

How bout county/country/state-wide?

Im all for being able to ban anyone you want but if its going to be one security guard cuasing someone to get banned from 900 sims with various owners .. im really at a loss to defend it.

I still cant beleive that Linden Lab endorsed a Black List site


Course I still cant beleive Melinda got voted off AI last night either ..

I'm with ya Mick. I won't use banlines on my land. I have a beautiful ocean view,the sunsets are spectacular. anyone passing by is more than welcome to sit on the lawn and enjoy the view. The other day I was entertaining a friend and noticed a person standing outside the house for a few minutes apparently looking in. I said hello,she responded, and I invited her in. we chatted for a few moments, and she politely excused herself, thanked me, and left. if something happened to require me to ban her from the propety, that is my right, no explanation needed, although as a courtesy i probably would explain why. No one else, however needs to know she has been banned.

Ohhhhh! - I thought she was a freind of yours ...

No, but it's happened.

I'm of two minds about Banlists. One side is that real griefers deserve to be banned from as many places as possible. The other is that people with grudges held against them get scroot.


Sister Shrek is gone! It makes me happy. Not that I really like the other two so much, but she and her neckless bobblehead bugged me to no end.

What I don't understand is how YaoMan could trust "Dreamz" to follow through on his promise! That guy is an idiot! He got rid of Michelle, my TV girlfriend!("Dreamz", not Yao... *grin*)

Still. Earl won and that's a good thing.

I hear mickey's point on banlists, but I personally would rather suffer a griefer and ban him myself, than risk creating blacklists.

I'm with you.

Then again, I'm probably the worst property manager in the world. I have half a sim and it's all open and free, just trees and stuff, so it's kind of a free-for-all sometimes. A friend, who I'm renting some space to, just so he's got a place to knock uglies... I mean.. um... build innocent things and suchlike... got griefed so bad it crashed his comp, so he didn't have time to get the names. Even worse, these were considerate griefers who cleaned up after themselves! So no luck getting their names there. I've lost the plot on what I'm trying to say... durn RL interrupting me.

Anyway, Yeah. Um.. I'm with yez on that. I'd rather ban someone one on one than go to a list. And I don't feel bad about it at all when I do... even though I've only ever banned, like, two people.

I'm rambling, aren't I?