What Does Privacy Mean in SL? What Should It Mean?

/me listens in but really doesn't have much more to say that she hasn't already said in the past. She sighs still dreading the TOS allowing bots, and the open source client idea. Many time we have formed together with public interest for better privacy in second life, and only a few of those times did we get what we wanted. Such as when we got out hide online status feature and our ability to block people from mapping us. Those are small steps but they mean a lot to us.

Well recording conversations is not allowed .. BUT ...

Tracking you and when your online and where you go IS.

a Snapshot bot that Cams inside your house and gets pictures isnt against privacy rules either.

So moblie snapshot bots covering much of the grid , if possible , would be allowed.

yay ..

It gets even more interesting when you consider the case where someone in RL who doesn't like you learns your avatar's name and offers good money to the owner of the spybot. Going through a divorce? Got a vengeful ex? A nasty neighbor? A rival at work? An employer who wants to know more about your "character?" Anybody at all who knows you and could be trolling for a chance at blackmail? Malicious kids at your school or at your kids' school? A political or religious nut who doesn't like your views? A random nut?

Or maybe you're operating an on-line web service meeting customers in-world and you don't want your competitors videotaping your every move? If you are an IBM, say, is that a place where you want to do business?

Show me one syllable in all the 75 pages in Automated Burglary or in the pages of other threads about this subject that indicates the owner of a spybot would do anything but take their money - and maybe advertise the "service?" Heh, we both know there is none. And remember, it doesn't have to BE reprehensible, just something that could be made to APPEAR reprehensible in the wrong hands. Or useful to a competitor in any way.

So, let the principle of spying take hold in SL, and pretty soon nobody can dare say, do, visit, or be anything they wouldn't want their worst enemy to know about.

When the resultant damage is done to someone, I wonder what LL's legal liability will be - or be seen to be by a jury when some pitiable victim gets a sympathetic jury?

That risk aside, sooner or later whatever Googles, Yahoos, Microsofts, Rupert Murdochs, etc. that do not buy SL are going to open up rival VR platforms. The platform that solves the privacy problem is the one that will get the sign-ups. Ones that don't will shrivel and die.

So much FUD in one post, how scary the world must seem to you.

Do you avoid stores with security cams?

Do you plan your driving route to avoid intersections with cop-cams?

Do you hide in your house all day so some tourist or news team won't accidentally catch you on their digital video recording devices?

This is a *PUBLIC* space. If someone is going to conduct business that needs to remain confidential here, they're fools to assume that even doing that on a locked down private island is "secure". There are corporate policies most places against using open channels of communications or even unsanctioned 3rd party collaboration tools for confidential business. With good reason.

When it comes to law, someone would have to establish a "Reasonable Expectation of Privacy". What is "reasonable" to expect here is:

1) the ability to complain and get someone banned for using scripted listening devices.
2) the ability to ban&eject people from our own land.
3) the ability to have linden lab issue "cease and desist" against DMCA violators.
4) oh yeah, and we can get linden lab to ban people wearing nazi flags and romping around like horny minors. woo.

FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt


Oh and Lorna- I'm fond of Brenda and all... but would prefer a Brendan.
And Colette stole the rest of my response to your post, and stated it more eloquently as well.

this is gonna end badly......

And it'll get restarted badly again afterwards... again and again...

Besides the fact that Brenda is MY girlfriend...

Anyhow -

My neighbor didesnt put a cam up on his garage and watch my house though. Im pretty sure even if legal the cops would tell him to take it down (yeah i live in that small a town.)


It really goes to Linden Labs figuring out what should be and what shouldnt be allowed. They figured it out way back in 2003 when they WROTE the community standards. At that time people could do X.

Well now they opensourced the client and bots can potentially do Y, which is X on Meth. Becuase of this, Some of the Standards they wrote before need to be re-elvaluated.

But maybe with the whole open source server idea, and estate level governance, they will release that , manage the mainland hands off and take one GIANT step away from enforcing anything.

It is in the interest of owners of spybots to promote the idea that everything in SL is and must be as public as if on Times Square. And maybe in the interest of some of their potential customers. But to few if any others, I think. And those who make this assertion forget that SL is entirely private property, and not their private property.

SL data are only as public as LL chooses to let them be. And, to a lesser extent, the Residents.

Notice that ESC did all its data-collecting WITHOUT THE COOPERATION OF LL. If they had that cooperation, they would have gotten their data directly from the database - which is the sole property of LL. There would have been no need for a spybot, and we would not be having this discussion. They did not get that cooperation, and I think LL was very wise not to give it. Instead, they had to go around LL and send out a spybot to get what data they want themselves. So far, LL has suffered this to happen, but it remains to be seen how LL feels about its property being used this way by outside companies who do not have the interests of either the Residents or LL in mind and are eager to blame victims for any damage they do.

So, how much intrusion should be allowed? How much should be revealed at the sole discretion of LL and the Residents who are being spied upon, and how much at the "discretion" of people motivated by avarice who want EVERYTHING?

Given the record to date, it seems pretty clear LL and the Residents need to set better boundaries, and find ways to enforce them.

Residents, what boundaries do you want, and why? And any thoughtsw on enforcement, either by Residents or by LL?

Malls are private property. Shop owners lease space understanding that there are caveats and conditions associated with their 'ownership' of their space. The analogy is far from perfect but more fitting than comparing a parcel owner in secondlife to a land-owner in RL.

You are confusing "private property" with "privacy"

Try getting satalite cameras to stop taking pictures of your back yard sometime.

I think people have a right to challenge that assertion, and to push for their wishes for privacy to be accepted by the platform provider, whether through terms of use or through code as law stuff.

Second Life has changed, and Linden Lab has reacted to meet the demands and expectations of some of its customers before, so there certainly is still a debate to be had. More than wallowing in schadenfreude at other people's upsets and showing them where the exit is.

A lot of people want some way to share private moments with others when in SL. I don't think that's evil, or unacceptable or in any way causes a problem for anyone else. In the absence of any such guarantees, I use SL accordingly, and I apply my own standards of behaviour to myself. So I don't go round bugging people in private and LOLing at them or cataloguing their poseballs or recording their chats.

Sadly, the last I heard was that the ban on disclosing RL information about other residents is going to be lifted. That'll be a spite fest and a half, given what is already whispered in IMs and on third party forums. I'm sure it'll make you feel happy though, forcing everyone to be all 100% public about themselves.

Well said



Gah!! where did you hear this? !!!

Just an observation:

If we could fly and look through walls in real life there wouldn't be much privacy there either.

Are we at a point now where we're willing to give up those abilities in secondlife in the hopes that we'll get a little privacy?

Removing features entirely is cheap and easy.
The alternatives are human enforcement which adds labor costs to linden lab,
or adding program code to enforce specific law, which increases lag.

I'll give you the flying part, definitely. Looking through walls? I haven't had a need to do it, but there's probably a legitimate use for it amongst the creator types. The ability for this to be disabled on your property if desired would be a nice feature. But I am not going to get Verklempt over the issue anymore. SL is about having fun for me, after all.

Actually you may be on to something...

"Force Mouselook" on a parcel basis could be interesting.

Keeping camera's out from other parcels would still be a
lag-adding check though, it wouldn't stop searchbots, but
if your parcel is large enough it could possibly enforce a
"no looking through walls" for human run avatars.

(and as for creator types and camera freedom... boy
howdy... try taking that away and content creators will
throw a *major* hissy-fit!)

Oh No! I am the last one who wants to inhibit the creators in SL. Being the Ultimate SL consumer, I want them to happily continue their work.

Making "Force Mouselook" an option the parcelholder could turn on and off at will would solve the builders and creators problem. And combat sims might like the option; perhaps other RP sims as well.

Still need to find something comparable to deal with spybots, though. And long-distance camming in general.

I'm glad you like the idea. Feel free to submit it to Jira.... I have no use for it personally.

rusty>but if your parcel is large enough it could possibly enforce a "no looking through walls" for human run avatars.

no, in debug menu 'disable camera constrainsts' allows me to cross multiple sims away from my AV. look up the difference between 'agent' and 'avatar'.

will not we have to become acustomed to zero privacy anyway, even in Real Life? nanobot fly on the wall spy cams are allready possible if not cheap or practical (which is only a matter of market interest ,right?).
Personnally, i like where this is going. people spend way too much energy telling other people what is normal. with zeroPrivacy people figure out that No one is normal and stop trying to tell people what they should or should not be doing(because the spyers have spyers spying them wondering what are "they? looking at.) lots of laughter laugh,laugh laugh.

It wasn't intended to be an idea taken seriously. I put about as much effort into thinking it up as you did in fully typing out the word 'people' in your next message.

Har keeps thinking that someone will magic up some way to 'deal' with spybots...

Which is as about as unlikely as having an online linden babysitting in every sim.

Hhmm. I notice that people report little crosses appearing on a wall when someone is camera-viewing through it from the other side at them.

That means the present SL coding already detects when a camera viewer looks "through" an object like a wall, and is already able to mark that fact in-world and alert presumably interested Residents being spied upon. I am not a coder, but it seems to me it would be no great feat to enable the same code to also detect when the owner of that wall has chosen to block camera views through it and then make it opaque to the spy's camera.

Doesn't sound like that would take any "magic" to me, unless one regards coders as "magical" beings.

The Code IS God after all......

Pardon? Where did you see reports of that?

"Thanks for doing this!"

--Torley Linden, to Electric Sheep Company, regarding their search engine.

Heh. I thought the same thing about the ESC sybot myself - at first. (SL could use an improved search function for shooppers.) Then, I found out what it did - and what it grossly failed to do. Then I saw what ESC did about what it did, and what it failed to do. Then I watched weeks of the most astonishing dishonesty on the part of ESC's apologists unfold on these pages. I imagine Torley has seen the same things. So now I think, if Torley is intelligent, he too is getting out and sharpening up the long knives...