Blocking Unwanted Interaction?

[Ecko Soulstar]

This is most likely a silly question, and in the wrong place. Please forgive me for being brain fried after 2 weeks of RL illness.

I'm not going to pretend to know a whole lot about the inner workings/techie stuff of things in SL. I am mostly a tinkerer, and only recently back to SL after a year of being away. So this is the first I am hearing of these drama inducing little 'scanners/banners'. Won't mention the big one in debate now. Just going to say I don't like them, because well.. My husband only comes home once a month (as he works in a different country), and when he's here, he uses my wireless connection to join me in SL using his laptop. I don't want either of us banned from somewhere just because we use the same connection once a month.

So.. my question is this:

How seriously difficult would it be for LL to implement the ability to 'block' on any one user *AND* ALL content created by them? Not Owned by, but just created by. This way, all we would have to do is block a user and all their content from ineraction with us.. thus, rendering these 'toys' unable to detect/scan/collect information from us?

I get that it won't stop the data-mining or prevent privacy invasion, but it would prevent people like my husband and myself from being banned by a process that has no real form of appeal, that is run by people that feels there's no excuse for 2 'avatars' to be using the same IP. I've even told my daughter that she couldn't join SL on her computer because of these stupid scanning things. Simply because more people means more risk of being falsely banned. I only know one person that has no problem with these things, and that's because they are friends with the creator of 'the current one', and has no concern of being banned, because he can be removed with just a simple heads up to the creator.

*Sigh* I don't know about this stuff. All I know is that when I ran my little bitty online RP years back, we didn't allow people to directly, or indirectly diminish the expereince of others. If I had EVER had a member tell me they wouldn't suggest my game to a friend on account of a group of people that made the place uncomfortable, that group would be on lockdown, or complete lock out. Happy people meant more $$, and when you count on that $$ to fund your world, you keep them happy.That's just common business sense.

I would be happy to give LL more of my RL $$ If I knew I didn't have to worry about being banned from most of the grid by someone, not related to LL, that doesn't give a rats ugly end about me personally, and who's on a Napleonoic powertrip. This mess has even been my bottom line reason for NOT opening up my own shop, or buying my own land. Both something I seriously long to do. :-(

Thanx to anyone willing to listen and/or reply.

~Ecko

~Fed up and thinking of funding her own grid, "Ecko's Other Life - Where common since says be nice, or be ignored'

[Govindira Galatea]

I believe and have observed that muting an avatar will also mute all that avatar's owned things and keep them from bothering you in any way.  Is there some hole in the Mute function that allows an avatar to continue to interact with you?

[Prokofy Neva]

Second Life is a shared, collaborative space. That's how its framers (Philip Rosedale et. al) devised it. You have plenty of privacy tools on your islands or parcel to block out the physical presence of people without having to obliterate their appearance.

I think it sets up a really awful society when people can obliterate others like that for any reason or no reason. While it always seems as if your own choice in this is justified, once you see tens of thousands of people doing this, it becomes a world where you cannot have basic fundamental human values that enable people to have a civil society.

I don't believe that all view of content or appearance even of people I ban from my land should be a feature in the world.

And it falls into the "do unto others" category.

[Ecko Soulstar]

I wasn't aware that it would mute people and the objects they own. I thought it only made it so you wouldn't see/hear that person anymore. I did admit to being not so tech savy. I don't even really socialize too much at this point to have done this more a couple times, and mostly with greifers in group chats who were going off on another group member.

My concern isn't about blocking/muting owners of objects, just the creators of an object that they have sold to people using these banning/scanning things.

I just wish there wasn't so much griefing and content theft. It ruins it for even the average 'no-body special' like me. RL can be scary enough, SL shouldn't be a place where you have to look over your shoulder too. :-(

Prokofy, I do understand, and agree that it could really suck for a lot of people. I also understand completely why people want to have more control over who is on their land, and what they are doing there. A friend showed me what a copybot can do when they turned into my avatar right before my eyes. It's terrible that can even be done. What I don't agree with is LL allowing any single resident, or group of residents, to decide who can access vast portions of the grid, and who can't.

I don't own, rent, or even really frequent any particular place, so my concerns aren't just about my personal 'gridspace'. There are tons of people out there like me, that just float through SL, with no real home. I don't *really* want to completely block people, it would suck if people randomly just blocked who ever for whatever reason. But I WOULD like to  know that when I visit a place I'm not going to be banned from many other places all over SL, just because I share a connection with my husband, daughter, or random friend that brings their laptop to my house.

Is there anything people like us can do to protect ourselves from these sorts of things? I'm not a person with some covert or ill intent, but it seems like the general opinion of the people that support these detectors, is that people like me, and my husband, are just casualities. So what if we get banned? We aren't big spenders, big content makers, or land owners, so we are disposable. :-(

I'm just trying to find a solution for the 'little guy', that just wants to share SL with RL friends/family and not be paranoid about where we visit using the same IP. It's unsettling that, if greifing and copybotting are such a problem, LLs hasn't done more to prevent it, rather then leave it to the residents to figure out a way to prevent it.