New Feature: Scripted Agent Estate Access Discussion

[Ardy Lay]

4 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Stupid policy overall then.  No difference between a video and snapshot, except the snapshot will reveal avatar information more clearly.  But that's ok, but dancers are not?   So who do I AR for LL violating their TOS for their own meetings with Lindens and residents.  I have seen my avatar show up in the Linden approved videos quite often on YouTube.  Nobody asked me if they could scan me with their camera, and stick it on youtube.   Now the FBI has more to add to my folder.  

Much ado about nothing, this fear of publicity.  We are not a police state.

You do not have to be bothered by publicity, but, you also do not have the right to tell others that they must have the same opinion.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

These laws do not protect what you put out in public.

No, you're quite correct, they don't. And a few of the Lindens themselves have recently popped onto the forums to suggest that we be careful about what we put on our profiles. And it should go without saying, of course, that you shouldn't put really sensitive information into your profile, or indeed anywhere it might be seen and/or harvested by potential bad actors. This is all common sense.

But, in addition to the legal aspects of this covered by @Ardy Lay , there are at least two other related issues that cause problems.

The first is that SL has created what Inara Pey has usefully called an "expectation of privacy." We have various tools to hide parts of our profile, to conceal our online status, to prevent people from looking into our parcels, etc., etc., and we additionally have parts of the ToS and CS that appear to safeguard at least some parts of our privacy -- more now, in fact, than we did before.

And additionally, and not unimportantly . . . we all have a "First Life" tab. Now, clearly it would be stupid to put your real name, address, or credit card information there -- but what does it exist for if not to share aspects of our RL?

So, all of these things create an "expectation of privacy" -- the sense that we can feel relatively safe sharing at least some parts of our RL identities in SL. And it may be that all of that is creating a false sense of security in some who haven't thought about or investigated these issues very thoroughly.

The second issue is that profiles -- and I'm thinking now about things like "Picks" and our biography tabs, as well as the First Life tab -- serve a real function on this platform. They are how we connect with people. They are the means by which others can identify common interests or perspectives. They exist for a reason, and the more "detailed" they are, the more "functional" they are. In fact, ironically, there is a tendency to see blank profiles as the sure signs of a bot, an alt, or a throw-away account: social status accrues to a more fully laid-out profile.

So, again -- yes, one should of course always be careful about the information that one makes public.

But there is definitely an unresolved tension between between the wisdom of carefully curating one's information, and the functionality and usefulness of the information that we provide. Finding a middle ground between a blank profile, and one that shares too much, isn't always easy.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 hours ago, benchthis said:

don't get me started on that symbol. are they the ones messing with region pathfinding and making people lose objects and fing with region crossing?

No.

Do you actually know anything about SL, or even use it at all? Pathfinding data gets messed up by PEOPLE who do dodgy stuff like:

Editing the terrain of the land that THEY OWN

Building on the land that THEY OWN

It has exactly nothing to do with "Evil bots who smell bad and are scraping your data"

Nothing.

Psst! You tin foil hat is showing!

[benchthis]

11 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Stupid policy overall then.  No difference between a video and snapshot, except the snapshot will reveal avatar information more clearly.  But that's ok, but dancers are not?   So who do I AR for LL violating their TOS for their own meetings with Lindens and residents.  I have seen my avatar show up in the Linden approved videos quite often on YouTube.  Nobody asked me if they could scan me with their camera, and stick it on youtube.   Now the FBI has more to add to my folder.  

Much ado about nothing, this fear of publicity.  We are not a police state.

I see your point there's a difference between having someone take a selfie with you in it in a public space, it is another thing to have bot game cameras setup capturing and reporting data it collects. I guess we have to limit where we travel, there is no opt out of being scanned by robos as far as I know, even if there were there would be a loop hole created so the weakest fall and the strongest will live to exploit.  

Edited April 4, 2023 by benchthis

[Jaylinbridges]

14 minutes ago, Ardy Lay said:

You do not have to be bothered by publicity, but, you also do not have the right to tell others that they must have the same opinion.

I'm not telling anyone else what to believe. That is my OWN opinion, which I still have a right to express even here.

Everyone I know, and I expect about 90% of all residents use a third party viewer.  Only the newbies start out with the SL Viewer, until some experienced resident clues them in.

 

Edited April 4, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[Jennifer Boyle]

25 minutes ago, Ardy Lay said:

Actually, yes.  And it's not "I think."  It's "I read the laws."  And don't be confused that Second Life's Snapshot and Machinima Policy states that consent is not required for snapshots.  If those snapshots include "avatars whose names are legible, and avatars whose appearance is sufficiently distinctive that they are recognizable by members of the Second Life community", the privacy laws do apply.

In RL in the US, it is legal to photograph whatever one can see from a place they are legally entitled to be and publish the photo. If the law is more restrictive of what one can do with avatars in SL than with real human beings in RL, that is bizarre, and the law is indeed an ass, and it needs to be changed.

[Ardy Lay]

5 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

In RL in the US, it is legal to photograph whatever one can see from a place they are legally entitled to be and publish the photo. If the law is more restrictive of what one can do with avatars in SL than with real human beings in RL, that is bizarre, and the law is indeed an ass, and it needs to be changed.

In the eye of the law, Second Life is private property we, as Second Life Residents have obtained permission to use.  Second Life is not, at this time, considered a publicly owned locale through which one must pass in their daily lives, such as city streets and sidewalks.

[Ardy Lay]

I am going to end my free consultation at this time.  It's not much fun meshing law, legal precedent and Second Life Terms of Service and Community Standards.

[Ardy Lay]

I have requested our venue operator and designer for the events we do often transmit outside of Second Life to make the required signage more obvious.

[Ardy Lay]

Thanks for the points.  Your laughter reactions count as positive points on the posts you apply them to.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Ardy Lay

[Jaylinbridges]

3 minutes ago, Ardy Lay said:

I have requested our venue operator and designer for the events we do often transmit outside of Second Life to make the required signage more obvious.

So you are a Linden?

[Ardy Lay]

13 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

So you are a Linden?

No.  I am an owner of land in Second Life that hosts events.  I have decided we need more overt signage indicating we are going to stream some events to interested people because the regions are full.  If people object, they can change appearance, change accounts, or leave the venue.  We do not charge for entry.

[belindacarson]

9 hours ago, Quartz Mole said:

I've double-checked this with the appropriate Lindens and they confirm that, provided (e.g.) a greeter bot in a club is registered as a scripted agent, it doesn't count towards that club's traffic.   

That's what the wiki article means (and it's been revised to clarify this).

If the bot is not registered, it will show up in the traffic stats,, but that is a violation of the scripted agent policy and someone notices the bot greeter isn't registered, they should AR it and appropriate steps will be taken.

Certainly, though, registered scripted agents do not count towards traffic.

 

I'm up to 104 abuse reports so far.

 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Catching up on posts..I also only use the official viewer. Because I'm old. Get off my mainland parcel lawn!

[Jennifer Boyle]

1 hour ago, belindacarson said:

I'm up to 104 abuse reports so far.

 

 

You should try SLex. It's a lot more fun than filing ARs.

[Jennifer Boyle]

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Finding a middle ground between a blank profile, and one that shares too much, isn't always easy.

I respectfully submit that it is. Share all information about your SL avatar freely. Share no information about the account owner.

If you do that, you will be sharing the information that will help the avatar find friends, etc., but you will be sharing no information that could cause harm to the account owner.

The above refers to sharing publicly. After you know and come to trust other account owners, you may decide to share information about your account owner privately with them.

[Jaylinbridges]

3 hours ago, belindacarson said:

I'm up to 104 abuse reports so far.

You are going force LL to raise fees again.  They need more employees in Governance to cover your AR's.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[Quartz Mole]

Please let's stick to the topic, New Feature: Scripted Agent Estate Access Discussion.

If people want to discuss topics like permissions for machinima, what to put in profiles, etc, it would be better to start threads specifically about those subjects.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Feels like a dumb question:

Along with the announcement  of the new feature ("scripted agent Estate access") - which is initially via Debug setting: Was there any official mention of a plan to make a more "normal" setting for this than a technical Debug setting?  Assumedly, this would be a change in the Estate dialog.

I can see many reasons why any "promise" to change it would be delayed, including:

- See how the change goes - such as "acceptance" by users

- Need to change both the official LL and Third-Party viewers to add it in a "standard" (non-debug setting) dialog

- Difficult to "promise" a valid timeline, and "soon" is not always an accepted answer

etc.

My question is because, not all users are "technical".

 

[Quartz Mole]

17 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Feels like a dumb question:

Along with the announcement  of the new feature ("scripted agent Estate access") - which is initially via Debug setting: Was there any official mention of a plan to make a more "normal" setting for this than a technical Debug setting?  Assumedly, this would be a change in the Estate dialog.

I can see many reasons why any "promise" to change it would be delayed, including:

- See how the change goes - such as "acceptance" by users

- Need to change both the official LL and Third-Party viewers to add it in a "standard" (non-debug setting) dialog

- Difficult to "promise" a valid timeline, and "soon" is not always an accepted answer

etc.

My question is because, not all users are "technical".

 

It's already in the Official Viewer.  As the blog post announcing this change (linked to in the first post in the thread) says

Details on using this new setting can be found here. You will need to download the latest version of the official Second Life Viewer to manage access on your estate through the Region/Estate floater

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Quartz Mole said:

It's already in the Official Viewer.  As the blog post announcing this change (linked to in the first post in the thread) says

Details on using this new setting can be found here. You will need to download the latest version of the official Second Life Viewer to manage access on your estate through the Region/Estate floater

Thanks, for some reason I was only aware of the details in the debug settings posts!

[M Peccable]

3 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

You are going force LL to raise fees again.  They need more employees in Governance to cover your AR's.

That was predicted early in this thread.

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, M Peccable said:

3 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

You are going force LL to raise fees again.  They need more employees in Governance to cover your AR's.

That was predicted early in this thread.

Idea: Raise fees for Regions where the new "deny scripted agent" setting is used.

Not for parcels (if that is added).

Region owners has monies.

Parcel owners has less. (I almost wrote "are virtually destitute in comparison", but that sounds like a pun.)

Edited April 4, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Love Zhaoying]

Theory:

Whether or not we were supposed to report "unregistered Scripted Agents" BEFORE the new changes - if you are an estate manager who uses the new feature, and there are avatars which are obviously "bots" (Scripted Agents) who are still entering your Estate, then you should probably report those "bots" as being "Unregistered Scripted Agents".

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?

 

[belindacarson]

13 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Theory:

Whether or not we were supposed to report "unregistered Scripted Agents" BEFORE the new changes - if you are an estate manager who uses the new feature, and there are avatars which are obviously "bots" (Scripted Agents) who are still entering your Estate, then you should probably report those "bots" as being "Unregistered Scripted Agents".

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?

 

That's exactly what I have been doing

Doing something as opposed to posting complaining threads and doing nothing 🙂