how do you protect yourself from theft of objects when using group owned land?

[Carson Brandenburg]

I recently added a land lord to my group as an owner to rent land from him in my group name so that I have the ability to do as I need for business.  I'm trying to protect myself from theft etc... if I am to be on group land with me as owner and my landlord and I set out a vendor, or an object, etc.  How do I make sure he can't just grab a copy and start selling... or move my stuff around?  I get confused with setting something to a group vs deeding, etc.  Please help.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

If made someone an owner of your group, that person has all the abilities that you have for any group owned item.....that includes land.  He cannot take anything or alter anything that you own and have not deeded to the group.  If you don't trust this person (and it appears you don't by the question you asked) you probably should ask that the person leave the group and let you reinvite him back..........and this time don't make him an owner.  You cannot eject an owner......even if you own the group.

[Dresden Ceriano]

Peggy beat me to it... but I just have to stress... never, ever add someone as an owner to your group, especially something as important as a group for your business.  You can give him all the rights he needs without making him an owner.  Definitely ask him to leave the group asap, while you're still on good terms... hopefully you can get out of this before you get burned and then don't ever do it again.

Best of luck ...Dres

[Thaumata Strangelove]

Hey Carson.  

Group rights can be totally confusing, right?  I think there are really two issues here:

 

1.  Your land and what group it's under.  You shouldn't need to add your landlord to your group in order to set your rented land to your personal/business group.  (And as others said, he definitely never needs to be owner, and shouldn't be unless you are business partners, too!)  

2.  Your object permissions.  

 

If you just rez your vendors and stuff out of your inventory as normal, nobody should be able to move them or take them.  The obvious exception to this is for people that you've specifically granted edit rights to, and you will know if you've done this because SL will shout at you that it's a really big deal to give someone rights before it lets you ok it.

If you set your objects to group, they should still be safe and sound.  Setting stuff to group is usually the most useful in terms of which objects are allowed on a parcel.  So like... you might set your land so that only the group can rez on it, and what happens then is that stuff that isn't set to group gets auto-returned.  Again, if it's just set to group, I'm pretty sure nobody can screw your stuff up.

If you DEED your objects to the group, then other group members can potentially take and move the objects.  For them to do this, they would also have to have this ability enabled in the group settings, under Roles.  In general, unless you really mean to share an object with someone like this, you should never have to deed anything.  (I've been in SL like six years and I've never deeded anything except out of curiousity.)

Hope that helps.  If you have any other questions or you need an oldbie to come help you play with permissions for a day, just give me a shout.  And good luck with your store!