What Should SL Landowners Do About Sexual Vagabonds?

In the real world, police call the criminal act of trespassing on private property "B & E", for "breaking and entering". In Second Life, the analog might best be called "B & F", for "breaking and fornicating". (Or maybe a less polite acronym will do better there.) It's a fairly common phenomenon, wherein landowners discover unwanted, uninvited strangers on their property, enthusiastically engaged in SL sex. Tymmerie Thorne calls them "the horny homeless", and after discovering a pair of them in the apartment complex she and her husband own, she's pretty peeved. Especially because it was one of her tenants who found them: "Our resident was upset, to say the least," Ms. Thorne reports. "The two trespassers would not stop what they were doing or leave when she asked. And I felt terrible that I could not get in-world to help." I notice similar occurrences described on other SL blogs fairly regularly, and even the New York Times has noticed Second Life B&F, duly reporting that metaverse artist AM Radio occasionally finds couples "having sex next to his steam engine."

For landowners, there's no simple solution to the problem. Many just choose to ignore it, or try to regard it with good-humored indulgence.  Those who do find it offensive are in more of a quandary: as Tymmerie Thorne's experience suggests, filing an Abuse Report with the Lindens will rarely bring the Community Standards constabulary in time. It is possible to lock off the property to strangers, creating an invisible barrier around their land, but many see that as a huge inconvenience, or an unneighborly thing to do. (Besides, B&F is also fairly common in large stores and other areas designed to be kept open to the public.)

So here again is yet another unintended consequence of Second Life's architecture as a persistent virtual world. Since the land is always there, who knows what's going on in the place you're paying for, when you're not logged in? It's also another reason why I think the Lindens' plans to segregate sexual content to an "Adult Continent" will be extremely difficult to put in practice. The reason for doing so, the Lindens say, is to prevent Residents from encountering pornographic content they did not choose to see. At the same time, their lawyer says that this ban will not apply to sexual activity which happens on property out of public view on the main continent. So how does that policy help the Lindens' paying customers who encounter unwanted sex in their own living rooms?  Image credit: girlwonderspeaks.blogspot.com

Comments

[Uccello Poultry]

B&F will continue whether an adult mainland is created or not. So-called "Sex Wallets" will still allow residents to fornicate where they wish, when they wish. What? Turn on No Build? Someone will find a way around that. Land owners still have the power eject and ban. Used in an intelligent fashion it these are effective tools.

[Laetizia Coronet]

What about the old hide/show script? What's there to do when the house appears empty?

[Iggy O]

Renters lack the ability to ban and eject. Even on our university island, where I have build rights, I keep telling our admin to let me ban/eject.

But unless the horny homeless have a HUD instead of balls to rez, they cannot DO anything on our island. If they figure out a way to get it on anyhow, I'd just leave them alone if students were not around.

But if students were present, I'd ask the shaggers to leave...if that failed, I'd abuse-report them and run their bare butts down in my car :)

[Ananda]

This is another problem which wouldn't be such a big problem if the tier structure didn't make such high barriers to entry-level land ownership. Just sayin'.

Lindens, we need a Middle Class!

[Pyewacket]

Turn off scripts in the land tab?

[Brad Reason]

I say film it and post it on the net!

[Patchouli Woollahra]

@Iggy O: No, just no... abusing them in reply, on a mainland sim, will probably get you dealt with by Linden Labs as well. "retaliation" is not an acceptable reason to GTeam, not now, not ever.

@Ananda: The cost of prims is relatively expensive, and I would agree with you. The question is whether LL can afford to support cheaper prices... I should certainly hope so - we're not even halfway through the recession and more people will stop being able to afford US$495/sim/month before this is through. :(

[Ann Otoole]

Judging from what Ahern was attacked this morning with it is rather obvious the only solution to wrong behavior is removal of all resident's inventory, elimination of user created content, and removal of LSL scripting capability.

This is what the people behind the griefing are trying to force Linden Lab into doing.

What Linden Lab needs to do is obtain assistance from the proper law enforcement authorities to infiltrate, identify, arrest, and prosecute the criminals. However this would likely look real bad when it became public knowledge of who is behind it all so I don't expect LL to do a thing about it.

Meanwhile the griefers will still teach their rl classes and play Croquet as they laugh.

[Tateru Nino]

Why? Who do you think is behind it?

[radar]

Ok, it's an annoying problem, although sometimes it's kind of funny to torment the people in question until they leave, but seriously. You'd really be misusing resources to call in law enforcement for something like this blog post describes. I'd rather they focus on criminal behavior that's a little more problematic in a real way, such as tracking down kidnappers or child molesters or something.

As for Ahern, I don't know what that's about, but then again I avoid places like Ahern like the plague anyway.

[Sougent Harrop]

I think I still have some weaponry from my SL youth.

Woo hoo, Target practice....

[Iggy O]

@Patchouli...I'll try to be good, even though we have a private island and are not on the mainland...and we need scripts on for projects.

So when I catch nekkid shaggers on our campus, with students present, I'll do my best to follow the Community Standards, even if "I just couldn't resist the fun of chasing them all just once around the parking lot"

--Charlie Daniels, "Uneasy Rider"

[Adric Antfarm]

Yes, barriers are rude. How many times do we have to fly smack into those damn things? I don't let others build on my land, but I have no problem with them crossing it (seems like basic civics really).

Second, these people are idiots. I can't tell you the number of spots - whole cities even - I come across almost daily that have long since stopped being visited by the owner or people. I've had the run of aircraft carriers, museaums, etc. If you want privacy and lack land in SL, you can find a spot with stuff ready built for you. I've even appointed myself the mayor (and King in the case of a few larger aeres) of some orpahan areas.

[Skate Foss]

Its a terrible fact of (Second) life. I've seen them in top notch stores and on HI's. Its one of the reasons for the bad rap SL has. Its something the Lindens must confront.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I don't really give a flying fig if you think ban lines are "rude". Being on (or over) my property without my permission is ruder -- you literally have NO RIGHT. Yeah, the barriers occasionally make it a pain to get from point to point. Blame the Lindens for not having the foresight to include more greenspace, roads and other rights-of-way for travelers.

If you make your space public, it's up to you to enforce any rules you want to enforce. If you want to make my space public, well, tough noogies. Fly around.

[Maggie Darwin]

Gee, Arcadia, try closing the airspace over your RL home sometime, and let us know how that works for you.

[Adric Antfarm]

I love you Maggie. I really do.

Excellent point. Very well made.

If we are going to come into a game and shut other people out we might as well just play solitare instead.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

As far as RL goes, if people could fly and had x-ray vision, I'd mount a kryptonite cannon on my roof.

No part of my vision for a happy second life involves coming home to a stranger reclining nude on my cuddle rug with a blank noob stare and a talking freenis.

The issue could be mitigated if we had access to secure instanced spaces. Instancing would also reduce server load and enhance privacy. Some people have emulated instancing with skyboxes keyed to teleporters, but that's a half-measure. Give us the real thing and mainland suddenly is a much more attractive proposition.

[Ann Otoole]

Try not leaving your e-sex stuff out or if you insist on leaving the items out then disable the scripts in them when not in use. If you cannot disable the scripts then buy a superior product that has security or can be disabled. Problem solved.

Even the cheapest of the cheap mlp things have security. This is a non issue other than people leaving scripts running in sims that don't need to be there when they are not logged in and e-sexing on them.

If you have an e-sex store then what did you expect? Of course you will have all sorts of "activities" going on in your store.

And if you still have issues with residents using your space then deal with it. The only privacy in Second Life is on a private island that *you* have estate manager rights on and you set access to private. If you can't afford privacy then don't expect privacy.

There has never been nor will never be privacy on Linden Lab owned mainland. Privacy is a luxury for the affluent.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

A cuddle rug is "e-sex stuff"? Pfffft. Try again. This isn't about sex, it's about the willful violation of somebody else's personal space. I was almost as upset at the fully-clothed jackass who used the sit exploit to bypass my locked front door.

I don't have to "deal with" fools using my property. The tool we have been given to deal with unwanted visitors is the ban line. Until we get better tools, I will continue to use mine. And if you don't like it, YOU can "deal with it".

My space is mine. I pay for it. I will not suffer squatters gladly.

[Sandor Balczo]

I don't want to cause a major fuss here, but:

1. Most of the residents of SL have devoted a good part of their early days to sex. What I don't understand is, with so many good places for good sex in SL, why do some noobs insist in having sex in private homes? The reason is very simple. They believe that you can do that. Education is key in these circumstances. Whenever I found "intruders" in my home, I explained calmly and jokingly the difference between public and private in SL (and to be the most hospitable, I took part in their sex session if I liked them). When I partnered, I tried to make sex bed unusable to strangers (you can do that) and I could find out that 3 of my partners were cheating on me by forgetting to reset the bed (a great way to ensure a quick divorce) and with my current partnership we have made it clear that no sex would be performed in our property, period. There are so many professionally built places to live out your fantasies, let's use them and save prims to make our homes more beautiful and realistic.

As for ban lines and security orbs, experience tells me they do more harm than good and I avoid any place that allows them like the plague. There are so many simple options you can use in your about land window to prevent unwanted rezzing which could also be used by renters if they were not hopelessly uncapable of even using the simplest commands, and I know this for a fact because I was a land manager for one of the oldest and most reputable estates for quite some time, and the lack of expertise of some residents was only second to their utmost arrogance.