SL Bug: Why Can You Rez on No-Build Land?!

I've reported this before as an exploit or something to do with a rogue viewer used by griefers, in part because when I tested it before it seemed that I myself couldn't replicate it with the official SL viewer.

But I really focused on it tonight, and also TP'd in a scripter friend, and we both replicated it.

Danger Linden is wrong -- he's reiterating the way "SL is supposed to work," but it has a major bug that is making it work differently -- not as it was coded and intended. And this has been in place for months on end, I've reported it, and I've "gotten nowhere". I'm not sure if it was on the (now closed from view) JIRA (I was banned from the JIRA and couldn't even it view it).

So here we are in the screenshot above, replicating it.

1. The "Build" and "object entry" boxes on the "about land" menu for "everyone" and "group" are unchecked so the boxes are blank.

2. Two group members try rezzing prims, one with group tag, one without but still a member.

3. The prims rez despite the no-build and no-object-entry uncheck on the menu (see the screenshot -- land is all on "no build" and "no object entry" settings, prims are rezzing regardless).

4. Tried on Blue Steel, RC LeTigre and Second Life Server channel sims, and it was the same on all those three.

5. None of the group roles except officer have the powers to "toggle settings on about land" to "build" etc.-- so it's not that somebody is toggling settings.

6. On Linden Land, where I am not a member of the group obviously, where "everyone" is not checked off, I'm not able to rez a prim.

7. On my own land, if I log on with an alt that is not a group member, he cannot rez a prim and gets the message "the server does not alllow it".

8. Therefore, the bug is in effect for group members only.

If this bug were fixed, then you could have open groups with different levels of permissions for different roles, and give some roles in the group the right to toggle about land, then they could turn off group/everyone build, and their land wouldn't be griefed even though the group would be left open to membership.

An entry-level role like "tenant" could rez prims, but not rez them on land that said "no build' for "everyone" and "group" and they could also not toggle the "about land/build" menu boxes.

But this problem just isn't of interest to the Lindens to fix, or would require other things dear to their hearts to be rolled back or sacrified or who-knows-what.

And that's because they can just tell people to keep closed groups. They only invite people into their group after they pay or if they are trusted, and then they don't have to worry about the fact that group rules are broken.

Or they can tell people to go on private islands -- ban people from the whole island if you like, and give tenants estate permissions and they can ban them. 

I refuse to close my groups. Second Life should be open; open groups enabling people to build on group land fosters creativity and socializing. People shouldn't have to queue up waiting for a land baron to send them a group permission, sometimes losing a day or two of rent and the use and access to their land while they wait.

"Openness" is supposedly the principle of the griefers' sims like Sandvik and open source sandlots -- there is no reason it can't be for rentals, too -- real openness, not the open source=closed society of coders.

Openness of groups is an enormous boon. I get new tenants every day, many of them new to SL. Every day. These people can jump in, put out a house, or build, or have friends over and build together and show each other items. This is the heart of SL. I don't see why this should be closed off when there is a function, in the design, in the viewer, that enables people to toggle build on and off that should work.

Of course, we were promised so many times that we would have granulated tools that would enable us to have openness and creativity -- and business! -- in a free and open market in SL yet "have the ability to control your experience with tools". Rodvik even said something new was coming (a year ago?) to help combat griefers.

It wasn't a priority, however.

But really, a lot of griefing would be curbed if they would address this bug that causes the settings for "no build" intended even for group members not to work if people are group members.

Just imagine if people could complete their builds, then turn off build and object entry -- so that they would not have the problems people constantly face with litter even for a minute or five minutes or griefing. When they needed to build again, they could turn it back on.

I'm fairly certain SL used to work that way -- that's why there are two boxes, duh! "Everyone" and "Group"!

The griefer who is whacking his axe right at this vulnerability in the group rules every day and harassing me for days and weeks and years on end now already is trying to destroy the openness of Second Life on just that point. He is trying to *force closure* and for ideological reasons. Even as he spouts nonsense about creativity and open source, what he means to do is make it so that people are forced to close their groups, their land, and the world due to griefing and become a security state.

Then, ironically, it becomes more vulnerable to griefing in some ways, especially via social hacks, and also becomes to close in on itself and lose its creativity and openness obviously and stagnate -- and become its opposite.

And that *is* the goal of Anonymous and all the other Bolshevik-like goon groups -- to make Second Life become unlike its ideals, to prove it unfit for human creativity and socializing, to destroy it so that the Internet and its structures can only be used by the totalitarians themselves.

I find this simple realization is very hard for people to grasp. They think open source cultist griefers are somehow still devoted to openness. Or they say "it's just a game, why are you crying about your e-lawn." Or they say, "fix your land settings" or "fix your group settings," it's your fault. They themselves often make closed groups and closed sims in their little griefy silos.

So what is to be done?

I don't think putting a cost on group membership is an option. Even $1 or $5 is too much a pain especially for someone new without Lindens yet, or not very many Lindens, or who can't figure out how to get them (they don't make it easy). It's a nuisance for people who leave and come back to the group frequently. It will reduce customers likely significantly. It's not worth it.

I think the only thing to do is to keep the groups open, keep abuse reporting the griefers, and eventually they go away. Usually they go away for a good long time when the Lindens finally seize their whole sim, because that's their base, and the alts draw from it.

I'm not solely interested in running a little rentals operations on the hard-scrabble Mainland, I'm interested in seeing how the society works and seeing if we can civilize its makers. Truly that's what it's always been about.

But the problem is that I don't have company in this. There are few intellectuals in SL to speak of, there are only shrill extremist partisans, particularly on Sluniverse.com. These problems don't engage them and they are not willing to fight for freedom -- they let the JIRA closure go in a heartbeat as soon as it was discovered that at least a few of the FIC would get to go on seeing it. Despicable.

The griefer has always tried to make this "about me" or pretend it's "a vendetta" that I wage against "kids". But of course griefers just like this, maybe even the same people, go and harass Fleep Tuque, the quintessential open source maven and open sim proponent, too. So it's not "about me".

I really didn't like seeing today a tenant with a lovely build and a bathysphere and docks get a huge red axe through her build, then later multiple effigies of me in blackface as an Obama campaigner, and slabs of black everywhere, finally crashing the sim and/or viewer. That's just goddamn creepy and sick. The griefer  -- Joanna/Tizzers in an alt named "tizzersluvsyu" or perhaps Shaun Altman or perhaps Jim Korpov or perhaps Hazim Gazov, who knows -- threatened that he would keep coming back and harassing her so naturally she refunded and left. She has an unpleasant experience as a relatively new person; so do I, and I lose some money -- $10.65 US to be exact...Multiple that by literally hundreds of times...

Another tenant was griefed out of that spot, and I had stopped renting it completely, but then after there was a griefing hiatus for a few weeks, I had risked renting it. But the totalitarian believes he has a veto on whether I get to rent this. Several times he demanded to "get his land back" (both Joanna and Yeehaw Ragu would constantly sound this theme, Yeehaw because he was kicked out of a rental when he was first created, after he was connected to a griefing episode, and rightly so, and Joanna because he continued to stalk and heckle me from land he managed to get hold of from an oldbie punk store owner who sold it at a huge price -- and which was seized by the Lindens when the entire Woodbury crew was booted for the third time.

I haven't given up hope that the Lindens might finally do something about this -- they have before several times. But it does take its toll -- especially because no one cares. The principle of openness that I'm fighting for isn't something that anyone values as an intellectual proposition per se -- the only people who value it -- and fleetingly -- are the hundreds of tenants and their roomies and friends and builders and guests who avail themselves constantly to this open system without a thought of its conceptual underpinnings.

"Can you give me the group?" people have to say a thousand times a day in Second Life. Not in my communities -- that function that so plumps up the smug burgher's vanity in SL in the land baron class is that lordly act of sending the invitation -- but I never send them. It's open to join any time.

The Lindens should care more about keeping Second Life that way in general.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Micha Sass]

It would seem that group settings override the land settings. Maybe not a bug as such. You could remove 'rez objects' from the default group abilities and then set this privilege in the land settings. If, as you say, this is only a problem for you and not the majority, LL may not fix this.

[Micha Sass]

Turning off 'rezzing-for-group' on only some of your group land will expose at least some of your estate to griefing (assuming 0-days can join the open group). If you are getting griefed I would have thought you would want to protect your entire estate, in which case the finer grained setting you wish for are not required any way.

[Amelise]

Check the "Parcel Powers" section of your group member's roles. There is an option that grants build ability. Is that checked?

Also the group does not have to be active. Membership is enough. This used to be different.

[Daniel Regenbogen]

It is not a bug, it "only" is a missing option for group roles abilities.

I take it your land is deeded to/owned by the group? In that case, *all* group members are seen as land owners in the settings for everyone/group/owner. It is different if the land is only *set* to the group, but not owned by the group. In that case, unchecking the checkboxes for everyone and group takes away the rezzing powers from group members, too - and only the owner of the land can rezz.

So, no bug and nothing broken. Though your idea of putting this into the abilities for group roles is a good one.

[c3]

i dont think one needs a virtual simulation to see from realities histories that totalitarian dictatorships dont get "reformed" but only overthrown.

we need to keep governments/cult leaders/meglomaniacs as far away from computer memes/money and pundits as possible.

all cyber/mech delusions of betterverses will always be the story of the scorpion and the frog.

the only way to prevent it is to remove humans from the game. which is what SL was founded on.

maybe today, rod will just turn them into a "stupid fun club"... which is fine with me... everyone can use some stupid fun.

[Don]

Rez in Second Life means to create or to make an object appear. Rezzing an object/prim can be done by dragging it from a resident's inventory or by creating a ...

[Gosh Human Rights?]

C.rap M.ariner commenting: http://firstlife.isfullofcrap.com/2012/09/21/tell-the-tale/

[Prokofy Neva]

The answers here are typical of the perverse snarky take on code that you would see on the JIRA.

Common sense would dictate that if a box says EVERYONE and GROUP for the build on land, and you uncheck them, then....you should have NO BUILD on that land.

The idea that "group rules trump land rules" is wack. There's no reason for that; if anything, the owner of the land -- the group -- should have the land do what he wants it to do when he checks those boxes.

This is the sort of thing Soft Linden would look at and also perversely say, "Oh, that's a feature request, not a bug." And Alex Linden would say "Oh, that just needs a better explanation. Let's just change the descriptions on the boxes because it *is* confusing."

But that's all bullshit. It's a design flaw. Build and no build are pretty basic. Hey, how come "safe" and "damages" when checked and unchecked work for the Lindens' beloved war games, but this function doesn't the way it is supposed to? It's not right

The expectation one has that it will turn off is right; the idea that group "gets to" override in fact isn't a norm in SL -- the funny thing is in that other annoying bug I discovered where people who didn't have the right to return group-set prims in the group *could* return them if they were on "share," why, the object perms were trumping group rules -- group rules weren't ruling then! So which is it, guys?

If "build/no build" only works for a sole owner who has *set* a land to a group rather than *deeding* it to a group then...why is the menu even there after you deed a land? Why *doesn't* it work?

There is no objective reason why it couldn't. It's just that no Lindens wanted to bother. It wasn't important for them to figure out group tools and land settings that help actual groups and communities or rentals because they just wanted to drive people to more expensive islands in the end, and stop trying to figure out how to make groups better. They went through an enthusiastic period reforming the group tools -- and back then, I fought another killer that really harmed rentals -- the ability to vote an officer off land he paid for on the auction and paid tier on, through "officers' recall". Remember that horror?

It was done to me by someone pursuing a vendetta once, and Blue Linden told me that I should just run in the elections and try to win fair and square (!) even though what I was running was not a hippie commune, which is what the tools originally were designed for, but a rentals system. It was an insane system.

Even after they reformed the group tools, they still had problems (group chat, anyone?) It's never been a priority for Lindens. And it's not BTW for Open Sim or any other sim I see, none of which have coded groups better and their functions.

Remember my famous blog post about "the pizza guy" stealing all of Linden Lab in real life? Cory Linden had actually liked that and the Lindens discussed it. Because it was really insane the way people could take your land away from you merely because you had once trusted them as officers...

The Lindens *accidently* made money on server sales because the real estate model developed which wasn't their plan. They didn't engineer for it. They engineered for content creators, sandboxing, people wrecking stuff.

It is a bug. It is not a "missing option." I'm not surprise, again, that the same perverse types like Daniel who always adopt the sort of lefty political view and also play the child avatar edgecasing game as well also can't see this issue normally.

Amelise is right that it used to be that you had to make the group active -- but that was changed.

Now, sure, you can check off roles not to have any rezzing powers. What do they get out of membership in? It might make sense for a mall or something, but for rentals, I think it's optimal to have people not queue up for invitations but be able to start building, or to test their houses or invite their friends to see if they like it with the "try before you buy" sort of house rezzing that people can do with a rental like this.

And the convenience outweighs the griefers.

Micha, you're talking about private island estates. This is the mainland.

[Daniel Regenbogen]

Lol, Prok, you really have some understanding deficits. I simply pointed out why it doesn't work the way you expected it to work. This setting is to restrict rezzing powers in steps from everyone, only members of a group or the owner. In case of group owned land, the group *is* the owner, so you can't restrict group members (aka owners) from rezzing.

"if anything, the owner of the land -- the group -- should have the land do what he wants it to do when he checks those boxes." But that's exactly how it is. The owner can not take away his own rezzing rights. If turning of group rezzing rights in group owned land was possible, you yourself couldn't rezz anymore (and shouldn't be able anymore to reverse that setting) - how should the system know that the member of the land owning group Prok is allowed to rezz, and the member of the land owning group xyz not? The dog bites its own tail.

Might be a bit confusing (especially when you do only half research, even when being in the land business for such a long time), but that's the way it is, and it is not a bug. Maybe there could be a way to gray out that box in case of group owned land - how about proposing that to LL? Might be a nice idea (and the only logical way) to have such restrictions available in group role abilities (you can NOT deny rezzing rights in group roles abilities yet) - how about proposing that to LL? But no, you, instead of giving productive input, jump into the faces of people, claiming "A bug, a bug!", while there isn't one - and then wonder that people not exactly bending backwards to accomodate your wishes. Nah, you prefer an insane bite reflex whenever you see some people/names. Pavlov's dogs anyone?

[Prokofy Neva]

It's not about "my expectations," Daniel, but your perverseness.

A box on a menu in Second Life that says "everyone" and "group" and "build" should work to turn off building for "everyone" or "group" or both -- full stop.

Everything else on the menu works that way.

It's either "damage" or "safe".

It's either "$30/wk search places add" or not.

It's either "public access" or "not public".

In fact, the griefers override two other things I'll do a separate post about:

a) they can rez objects regardless of being on the ban list
b) they can rez objects even on land closed to admit-only.

Neither of those can be said to be merely what "I expect" but are flaws, along with the initial flaws that don't perform the simple intuitive and common-sense function.

But simple, intuitive and common-sense -- those aren't features of open source software.

The owner can in fact take away his own rezzing rights when he's sole owner. So why can't he when he's group?

And truly, why can't he? Some land should be designated no build for any reason or no reason, and the box is there to do it. It doesn't work. It's a flaw.

If you put no group, that simply no build -- period. In fact it used to work that way.

I don't need LL to "grey out the box" consistent with the Alexa Linden way of sweeping bugs under the rug, which is to pretend that bugs are just poorly-explained features.

I need them to make it work the way it is supposed to and as it is advertised.

Checking a land to disable building shouldn't be something complicated. You can already do it in some instances -- why not completely?

And the whole reason why this matters in the first place, because the OTHER feature -- BAN -- IS NOT WORKING. They are OVERRIDING BAN. Later iterations of SL software made it possible so that if a person was banned, they couldn't rez objects or interact even with objects on that land.

Timeless Prototype thought this was great because he could ban me from his land, then I couldn't reach in and buy something from his vendor anyway, from a neighbouring parcel.

So I could ban "EugeneObama Resident" who is rezzing all this crap on my land, but he can keep rezzing it. Meanwhile, he overrides the system again to ban me from my own land, making it so I can't return an object with a right click but have to try to access the land menu.

It's already the case that you can deprive *roles* in the group rezzing rights, but that's not an open group. You aren't sufficiently versed in the menu. So you're wrong about that. Indeed you can. It's under the"Allowed Abilities" and "Parcel "Powers" and "Always Allow Create Objects".

It is a bug.

I don't expect these hippies and perverse engineers in the open source cult to accommodate me. I simply report on how they keep enabling griefers with their bugs.

Eventually, governance will become as important to them as shiny new alternative toys like pathfinding. They'd rather make it possible for an NPC in a zombie game to move through obstacles than to place any reasonable obvious common-sense obstacle to griefing that always helps maintain open communities. Their game.