Land With Restricted Access

There are parcels with restricted access and sims (regions) with restricted access. The land owner is the one who decides who can ehter land and who cannot. The way we manage our second life parcels, buildings and avatars show in fact what we are on real life, our more or less hidden personality.

## Parcel restrictions

Many residents block access for different reasons. They use the *About Land* menu, an entity orb or obstacles made of prims.

### Restrictions using land menu

This is the most common way to limit access for unwanted visitors. To do that, choose **World - About Land - Access** and change from there all the data you need. A guide for land management can be found here. This will create ban lines for different categories of visitors. These ban lines can be created for the next groups of residents:

* Everybody, except people on the *allowed residents* list
* Underage residents (it is good if you have *adult* contnent)
* Residents with payment info (it is recommended sometimes, will create green ban lines)
* Group access (this will block access for non-members)
* Only certain avatars from the *banned residents* list
* Another function should let you earn money for avatars that pass through your land. This is not implemented.

Ban lines operate up to about 40 meters high when set for a group of avatars. However, if you specify a certain person on *banned residents*, that person will not have access at any height.

### Entity orb teleporters

This method is done by using multiple scripted devices. The most used is the Land Security Orb. Usually, these devices teleport away any resident except the land owner and a few friends. Some of them can be set to evacuate residents at from a specific altitude or who don't belong to a certain group. In this case, group members usually need to wear a distincitve sign (an object or a script). More advanced devices eject residents from land and then add them on the banned list.

There are places (for example many combat sims) where it is required for an avatar to use a specific sign (HUD or added object). Avatars without the required marked sign will be teleported away (home or to an instruction point).

### Visibility restriction

This new feature (implemented at the beginning of 2013) is very useful. It allows avatars on a parcel to be invisible to avatars outside the parcel an also avatars outside that parcel to be invisible from inside. Also, chat is not possible from inside to outside and from outside to inside your parcel. To do this, open **World - About Land**, then in *Land* menu, choose **Options** and click on the tab for avatar visibility and chat. You might also go to **Sound** and restrict from there sounds on your parcel.

Even using ban lines or entity orb teleporters, privacy is not complete. Someone can go to the land border and spy a parcel using camera conrol options. Using visibility and sound restrictions can really hide you from your neighbors (especially if you use a skybox). Another advantage is that it doesn't have the secundary effects had by a ban line or an entity orb (see below).

### Obstacles

This might be one of the most natural way of limiting access. Building a high obstacle consumes only a few prims and is visible for anyone. The obstacle might be made only of 4 large prims (for a square-shaped parcel). If a texture is added on inside or on outside, the overall image of the obstacle will change a lot. For a skybox, it can be entirely covered or included into a large box. Unlike ban lines and entity orbs, obstacles are visible and can be avoided and can be used for a much greater high. Into a cube skybox, if there is no door or hole, the only access way is by direct teleport.

By puting something in a cube skybox with no entrance and blocking visibility, the chance that somebody else will enter on your land and see you is very low.

There are doors that can be openedd only by their owner or by a specific comand.

## Sim restrictions

These restrictions are different for Linden-owned and private-owned land:

Linden-owned land sims sometimes have restrictions:

* Only premium access (premium wilderness, premium sandboxes, premium railway, premium snowlands)
* Only newcomers (special places for newcomers)
* Only authorised access (places used for testing).

Private-owned land sims might have restricted access for a list of residents, for everybody outside a group or for everybody except some allowed residents. In the List Of Microcontinents And Sim Clusters, there are listed many places with *no access* for public.

## Secundary effects

By restricting access, severe problems are created for transportation. If a vehicle (car, horse, airplane, helicopter, boat, submarine) falls into ban lines, it is desintegrated and the pilot needs to find a place to rezz another vehicle. Also, if an entity orb teleports the pilot away, the vehicle will desintegrate too. This is a real problem for nearby residents, especially in continents with low-developed infrastructure, like central parts of Gaeta 5, Nautilus, Satori or Jeogeot. It might be a reason why these regions are low populated.

Some people don't like that sometimes they see ban lines from nearby parcels inside their homes.

Entity orb teleporters are the nightmare for those residents who like to travel, visit and explore. If the teleporting point is set *home*, then the whole trip might be lost.

## Problems

### Linden official position

*You can use scripted objects to enhance your land ownership tools. Generally, such scripts should:*

* Provide adequate warning to the undesired Resident.
* Only work within the property lines (this includes projectiles that cannot operate beyond the parcel boundaries).
* **Not be excessive in the removal of the unwanted Resident**. *Pushing an avatar off the property or teleporting them home is generally acceptable; intentionally applying a script to disrupt someone's Second Life connection or online status is not allowed. Scripts or no scripts, you cannot use land ownership as a way to unfairly restrict another Second Life Resident's personal freedoms.*

Boston Linden

### Residents and their position

There are at least 10 inworld groups who protest against restricted access. They can easy be found by using the *Search* tool. Also, on the forums many people protest against parcel access restrictions. However, since many people use restricted access, it is also clear that many people want to block access on their land.

So, everybody has a different point of view and it is difficult to find a solution. Some residents will never tolerate anybody on their properties, while others just cannot understand why they are not allowed. The property right cannot be disputed, however a too fast teleporting from a parcel can be considered an abuse [1].

### Percents

A survey made by our team showed that about 40% of all parcels have restricted access, as follows:

* 20% use ban lines and use group access, access list or no access list. This percent is much higher in some places of the grid and a lot lower in others.
* 5 to 10% use entity orbs to restrict access. From these, the majority use a higher eject time (over 10 seconds). Only a few are very aggresive and are set for less then 5 seconds. Also, only a few teleport people to another parcel.
* About 15% use banned lines for a few unwanted visitors.

### Note from editors

While creating articles for Second Life Geography project, we had to travel large distances and teleport many times. People all over the world use Second Life, so there are many different points of view. Some residents are like tohse guys from movies that point the shootgun to you and shout *Get out of my property!*, while others are very friendly and say *Feel welcome here and enjoy your stay*. Talking about unwanted visitors, more then 90% are residents without any bad intention and only 1% might be persons that like to make trouble.

If you want to block access on your parcel, please take in consideration the follows:

1. If you decide to use ban lines, please think about building a fence or a wall on the ground. This way, people will see and avoid to enter your parcel. This system is very effective. No vehicle will hit your ban lines and no vehilce will get desintegrated.
2. For airplanes that might smash into ban lines, think about building something in air, close to the maximum altitude of a ban line, in corners of your parcel. This way, airplanes and helicopters will see the obstacle and avoid your land.
3. If you decide to use an entity orb, please think that the time between the moment when an avatar enters your parcel and the moment that avatar will be ejected must be significant. An amount of time higher then 10 seconds will let the missfortuned traveler to run out of your land. Think aboutt the time needed to fly away from that parcel.
4. Also, try to avoid teleporting avatars home. Think about sending them to a public parcel (like Protected Land: parks, waterways, a road or a parcel of Abandoned Land), close to you, so they can continue their trip.
5. If you use an entity orb that protects a skybox, think about a notice, something visible from an airplane. A blinking prim is a good device. People will see and avoid this.
6. Think that an avatar doesn't know when it entered your parcel and what way to fly away from it. So, if your parcel is very big (so it is needed more then 15 sconds to get accross), teleporting to a nearby parcel of protected land or abandoned land is a good solution.
7. If your parcel includes water, think about using something visible, like a buoy (device used to mark shallow waters and water obstacles). A sailor will see this and try to avoid your land.
8. Think about restricting visibility (see above) as a better solution. Even with the most advanced security restrictions, somebody can still spy your property, using camera controls.
9. If you own land on a sim that has no contact to other sims, please consider to block teleport entry to your sim or to divert teleport entry to a place surrounded by ban lines or to a skybox without access to land. This way, the unwanted visitor will have time to find another destination.
10. If you own land on a private sim and don't want to be visited, one good solution is to fix teleport entry to a neutral parcel, like the rental box or channels/mountains used to separate parcels. This way random teleporters will land there and not into your home.
11. Other moderate solutions are using obstacles and doors that operate only for therir owners, combined with restricted visibility (see above).

Think how you should feel to be the other person. If you are the land owner, think about how would you feel to smash your vehicle and to be ejected from that parcel. If you are a traveler, think how would you feel if somebody unwanted enters your parcel and disturbs you.

## See Also

[2] - Managing your parcel

Second Life Geography

* Abandoned Land
* Inhabited Land
* Land For Rent Or Sale
* Protected Land
* Protected Route
* Rezz Zone
* Unused Land
* Water