Linden Labs open invitation to griefers and extortionists?

So if the land was not for sale, you would otherwise have no problem with these signs?

Thats not what he's saying. HIS land IS NOT for sale. He just makes his tiny plot ruin the view for others. THEIR land value drops and they put THEIR land up for sale. HE buys THEIR land at CHEAP prices. He then removes the ugly crap from his small parcel and sells THEIR land at better rates, makes a profit. Then rinse and repeat.

Warning: Of course use an alt as the owner of the small build.

These signs have caused hundreds of people to give up land ownership on the grid.
These signs have caused alot of people to not invest into land ownership on the grid.
These signs are costing LL alot of money.

As a land dealer, when I am approached by somebody tiering down, the first thing I look for are these signs. Plots next to these signs do not resell, therefore I have to offer these people a mere fraction of what they initially paid.

Lazarus is making alot of money from this, do not be fooled. Some back of the envelope calculations:

65,000 meters in land owned (-$195 per month)
# of 16m2 plots owned at max tier = 4062.5 16m2 plots

Fudge factor-assuming he only has 40,000 m2 worth of holdings, and holdings are 32m2 instead of 16 m2 = 1250 32m2 plots

If Lazarus sells just 3% of those 1250 plots in a month, thats 37.5 plots per month sold.

If he is selling these at $5000L per plot that is $187,500L = $721.15 USD per month.

Deduct his expenses and thats a cool $526.15 per month profit.


Disregard my previous complaints about this, when I get home tonight I am starting a sign business.

Im with you on this. In fact start up a proposed feature for a technical solution and make ugly signs to advertise the need for this feature/proposal.

CHA-CHING! $$$

We can argue about Laz in the forums all day but what it boils down to is that LL has scads of paying, unhappy customers on their hands now, which is NEVER good for business.

Because it hasn't WORKED. It already has not worked. That train has done left the station.

People started buying pieces of this land before people in the grid started talking and deciding NOT to buy this land. Therefore the situation grew. Therefore it is no longer an option, because he has now been enabled to buy even more land, and now the problem is much bigger.

It could never have worked as a solution because people couldn't get their understanding of it and their acts together until the problem was already widespread. We may be at the point now where - oh, say, 40% of the residents (to be very optimistic) may now have it clear that they should not purchase this land and why, but that is still not enough to prevent its spread.

You and I may not have purchased it, and would never have purchased it, period - but others did, and now we are where we are now.

Which is why it is now a societal problem, not one that individuals could necessarily affect by ignoring, even now, even if 100% of us knew to do that and agreed to do that. That would depend on this individual's running out of money for his tier. Meanwhile, others come in to do the same thing. Like Kris talks about doing.

Matter of fact, her talking about doing it made me think about ways in which I could manage to be a grid-wide pain in the butt. (And don't say I already am, lol.)

I love the freedom of expression, too, and it is a great thing to offer; I'm all for it, crazed pixel sex, bling contests, and all. But we can still have all that freedom, I maintain, without allowing people to take advantage of it and ruin the whole game.

Not to mention others can now come in to do the same. Now there is someone with signs offering to buy your land when you leave SL. Nothing wrong with that, in my eyes - just as there was nothing wrong with the Impeach Bush signs in my eyes.

But - imagine: Enough of the Impeach Bush things get going to where enough people are tiering down and/or leaving, and they do sell their land to the people waiting to buy their stuff, and those people buy the land at a very low price, then turn around and sell it, then manage to get out of the business just before the Impeach Bush sign-type people ruin the landscape entirely, and the game goes down the tubes.

That's a few people getting an awful lot of profit while ruining SL for everyone else.

A similar sort of process occured in TSO, with exploits. I pinpointed the best time when I could have sold all my stuff on EBay - my accounts and everything - and made a very tiny sum. Not that I would have. Instead, I rode it to the end, and still ride it, and of course, all my stuff in TSO is virtually worthless now.

I could turn a jaundiced eye toward SL, too, and figure out some Lazarus-like way of ruining the game and getting the biggest profits out of it while doing so, as people did in TSO. Others certainly will.

coco

Well, that could be. But if so, he has an awful lot of money to spend irl and doesn't care that he is actually making a huge profit off this.

I kinda doubt that.

coco

Hmmm . . . I used that analogy too, in this thread or another.

But my view is that the correct thing would not be for the parents to tell you to ignore it, but to tell said little brother to CUT IT THE HELL OUT.

His freedom to annoy you endlessly in the back seat of the car is of lesser importance than the freedom for everyone else in the car to enjoy the trip.

coco

I have a different perspective perhaps because this has been an issue on and off since the very beginning of SL. It hasn't ruined the grid. It hasn't spiraled out of control. It hasn't driven everyone away. There will always be people who feel they should have some right to tell their neighbors what to do and who will complain loudly when confronted with the fact that they have no right to do so. That's a problem with human nature, not with SL or freedom of expression. There's no technological solution to "fix" human nature.

People who can't tolerate living next to something they find to be an eyesore perhaps should leave SL because they're expecting it to be something it's not, and hopefully never will be. If anything this just goes to show that there's plenty of market demand for people to follow in Anshe's and Prok's footsteps and offer zoned communities for people who desire that kind of predictability. I suspect that the percentage of people who are prefectly happy living in freeform/anything goes areas is still much higher than those who aren't. We only tend to hear from the disgruntled and not from the contented. As a result this situation is being blown out of all proportion.

Jake, I admire your ability to defend this guy. And you know that I am totally with you about not allowing individuals to have their rights trampled because ten other people don't like them.

But - well, I am so out of analogies, because we have been talking this thing to death. But I'll try anyway: I set a huge buffet, and I tell you it is a buffet. It is not a side dish, it is a buffet. You tell me no, it's not a buffet - it's a ham. And a pie. And chips. And dip. And a broccoli-rice casserole.

As I said before, I don't need to prove the guy is lying. I have taken the things he has said at face value, but those things include things other than Hamlet's blog. If all the things I have read and heard (yes, yes, I know, that is just hearsay) have been reported to and heard and read by the Lindens, then that is sufficient evidence. If none of these events and words actually took place, and were never reported to the Lindens, and it is all a matter of a sort of mob hysteria, then yes, that would be unfortunate.

His word as a resident on Hamlet's blog (and I'm very big on taking people at their word unless and until there is evidence to the contrary - is one thing. His words to other residents (if true), coupled with his actions, are another - they provide ample evidence to the contrary.

I think there is plenty of evidence, and I would think the Lindens could take the same sort of reasonable stand as I have and determine that yes, it is griefing; yes, it is extortion; and even if it's not intended as such, it still has that effect; and yes, the guy lied like a rug in Hamlet's blog.

Then they could recognize it for the buffet it is, a griefing and extortion buffet, and take appropriate steps, which ALREADY EXIST WITHIN THEIR OWN TOS. No court needed - anymore than any court was ever needed in any of many cases where the Lindens made a judgement call and/or interpreted their own TOS.. (And a lot of the calls have been a lot less clear-cut than this.)

This they need to do from their own self-interest, if nothing else. If this sort of thing is allowed - and the Lindens are setting a precedent here for allowing it - then we won't have a game worth playing anymore, and SL will fade into history.

I'm assuming they are working behind the scenes on a solution. I applauded it when they took down the Hitler stuff, because frankly, I don't want to live in a game that evil. I know others thought they shouldn't have, on "free speech" basis, but I thought it showed a modicum of ovaries. To me, on this, they just look intimidated and ineffective as all get-out. I hope whatever they come up with will save the game while at the same time not trample on the majority of people who use our vital freedoms reasonably and responsibly. Which includes the freedom to make an ugly build, by the way.

coco

I want to know who the hell has actually bought the land. Can I get a witness? Please?

Also, there is a huge spinning "for sale" sign next to a plot of land I own. I hate it. Spins waaaaaaaaaaay too fast. I can't concentrate when in it's presence and if you are looking to drop some subliminal suggestions on me, catch me at this site and it will probably work. I may buy the plot just to get rid of it. Is that land seller extorting me? The price is not out of whack, which actually makes it much more likely that I will knuckle under and buy it. I say it isn't just a legit "for sale" sign, it's extortion and I don't give a rats ass who says otherwise. It's devaluing my land - people won't buy it knowing that someone may buy this other plot and put up an ugly ass build.

Well, you do have a longer perspective of the whole thing than I do, and maybe you're right.

coco

P.S. Gabe - given the factors of this situation, I think the whole solution is to put limits on what can be done with smaller plots of land. My personal favorite is to have a sliding scale limiting how many small plots an individual can own - say, only three 16m plots, only five 32m plots, and so on. I haven't heard anything yet about why that would be a bad idea.

Or, as another person suggested, putting a cap on how much you can sell small plots for, but I like that solution a lot less than the above one.

In my neck of the woods alone, i know of 2 people who have.

Im still tryin to figure out which one of you is _ _ _ _.

OK, good. That's 2 so far. Anyone else?

I Live Help frequently. We get many complaints about it. I can only imagine how many the Lindens get directly on top of these.

How is this handled in real life? For instance durring and preceding elections there are "vote for" signs in a lot of peoples yards, but they are pretty small and positive rather than negative. Would there be recourse if someone put up an Impeach Bush sign in their yard now in rl? what if it were 10x20 feet?

There are probably rules reguarding the size of signs, their purpose, where they can be placed, zones, etc. by the local government.

I have purchased 1 such plot. It was next to a 30K m2 parcel that I lost a sale when the buyer saw the signs.

I know of no less than 15 other purchases of these plots.

I have seen people release their land because of these. I have had to offer $1-2L per m2 because these signs.

These signs have done nothing but help me financially, so I shouldn't be vocal. The rental business is booming. And hell, I just found a new profit center.

assuming there are regulations, then LL would have to spell them out in their TOS or a seperate regulations document. However would anyone in SL support this or is everyone hell bent on not having any restrictions on their own land? Could this be a premise of zoning in sl, and has this been proposed along with zoning previously?

I don't think this would require a change of TOS or be precedent setting.

Just call Bub in to handle this matter discreetly.

I handle a lot of things in RL by opening up a can of 'whoop ass'... alas that option isn't available in SL so I'm forced to be a lil more creative.

Well I wouldn't think too many would be contacting live help or LL to say they don't mind what's on their neighbor's land

Well the flipside of this coin is that LL may want land prices to drop. If you want the sinster conspiracy angle. Lower land prices mean more land sold, meaning more tier in. They are opening a new continent, when much of the land has not been sold from the old new continent. Thus they are not dealing with this sign thing becuase it is driving prices down?

Most people In SL i veture to say, have little or no interactivity with the rest of the grid beyond thier area, and most are not affected by the signs.

And so far i hav enot heard of any of the critics voting with thier feet and leaving SL. I venture to say this is because most won't. A couple people may tier down in principal, but cancelling accounts? I don't see it happening.

It is still my position that when tiering down and leaving game reaches some critical mass (though I don't know when that tipping point is), LL will take action on this and similar activity. Does anyone seriously believe that LL, a for profit company, will allow customer meltdown out of some uber-libertarian principle?