Sould LL just ban the "Impeach Bush" guy?

I know we should have freedom of expression in SL, and we do. But this guy has used it for extortion, devaluing land across the grid. Thousands of USD worth of land have become devalued, people are leaving the grid in droves, and newbies are getting a terrible impression of SL.

If I were LL I would warn the user to remove his signs. After 24 hours of noncompliance, I would suspend the account and reclaim all of his land.

This is the SL version of pop up spam.

I voted yes.

I'm not sure I'd support an outright ban, but I'd certainly support LL taking action to take the signs down and with the warning to not pull that shit again.

Voted yes because this same person has griefed my partner in other ways besides "Impeach Bush", so he has a history of behavior that tells me the signs are not a political statement.

I don't mean to be a buzzkill, but I'm not convinced this guy is specifically violating the TOS by placing these signs everywhere on his own land. I don't think Linden is convinced either, or else we'd have seen action on this by now.

I do think we could stretch the TOS to cover this (under harassment), but its weak. He's not targeting anyone specifically with his signs (other than Bush).

I think a more reasonable request would be to update the TOS to make this sort of thing more clearly a violation, then the guy can either comply or be sanctioned accordingly.

If it is clearly used for extortion then yes.

I wish the SL client had a feature that allowed you to filter objects, sounds, etc. based on owner. It seems simple to just not render items with a given persons id. Maybe its not?

Meh.... i was just as ticked off by the pro-war, pro-bush, gun-totin', rah-rah-usa freeper/neocon propaganda saturating SL when i joined. So..... que sera sera. Suck it up and live with the times. You want an echo chamber devoid of reality? Go to FreeRepublic.com and join your fellows.

Someone said the guy is really pro-bush that put up the signs just to piss off SLers, which is probably more liberal in its user base.

That wasn't really the point, but nice tolerance on your part. Here's your website for ya http://www.airamericaradio.com/

I dont think he's violating the TOS from a technical aspect, but I'm fully in agreement LL should exercise their discretionary leverage to tell him to shape up or ship out. It's becoming a highly visible problem practically all over the grid. I shudder to think how much of a black eye this type of behavior is causing to SL.

- Newfie

Exactly.
This guy needs to be removed ASAP. This would send a strong message to anyone who follows in his foot steps.

If this type of thing is tolerated, I may just decide to do something similar. This is far more profitable than conventional land sales.

This is not about politics but extortion. I worked very hard to defeat Bush in '04. I despise him as a president, and I would like to see this guy banned. This is not about free speech. This is about devaluing the property near the sign in an attempt to force someone to bite the bullet and buy the land to take down the sign. It's despicable and should be stopped.

And that's the trouble. Extortion is not against the TOS as it is now. LL needs to figure out a way to close this big, fat, gaping loophole. What this guy is doing is wrong.

Absolutely.

At the very very least this man's objects are projecting onto other people's property. He has no right to do that.

It is. But then you'd be creating your own view of the world. We can't have that. You must be forced to suffer ALL of the community surrounding you. You will appreciate the physical continuity. You will obey. Obey! Obey!

This would be perfect. I could build absolutely nothing on my land, tell everyone their settings are FUBAR and that I wish they could see how massively superior my Crea-Tor Skillz were.

And then I'd ask you for a screenshot, and you'd be going "ummm zors".

This guy needs to set his sights on the real criminals - LL.

For the record, I totally agree that its wrong. I'm just not too fond of making special cases to bend the TOS. (Because things can bend both ways.)

If the TOS doesn't have enough teeth, that's the true problem, and Linden should do something about it.

I will say I'd be eccstatic if this whole thing became the impetus to expanding the 'mute' function - as in muting builds/objects we individually find offensive.

It sure would take a lot of teeth out of the extortion racket if we could easily block all objects owned by a specific avatar from rendering.

As much as this issue needs to be addressed, I don't think Linden Labs are going to lift a finger to address it unless this guy manages to put these signs up on small uber-expensive 64m2 parcels near the Linden Labs own headquarters in SL.

I agree with your sentiments, but IMO this is against the TOS under harrassment. Peole have been banned for merely standing in the welcome area and ressing harrassing objects, I don't see this is any different. This person has purposely harrassed hundreds of residents with those signs.

Ingrid put her finger on it though in that this is an outright scam which would be illegal in RL. Linden Labs needs to put something in the TOS that financial scams won't be tolerated.

Granted in each individual land deal there is no proof of harrassment (that's why the signs say impeach bush), and no proof of it being a scam (it's just ridiculously high priced land). But the actions taken as a whole are clearly indicative of both and should have been actionable after the first twenty land deals or so.

From what I have heard this person has done hundreds of such deals and made tons and tons of money.

I don't know if the "Impeach Bush" signs are any different than the "Mini Casino" lots scattered around SL. The lots are a little larger and the pricing is a little lower, however the purpose is still the same. Charging highly inflated prices for land. I have both in the sim I'm working on and basically ignore them. Two "Mini Casino" lots and about four or five "Impeach Bush" lots. I'd probably buy them if they were priced reasonably. In the meantime, I'll do without.

While this is visible, what about the numerous 16m land scanner lots? Having tools to determine exactly what scripts cause lag and who owns them is more of a concern to me than these signs. I recall an idea mentioned awhile back that would limit a scripts SIM usage based on the size of the owners land. It would be great to have some sort of bar graph like the one for textures to see the impact each script has on performance.

Basically this is a very visual problem, but there are a lot of other schemes possibly worse that are more discreet.

No way, I don't give out my screenshots!

I'm curious how much money could be made if the land in question was only moderately overpriced - in the realm of what someone might actually pay to be rid of the eyesore. He would just be another broker, albeit with an odd looking for sale sign.

Given that he is actually pricing beyond what people will pay to be rid of the signs and that the existence of multiple signs on the same lot are beyond what would be needed for a political statement....LL makes short leap of logic to harassment, warning, suspension and finally banning.

I think the TOS has plenty of teeth, Trav, since it gives LL discretion to act in any manner they feel necessary.

This is not pro/con Bush thing. It is about uglyness. I hate Bush, I really do believe he should be impeached. Just as strongly as I beleive this asswipe should be removed from SL.

Very well said. I voted yes because this is griefing which is against TOS.