Lindens are gonna buy back telehub land at L$10/m -- Fair?

That's an angle I hadn't considered. If they knowingly sold a 'lemon' and are now having to buy it back, well... shame on them.

Either way, it boils down to LL worshipping at the $$$, (either from cow-towing to high-tier holders, or from accepting full price for something they knew would soon be of less value) and erodes my faith in them, but at least with your scenerio it's a tad bit more understandable why they would choose one instance to reimburse.

I hadn't thought of it in those terms, either, and in such a case, it makes perfect sense. What a dumb-assed move -- if they knew P2P was coming that much in advance, we should have, too.

That's the first thing I thought of -- heading off potential litigation.

And Enabran is correct. If they had made their intentions public sooner, this whole mess could have been avoided/minimized.

So, for the folks that are most furious about others getting reparations - what do you honestly expect to acheive here?



Be realistic here, just for a moment. The first one, isn't going to happen. C'mon... really. You really think that a campaign is going to change their stance, that they're really going to suddenly give reparations to a now stale, over a year old snafu? If you stand back a moment, and take your emotions out of it - I think its rather clear how incredibly unlikely that is.

So, we have the second bit. No one gets anything. Will it feel good when you make sure that "If I can't have pie, then no one else will either, damnit!"?

If you really do feel that way - pardon my bluntness, but that's just stupid.

Before you flame me, please read on first:

Dianne Mechanique posted a cool link to off-topic last week, dealing with stupidity. You can read the link here: http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/stupidity/

To boil down that long read, allow me to refer to the Golden law of Stupidity:



By attempting to punish the small subset of users that are actually eligable to gain from these reparations, without any gain to yourself - that is in fact, stupid.

And alienating LL in the process thru an honestly futile campaign? That seems like a loss, not a gain to me.

Made sense the first time it was presented by Katykiwi on page 5 and everytime thereafter.

Aimee, the difference here is that we didn't have someone that fills LL's pockets leading the pack with boycott ads. I hate to say it but I think that made a difference.

If you want an example of when content creators had losses and pains from a direct LL hit, what about the "Great Crotch Disaster" after 1.1 (I think it was 1.1). I'm probably wrong on the exact update but it literally ruined every pair of knickers, swimsuit bottoms, shorts, and anything else short enough with the change in avatar mapping. All of those items became crotchless! As funny as it is to talk about now lol, that actually was a massive pain. People who had bought the items were crying to the designers to fix it and a lot of the designers just had way too many items to even begin fixing them all. A lot of people just started over, trashed everything that was changed, and figured out the new mapping. I don't think anyone thought to yell at LL, "We're crotchless and we want compensation!"

I can think of many times when content creators have suffered losses, we all can. I think the point trying to be made here is that yes, we whined some, but it got us nowhere. It seems LL is now doing something about complaints, but only from a certain group. Over the years we've just sucked up losses and accepted when LL shrugged their shoulders, I imagine we'll just have to accept this too.

That's the thing, though; there's more than one big land owner, and at least one of them is pretty stealthy about it and keeps a very low profile. Two who are more high profile maintain something of an alliance. Content creators would never be able to band together in a large enough group to affect LL's bottom line as much as the really big land barons are able to at this point in time. There's always another person who will come along and sell virtual clothing and vehicles; there may not be another person around the corner who is willing to sink tens of thousands in a virtual real estate market if it appears that LL is going to knowingly undercut their profits with planned features. Like it or not, the big land barons are important to LL. *sigh$$$*

I think the intent is to shame LL into thinking things through a little more throughly in the future.

Torrid I forgot about the crotch issue. And yes, when the snickering is done we should try to remember that that wasn't a bug. It was a design change that, like so many other examples, resulted in unrepaid losses for content creators.

Travis, you left out a third option: Force the Lindens to rethink their selective reparations policy for the future. If starting an anti-Linden ad campaign or sending lawyers after Linden Lab is what the Lindens want us to do, we will have to learn to adapt.

This isn't how things used to be, and it's not how I would like them to be. But times, they are a-changing.

I suppose that's a noble effort. But from everything I've seen since I've been in SL, an unlikely outcome.

Heh, it may be just me, but I was attempting to word a reperations policy in my head while sitting here... I have no ideas. Anyone want to take a crack at writing a rough draft?

I am not entirely sure this is true. In future, it may be necessary for content creators to organize and see what we can accomplish as a group (sharing legal fees, for example.)

I am not sure if this is the time, or if this is the issue that will motivate content creators to form some kind of union or guild. But if Linden Lab continues with their "squeeky wheel" customer service policy, we will be doing ourselves a great disservice to not "squeek."

Do they have to change?

What would happen if everyone chose to take this situation at face value, and not compare it to past snafus?

What if everyone ignored this situation. Would we be better or worse off than we were a week ago?

I'd think it would have no change.

And no change vs. 'times-a-changing' in a way that's distasteful to both you & I.... I'd think the better option is the first one.

I guess you could argue that it was Linden that cast the first stone. But it is our choice whether or not to volley back. We are by no means compelled.

::blink::

If women didn't complain about rape it wouldn't be "a problem" either .

Was that too strong? I appologize for my choice of similies but stand by the point.

You know what Travis, it is not even that I begrudge the telehub land owners getting their land bought back. They are lucky, I suppose. It is more disillusionment with LL than anything else. Their customer service has always been supbar, and every single time I've ever really needed assistance from them that mattered (ie...help, my build is being destroyed because it is randomly returning items to me, or help...all of my items have disappeared from my land), I was not provided with any assistance.

I am willing to put up with a lot, especially since I love SL so much, but there reaches a point where you say "why am I doing this if LL doesn't give a shit how they affect us?". Perhaps if they had been more compassionate and treated other people more fairly in the past in regards to tangible financial loss, this would not be an issue - but there is a wide enough swath of people that they have fucked over repeatedly that this is just a slap in the face.

I can't say I'm personally furious about this. I'm just annoyed that Linden Lab can't keep its proverbial shit together. I can't say that I have any hope of achieving anything at all. Nor am I optimistic anyone else will, either. I'm just here to have my fun, make some cash and dodge all the silly obstacles that I know Linden Lab is going to throw in my way sooner or later.



I really don't think the objection to this is rooted in punishment or in stupidity. I think we're dealing with an issue that's crucial to the past, present and future of Linden Lab. Linden Lab makes decisions constantly that affect all sorts of resident investments. It's not unreasonable to expect a clear and explicit declaration of what things are worth compensation and what things are not. It's not unreasonable to request an explanation as to why one loss is compensated, while another is ignored.

The annoyance here is genuine, I think, and perfectly valid. When individuals swallow hard and move on from losses, only to watch others be paid off for their own losses, the umbrage is absolutely to be expected.

My contribution to the media campaign:

::blink:: indeed! LOL.

Let me try a different analogy ...

Say a city garbage truck goes out of control and smashes my car and neighbor's car. The city repays my neighbor but says they cannot repay me.

Would it really effect me whether or not my neighbor gets repaid? No.

Should I let the situation stand?

Context is everything. Why would anyone want to look at any given situation in a vacuum? Consistency is important for a company. A company with wildly inconsistent behavior is not appealing to incorporate into a business model.

That was an incredible answer

Wow, a union for content creators in SL would be a rather fascinating prospect. I am very pro-union in real life, having grown up in a blue collar family with a father who worked in a union lumber mill.

Can you just picture a SL-wide strike by content creators? LL probably wouldn't know whether to panic or be totally jacked over the media coverage they'd get.

Given: LL's single-largest sim-owner and tier payment producer
Given: Same person owning significant (if not majority) portion of land affected by telehub change

Hypothetical situation: Said largest land owner/hub screams blue murder, uses public ad campaigns, and private meetings with LL. Reminds LL of their 'significant stakeholder' status, and not-so-subtly implies that they will pick up and leave SL (taking a noticeable hunk of LL's monthly revenue with them) if they do not get their way.

Hypothetical result: LL crumbles faster than a wet cookie.


Did such a thing happen? I've no idea. Is it within the realm of possibility? Oh heck yes. I'd be surprised if it didn't.


- Newfie

I see your point, Richard.

My better judgement says to just stay out of this whole thing. I'm certainly not eligible for any kind of reparations, and I wasn't an affected content creator - so this whole thing affects me very little.

But it does affect me, in a way - because I see this as something that just further tears our community apart, rather than bringing us together. Pitting on class of users against another, marginializing one set in the name of... what? Unfair treatment by Linden? This feels like all the toxic FIC arguments from before, but reversed in a parallel universe.

I wanted to say something to try & neutralize all this arguing. Maybe its just inevitable, and I'm the one that just needs to step back & let it play itself out.

If this is the first stone cast in the battle that ultimately brings our community to an end, however - I'll be eternally saddened over the whole thing. There's more important things to worry about than this.

The misconception in these posts is that LL will bother to navigate requests for investigations about this loss et cetera. They don't need increased staffing to simply ignore such requests. There are no precidents in Second Life. The management of Linden Lab do what they please when they please. This move is much more likely the result of expert smoozing than public kicking and screaming and diverse threats of legal action.

Pandora's box has been opened. Check out item #6 in this post in Ben Linden's blog. Eventually, LL plans to allow servers other than their own to host sims. This will affect the land market. LL better have a plan in place for compensating land owners whose property values drop with this change. Or is it easier to simply not implement that particular feature, given possible pressure/legal trouble from high-stakes land barons?

In fact, for every change to the status quo that LL makes, they should probably have a corresponding compensation strategy in place. Because people will be asking for compensation now.