Advertising-free Zones

My suggestion is that SL's customers not be subjected to RL commercial advertising (such as RRR's) unless they actively opt-in. The vast majority of sims could be ad-free zones ( I believe that De Haro and a couple of others already implicitly are).

My primary personal interest is in keeping the continuity of the virtual experience intact. There's also the issue that uploading and displaying/selling commercial content iw is a blatant violation of the TOS.
I've already quoted chapter and verse about that in another thread. The essence of it is:

5.1 Participant Conduct. In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not: (vii) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising, promotional materials, "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation... You agree that Linden may take whatever steps it deems necessary to abridge, or prevent behavior of any sort on the Service in its sole discretion, without notice to you.

I asked Michael Linden one or two nights ago if it was against TOS to sell real world stuff in SL, like, say RL software, RL computers, RL t-shirts, RL real estate, anything.

He said, basically, Linden Labs has a hands-off policy on the content of what people use SL for, so we can do what ever the heck we want in SL.

My reason for asking is because I AM INTERESTED in selling RL stuff in SL. I love the idea of bridging the gap of the worlds.

FYI, these things ...

... apply in RL scenarios as advertising that "violates your space" such as junk e-mail (or junk IMs, etc). Entering someone's property (or approaching their property) is a form of solicitation. I don't know how many times I have been bumped undesirably into the opposite direction while flying from Point A to Point B... was that Harassment? No .. I flew into someone's space. Same principle with signs. If you don't like the signs, don't look at them. It's YOUR choice... just like it's THEIR choice as to what THEY do with THEIR virtual real estate.

In fact, I think your avatar is butt ugly. I think that violates the TOS as harassment. (Kidding. I don't even know what your avatar looks like.)

Note that your quoted TOS snippet says NOTHING about a distinction between real world and the virtual world of SL. How many billboards do you see advertising some SL service? And does size matter? How many shop stands sitting out in the open contain "click me to buy xyz"?

They are all solicited. You're viewing someone's paid-for real estate usage, their space.

However, I do fully support the idea of client-filtering to whatever extent... For instance, the Mature-rated sims was a great concept that I feel should be extended with a user-enforced "disallow viewing and entering" option.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the goal should be that one's right to express himself--even ads in one's own space--should not be thwarted, so long as your rights to hide yourself from such things are not thwarted.

Well the problem with the TOS is that its purposely sketchy, you don't really know what the hell they mean.

They could mean if no one asks for your advertisement you can't even upload it. They could mean just spam and such as if you force people to look at it, such as giving out textures to anyone that flys by like the DGM signs did along with a notecard. Like if I made an object that handed out an image that was all about "Ozcorp" to anyone who flew by in a 200+ meter distance, that would be against TOS definitly.

I do however agree that it would be nice to have strictly no-ad regions, regions could be labeled "suburban" or such simular to Brown. Where you can build whatever you want, as long as it does not advertise anything in or out of world.

While this would limit the region some it would also create regions where you don't have shops or billboards in every sim.

Unless residents of a current sim want this done, I wouldn't change it on any that are already around, but for future sim releases it would be neat to see.

While I have nothing against people doing what they want with thier land, it would just be nice to see some sims where you know certain things wont be and where you could build without worrying about "corporate joe" moving next to you.