Can't buy land on "Azure Islands", but it is listed for sale in the land listing!

Blaze asked them if he could do something. They told him no. Just because another person has apparently chosen to defy this ruling thus gaining unfair commercial advantage over Blaze and others (though she may of course be clearing the list right now, or seeking final clarification) does not alter that.

By the time of this posting Robin knew the topic was becoming controversial, and its content shows clearly there had been discussion with other Lindens. This was not one person's ill considered off-the-cuff response. I find it inconceivable that they will go back on such a very clear statement as:

/invalid_link.html

I have no problem with LL's decision and the timing of their actions.

My concern was really that I need to understand their decision making process a bit better before investing significantly in LL myself.

Are they anti-business? Do they see Anshe as a problem or an opportunity? Are they going to jerk people around who have made committments or are they going to treat them with respect? How would they handle it if someone complained about something reasonable and how would they compromise in a way that creates stability for all?

So far they've responded quite well and gives me a certain feeling of confidence in persuing some kind of realistic investement strategy. But a lot of it will hinge on what the end solution is to this particular problem.

It should be pretty interesting, I suspect.

Thanks for the quote and link, but I have read it before I posted

I will not even pretend to know what you do 1st life so will only base my statements off my personal longtime experience in resource (Virtual resources, server clusters, hosting, DC's, NOC's) buisness. I still believe they need to have a solution installed before they role this out.

It is simple buisness here. They created the problem, indirectly but still created it. They need a fix, yes... but they need a workable solution also. You do not treat high teir customers by just cutting them off of tools without a workable solution... or I should say you do not do that and expect to stay in business long.

Yes, I also understand that players are also paying customers. I understand the fundamental responsiblity of LL's to take certain percautions in protecting their customer base from other customers. That is why I said they need a workable solution.

Surely you can see the logic in this Lindar.. you hae thus been very open minded and level headed in these discussions.

I agree, they are on the virge of doing exactly, IMO, what they have said in all the town meetings. Having the players make the content for the players. Private estate sims are just one step in that direction. It gives those that want local governments, closed communities, zoned lands, themed areas, etc the content that they want and willing to pay for even over the risks involved.

That in itself should raise eyebrows that players are willing to deal with the inherent risks to be able to have that. LL will not provide it, we depend on players for that.

I think we all agree on this, Jesse. Aren't you reassured, as I am, to learn they are working to produce such tools for the very next patch ? Surely this is what we all now want ?

The only things I now object to are

1. Just one sim owner apparently feeling powerful and arrogant enough to defy this ruling by the Lindens. To continue doing (to her own advantage) what other more law-abiding competitors (eg Blaze, Hiro, and now Nexus, probably several more) are respectfully refraining from doing (to their own short-term detriment).

2. The specific targetting of Newbies by the same person.

Please tell me clearly, Jesse, are you really happy with these two things? You don't think this person is acting wrongly and should stop ?

You're full of it dude.

It's NOT the same type of transaction as one gets from LL when "buying" land from them.

1) It's a player run business, therefore it must need be scrutinezed more highly than an LL to player transaction. Any promises made by a player lack the weight of a transaction made soley between LL and the land buyer.

2) Your, not selling it, your leasing it. When you look in the classifieds on Sunday morning in RL, do they or do they not seperate leases and rentals into a seperate section from sales? They do. Imagine if Ford or GM tried to advertise cars as for sale when they were really for lease AND with a bogus price tag to boot.

3)Listing something for zero or one Linden dollar per m2 is a shady tactic. Classic baiting and a blatant exploitation of the land sales board.

It's ok though, in the long run you folks will do damage to your own business.

Have fun liars.

I try to judge no one, I have heard of no specific verifiable exploitations on any newbie or misinformed "buyer". I can only go by my firsthand account of dealing with the person I believe you are referring to.

I have personally seen her fully refund someone that was mistaken in their purchase. I have purchased (leased) land from her and the price was what was on the land, the teir was the same as LL's and I have had it now for... 2-3 weeks and even "leased" more land and now have 1/2 of a sim from her.

I have had zero problems, I have seen no one that has had any direct problems. I have seen many many "stories" of possible problems. So unfortunately Lindar I am unable to answer your questions.

Oh, btw... I never take hearsay at face value. You would not want me to do that to you would you? I won't do it to anyone else either. Hope you understand

Had it been properly advertised no refund would have been necessary. All this proves is that indeed people (at least one, and that's all it takes) have been mislead.

One thing I will say though, is I hope that LL gives us a heads up about what alternatives they are considering persuing.

If they don't leverage the collective community wisdom on a complex problem of this nature, I think its a huge mark against their decision making process.

They need to understand they are the final decision maker, so this is not an issue of 'too many cooks'. And not looking for those small gems of logic that crops up in these threads would be a significant and alarming lack of research skills on their part.

Having not read this whole thread (but I did read Robin's response), I want to say that I live in Andromeda in the wonderful residential community run by Nexus Nash.

Having it advertised "for sale" as "0 Lindens" was a headache to me. Players did not come onto the island and immediately understand everything. Not only did I end up having to explain it to them, I'm certain they feltl like they were misled. Because it was misleading, in the extreme.

Moreover, the land itself was NOT "0 Lindens" at any point in time. You have to "buy" it for, say, 6k, from the island owner before it is deeded to you. After that, you pay tier weekly to the island owner.

This is a problem with what Robin said about their eventual solution for this, because she addressed "rentals" - when this represents a hybrid, neither a rental nor a Linden sale. When they get around to addressing this issue, they need to divide rentals between true rentals and those where you must "buy" the land before you "tier" on it.

coco

Ding Ding Ding!

Not only are these ads bogus, they cause headaches for other residents who already live in these zones. Go figure.

I'm sorry Jesse, thats a cop-out. There is absolutely no hearsay here, you can go look at the first page of "Land Sales" for yourself, right now, and Anshes other actions are irrelevant to the rightness or wrongness of the two actions I list, and which you can verify beyond all doubt for yourself with a few clicks. Robins posting, in her/his own words is on open display

My only conclusion is that either you are not as fair-minded and clear-thinking as I thought you were, or you don't want to offend your very powerful landlord (and that is maybe quite wise).

I am asking you a straight forward moral question, based on hard evidence you can check for yourself very easily, and divorced from any personalities or histories - yours, Anshe's or mine. You chose to sidestep. So be it. This is part of what is wrong with the world.

"Hearsay" indeed - come on Jesse, you deserve better than that !

Robin in fact did NOT forbid the use of the internal land sales list to list rentals and the sale of long-term leases or deeding or whatever you wish to call it.

Read what she wrote:



"other in-world ad options" includes the use of the Land Sales list for advertising rentals. You can do it, because it is not shut off. The Lindens are aware of it, but did not shutit off. It has been explicitly stated by Robin that you can use it.

Perhaps you need to phrase the question with the right amount of spin and venom coming from some of the posters here:

"Robin, are you going to punish those landowners who use the land sales list as a workaround now to advertise rentals and sales of deeded land on islands?"

Because the fact is, you CAN use the land sales list for this purpose and there is NO PUNISHMENT and NO WARNNG from any Lindens. Indeed, how could there be? They are aware of the problem and are dealing with it.

New players pressing on an ad that says $0 generally want to get something for nothing. It's good for them to get disabused of that notion in SL earlier rather than later.

IN fact, you could only make a technicality of that. If they want a rental, they indeed pay $0 to get access to a rental, after which they pay the rent, which is some version of tier.

If they want a long-term lease of a deeded parcel then they will pay an upfront charge. If someone feels this is misleadingly portrayed as a land sale that leads to ownership, well the notecards, explanations, etc. available from the owners or on site put all those problems to rest. And the Lindens have already said they'd deal with it.

The newbies that Coco is patiently dealing with haven't lost anything. They have not been parted with their money. They have not right-clicked on something and bought a pig in a poke.

Instead, they have had their initial confusion cleared up. They either wind up as happy customers, or they move on. No loss.

"Since the land is actually a rental you won't be able to list it in the Land Sale directory after the next patch."

"we want to make sure that people who 'buy' the land realize they are not actually the owners. Being able to list the land in the Land Sales directory is misleading."


Nice try.

These kinds of statements have no place in the forums

It doesn't matter if they are true or not.

Efforts to find out and publicize allegations or truths about a resident's RL are against the TOS. Only information contained on the Second Life profile in the game of a resident is "fair game" to be revealed in the game or on the forums by other players.

I'm not going to dignify these silly things by trying to refute them. The point is, we have a crystal-clear interpretation of the TOS: do not reveal RL information of other players other than what you see on their in-game SL profile. That means if you think you saw something somewhere on the Internet -- including Hamlet's blog -- it wouldn't be fair would it, Eboni? And if someone wants to spread lies about you, they have to look at the same TOS: it is against the TOS to publish RL information and also against the TOS to verbally harass, and making fake allegations about people falls just into that category of violation.

And really, using RL facts or factoids or lies as a kind of currency in SL in the metagame of gaining a pos rep is really lame. It's really pathetic. Either accept their arguments and argue on their merits, or don't stoop so low.

Um, nice try yourself.

They've recognized that it is a problem. They've indicated what they want in the FUTURE. They've made a generic statement about misleading ads.

But they haven't banned the use of them NOW. They haven't signalled a punitive attitude NOW. They've essentially tacitly grandfathered it for now -- to do otherwise would be to renege on understandings they gave people to believe when they made large batch purchases of islands.

To do so otherwise would mean they'd have to stop the game and recode stuff and reissue patches off schedule and all the rest.

There are no cases of fraud. We don't want them to appear. But you'll have to be patient while the "loophole" is being fixed.

Meanwhile, I see absolutely no Linden statement banning this use of the land list, I see no Linden statement encouraging voluntary compliance with a request not to use it, I see no punitive Linden statement saying they will prosecute players who do this so I have to conclude, it isn't the big deal you all imagine.

Dude! I am a newbie. I can't figure out this slider, but people are assuming that I can figure out that land advertised for 0$L isn't 0$L nor is it for sale!

*Beats head on the nearest Moskva*

It's all good, I will continue to support the posting of misleading ads, because I can. Fuck morals.

I see that my post about 0 Lindens above has been quoted, but please note that I edited it to read in the past tense, because after I read further in this thread, I saw mention that Nexus had removed this listing.

coco

(Had to remove personal attacks and the rubbish from the quote. Didnt leave much did it ? )

You seem to be missunderstanding somthing with what we do, please go read the deeding infomation provided on the sims, if you still have problems, drop me an im in world and ill send you a copy.

On a more sane note, estate sales will not show up after the next patch, so people who current fail to understand the systems run by the owners can be happy that they will not have to moan for much longer.

Yeah, much easier when you simply dismiss the numbered points which contained no personal attack eh? I won't be IMing you, I want nothing from you other than an admission of misusing the system.

I still think your full of it and a liar. If I believe that to be true is it still a personal attack?

Robin has stated that it is a misleading practice.

mis·lead Audio pronunciation of "mislead" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ms-ld)
tr.v. mis··led, (-ld) mis·lead·ing, mis·leads

1. To lead in the wrong direction.
2. To lead into error of thought or action, especially by intentionally deceiving. See Synonyms at deceive

Main Entry: de·ceive
Function: verb
Inflected Forms: de·ceived; de·ceiv·ing
transitive verb : to cause to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid intransitive verb : to practice deceit —compare DEFRAUD, MISLEAD

People are not complaining because they lack the intelligence to understand. In fact they understand all too well .

Im sorry, I did inform people that there is infomation about how it all works and what you get and what the rules are in the sims didnt I ? ah yes theres the notcard givers full of that infomation.

If your still hung up on the plots being in the land for sale window, ill request that no more are posted there.

Update: There will not be any more posted there, the sim is now full

Right Any thing else ?

heheh good on splat1, more power to you! Glad you're doing some good business on this program, SL needs more of this.

I wouldn't cave to the Nervous Nellies at the Gates and not post this stuff tho splat, because no one has forbidden it.

"Whatever is not forbidden is allowed."

"Better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission." LOL



My point is that other Brits who are also nuts maybe have a different political persuasion than you? And they may have gotten their knickers in a twist of any hint of a land baron doing anything other than swinging from lamp posts? But..you just had an election...and, well, work it out there, k? lol

heh hey! I voted conservative!

I had noticed with approval that these listings had disappeared. I thought you had decided to withdraw them on moral grounds, in obedience to the Linden ruling. I had removed Nexus from my "guilty of unscrupulous practice" list. I am very sorry to learn that it is only because the exploit has paid off. Presumably your unfair practice got some rentals that might have otherwise gone to more more scrupulous landowners.

If I could be bothered I'd go round and ask your new tenants what they thought they were getting. I'm sure we would find at least one of the "proven cases of exploitation" that are constantly demanded, although in RL convictions for fraudulent practice require no such proof. If an offer is fraudulent in nature or intent, that is enough in most jurisdictions.