Dear Linden Labs

Dear Linden Labs,

Enclosed please find 0$ for my next tier payment. Your inaction, indeed your stance, in dealing with the pervausive "impeachment" signage griefing/land extortion scheme across the main grid has made me rethink why even have land in SL for legitimate purposes.

I am liquidating my SL real estate holdings. What is the point when LL policy permits, even encourages, others to engage in real estate dealings with the only purpose to devalue a neighbor's investment. This is not about subjective opinion of "ugly builds", or another user's "freedom of speech". The individual responsible is using his/her land purely for visual griefing and extortion, nothing more, nothing less. Therefore I refuse to give LL another RL cent for real esatate as long they permit such criminal activity to happen under the guise of "creative expression".

I am hoping, indeed encouraging, other members of the community take similar action. It may be the only way for LL to take action is when your cashflow has taken a significant enough hit.

Sincerely,
Jacqueline Trudeau

Months ago I was accused of visual griefing and extortion. Some making the charges had not bothered to verify that my land was marked for sale. It wasn't.

The ugly builds might be a political statement instead of an attempt to make money.

I doubt the community has much question in their minds on whether moneymaking motives are present for the anti-bush signs along with any political agenda.

However - the personal situation that happened to you is exactly the reason I think its wise not to make a knee-jerk reaction to this predicament.

I'm still in favor of a technical solution that could allow anyone to build as they please, and anyone to control their view - simultaneously.

Ya well, Bush isn't the President of SL so it's a moot point to keep intentionally aggravating people by supposedly making a 'statement of belief'. This is SL, the Impeach guy can litter up his rl yard with crap all he wants. The fact that he is apparently charging out the kazoo for the land he puts the signs on on furthers my belief that he is just an ass and really doesn't care about anyone but himself...

The whole free speech vs. extortion debate could be circumvented by kicking him out of SL for good old-fashioned griefing. From what I've read on these forums, he's done plenty of it.

Failing that, I think it's pointless to keep asking LL to do something about the signs. They've heard us loud and clear, and they've said "no." The only solution is: don't buy any land from this guy, and convince other residents who don't visit the forums to follow suit.

No offense, Biff. But I think you didn't bother to look into this "impeachment sign" issue. This has been circulating on the forums and discussed in-world for a long time. The signs at issue here are for sale and at ridiculous prices per square meter. They do appear to be extortion for that reason, regardless of any individuals reaction to the signs' messages.

I agree with Travis that a techinical solution would be great. Its an interesting concept of allowing anyone to build anything while still allowing parcels to maintain their view. What comes to mind is a phantom invisiprim shell around the parcel, except one that works in the opposite way - blocking out prims but showing avatars. I am concerned though about the effect this would have on the overall SL experience, so I tend to like the idea of zoning.

Zoning, however, requires a heavier government hand and a watchdog body to make sure the zoning is enforced. From what I've read, Dreamland has some creative zoning guidelines that their residents must adhere to. Perhaps that is a model mainland residents should be examining.

In the end though, as much as ugly signs on extortion-priced land make me want to smack their owner's face, I don't want to set a precedent for government(Linden) censorship of legal content on our land. I don't want one rotten person to create a rule that then restricts decent citizens in the future. So in the end I think we need more community discussion in-world with real Linden authority (Philip) present.

If Philip would like a grass roots citizen government to form to take care of issues like this then we need to know a few things. We need to know how to set up a vote that really matters. Right now we can vote on features but it is more a system where we collect pleas to show the dictator LL. Unless we develop a system whereby we can actually vote to change our world - knowing that our vote will actually count - then we will have no choice but to post here and make threats or beg or just quit playing when the world takes turns that upset a great number of us.

In a virtual country where there are no democratic means for the people to control their world a revolution will lead to either griefing to close the grid or the citizens leaving to collapse the world altogether. It seems that griefing and leaving are our only two forms of protest. I would like to see more empowerment for the people. I think this issue makes it clear that SL's many good citizens need and want more control over the world and what is considered fair play.

They've said no, I've heard their answer and this is the reason I'm taking the steps I am. And not taken lightly BTW.

There has already been plenty of precedent, Random. The Lindens have removed content on land, and on land that wasn't even for sale at exhorbitant prices. They removed content that broke the TOS, regarding "broadly offensive."

They can remove this content on the basis of at least one, and possibly three, portions of the TOS which already exist. Moreover, they could react to the extortionary aspects of this by . . . reacting specifically to the extortionary aspects of it, and announcing that such won't be tolerated.

That they do not only tells us that anyone who likes and who has enough money can come in and purchase hundreds of tiny little plots, put up something disruptive, and then set all this land for sale for huge prices.

What's even better, a competitor to SL can come along - perhaps somebody with a game almost out of the chute - and buy up as much land as possible, and do the exact same thing, till everyone tiers down and leaves - just in time to join the competitor's own new game, where this sort of griefing won't be tolerated.

coco

Interesting conclusion, Cocoanut. I was wondering if the current LL policy is, sadly, encouraging exactly that to happen: someone griefing the grid to make everybody run towards a competitor.

The major reason why "a competitor" hasn't exactly been around the corner is that LL's finantial model is just barely profitable. Established game distributors like Sony, EA or Microsoft want to earn millions of dollars a month from their games, not a few dozen thousands. A business model where people join up for free, with huge monthly running costs (hardware, bandwidth, salaries), and where you can only "hope" that people tier up if they're happy about what they see, is simply not attractive enough for financing the required technical know-how and develop a direct competitor. Also, more policing (ie. making sure that a ToS is not blatantly violated) requires more manpower — more staff, thus, even higher costs. Content-controlled platforms like There or IMVU already exist, and they are surely highly profitable, since they rely upon a different business model — thus, they can afford the extra staff to do tighter enforcing.

The end of the line: there won't be a "better SL" for free Trust me on that. You'll either have a "pay-for-everything-including-breathing" SL clone, or, as an alternative, open-source projects, in various degrees of "usability". The only "middle-term" virtual world platform that currently rides the Internet waves is Second Life, just because LL is stubborn enough to push their current business model ahead

Still, as mentioned, their model relies upon happy people to tier up. This also means that they can't always insist in displeasing the majority of users — especially those that are effectively paying for the platform to be available to all. This is actually a very interesting concept: Premium users are actually stakeholders in the platform. LL knows this, and will definitely listen to them in the long run. Money talks. I'm not sure how much tier Lazarus Divine pays, but it's definitely not negligible, as he's so fond of telling us in NWN.

The problem here is that people have conflicting opinions — and as SL grows, opinions will vary even more. It'll be hard to keep a balance of justice and fairness if there are so many contradicting opinions (and I'm including LL's opinions as well!)

Sadly, this seems to be a case of both money and the dreaded "freedom of expression", something is so easily abused by anyone who misunderstands its formal definition (ie. reading article 19 but disregarding articles 29 and 30).

Biff, are you interested in buying a nice bridge, by any chance?

Exactly how long does this have to continue before you wouldn't consider LL banning the griefer a "knee-jerk reaction?"

I do believe, thank Heaven and Hell alike, that Philip and LL have finally given up the whole connected geography, virtual country, it's a world routine and are working toward marketing the software to groups of people who are interested in building and policing their own grids for their own purposes while linking to others' grids in a way that makes everyone, except the griefers, happy.

I think its apparent that this situation has persisted long enough where its turned into something emotional for a lot of people. Its hard not to get emotional when something you deeply care about appears in jeoprady.

I think part of what's feeding that reaction is the lack of a visible reaction from Linden Labs. Some folks are probably already thinking "What if Linden chooses to do nothing - ever" on this issue.

Maybe Linden thought/hoped at first that this situation would correct itself. Since that hasn't happened, I suppose they could just say "Laz, you're out", and boot him and his objects over to THERE.

Problem is, as much as it may not visibly appear this way to a lot of us, I think Linden strives to be consistent, and wants to apply the TOS/CS evenly to all residents as much as possible. I'm going with that assumption at least. If that's true, Linden needs to make a call here that doesn't jeopradize something else that might be truly legitamate - yet unpopular. (The initial attempts to create MetaAdverse were grossly unpopular at one point in our history too).

I don't think Linden should do nothing - and I'd be absolutely shocked if there wern't lots of deep, and private discussions going on within Linden labs right now formulating a plan.

Removing Laz's signs would be the quickest solution here, that's clear. I just disagree that its the best one, assuming I'm correct about Linden's intentions.

Hmmm, I've been thinking and thinking about this whole issue - and my head exploded. I don't want to encroach on anyone's freedom in SL, on the other hand, those damn signs and the ones that have sprung up around them make my teeth itch. It just looks like some darn preschoolers got together and left their toys out instead of putting them away. It's called pollution... I think there should be some sort of law

OK, seriously, this guy is filling up various sims with his scripts and signs (I was just told about the scripts) incrementally. I'm pretty sure resticting sizes of plots that can be sold will do absolutely no good. I haven't looked at the profile lately, but the last time I looked, "I have more money than sense" or something similar to that says to me that he can pretty much purchase any plot of land he so chooses.

While I am all for "your land, put up whatever you want," there is a fatal flaw in it. It allows for pollution and an overtaxing of servers when there are scripts running constantly on land that no one has been to in months. Personally, I think he's trying to make LL lose as much $ as possible - it seems to be working. How many people have either lowered their tier or gone all the way back to basic? Ah well, still nothing I can do about it...

Easy solution:

1) Run a report to show the price paid for each of his plots.

2) Refund him his L$'s for all plots owned.

3) Kick his @$$ out the door and send him on his merry way and tell him he's welcome to come back after he figures out how to play well with others, just like any other business IRL would do to someone that was so blatantly harrassing their other paying customers by degrading the quality of their experience at said place of business.

If I was eating dinner at a nice restaurant paying $125 for my meal, you can be certain that if some guy walked in and started throwing up annoying signs all over the restaurant, that the manager would kick his butt out the door so fast he wouldn't know what hit him. And if the patrons spotted the signs before the manager did anything about it, you can be sure he'd take care of it ASAP as soon as the customers brought it to his attention.

I also say if we're going to keep bringing up the "Freedom of Speech" crap, then each Resident should also be allowed to vote on proposed actions on important issues like this. This would also take the weight off of LL's shoulders in tough situations like this.

For what it's worth, I've started seeing copycatters the past couple of days, so something needs to be done, and quickly.

Most of us agree that this guy is gaming the system in his own special way. He's being allowed to harrass/annoy/litter/pollute SL with his signage because it's his land and he can pretty much put up anything he wants as long as it does not go against the TOS. If you look at these signs in a black & white way - he is technically following the TOS. However, there is a clause about spam... I wonder if these signs could be viewed as spam. I think they should be.

There are several definitions listed for "spam" that would clearly classify the billboards being discussed as such...

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=spam

Jacqueline I am not surprised to read of your decision. Everyone in SL that I have spoken to considers them a form of griefing/spamming/extortion. They are certainly ruining our neighbourhood (Monti)... I feel bad for my neighbour... she built a beautiful temple for all to visit and she's overwhelmed by Bush signs. Personally I am buying every tiny piece of land that comes up for sale around our lots so we don't end up with more. I have posted on the Linden hotlines, and their response was along the lines of, 'we generally don't like to tell people what they can do with their land, but we are looking into whether it consitutes spamming'...
They need to look hard and act or I suspect more will join Jacqueline...

The alternative, like Khamon Fate explained, is for all of us to move out of the mainland and join an isolated community (often in a private island; alternatively, on wholly group-owned mainland sims), where this kind of griefing does not occur.

Perhaps LL wishes us to take this route, as Khamon also suggested, and their inaction in this case (and the case of the copycats) is a way to point the direction they wish SL to take: a place where everybody runs away from the "Griefing Area" (formerly known as "mainland". Since there is not really a "direct competitor" right now, and while there isn't one, this may even make some sense: people get drawn much faster to organized and planned communities where "visual griefing" is impossible, and, instead of waiting a few years until the "visual griefers" go away (the way we saw it happening on the oldest sims), perhaps all it takes is a few months...

The loss of a few residents in the process is eventually negligible: most enjoy SL too much to leave "forever". Many of those would rather prefer to move around inside SL, instead of leaving. And when (and if!) a new competitor comes out, SL would have an advantage: it would already have an overall well-planned landscape, beyond the isolated "griefing areas".

In a sense, I think that this is what's happening right now to a degree. It's no secret that private islands and the few whole-sim mainland communities are already the places with the highest traffic, the best views, the most attractive events, drawing the more interesting people to hang out with. They even show up on some LL lists as being the places for higher business transactions, and Dreamland or TeaZers, for instance, are where the highest traffic is found.

Allowing "visual griefers" to proliferate and expand their, uh, "freedom of expression" just accelerates the process. As said, this won't be a peaceful transition. But LL has recently shown how well they are ignoring the few nay-sayers — no matter how "right" they are — in order to get a SL that they wish to happen.

This is something we can only speculate about. I'm quite sure that a year ago things would have been very different. I fear that the reason for LL's passivity is part of their plan for SL. I say "fear" because I think it's the opposite way of "building worlds": through negative attributes instead of positive ones. Also, it encourages people to "run away" from problems instead of dealing with them. In this case, "running away" (ie. leaving your place and move elsewhere) seems to be the only choice given to us who are bothered with visual griefing.

It'll be interesting to see if this plan will actually work.

I totally agree with you that the Bush signs are VERY annoying! I hate them! Totally! lol

Discovered today the signs are forcing irritated neighbors to also pollute as a protest to the spam. One sign said "I love Bush!". Another citizen had tried to camoflague the Bush sign with a cloaking prim, but apparently the Bush sign spammer had moved his sign even higher. Is that what Linden wants SL to be? A pollution war? Freedom of speach is important, but it cannot be tolerated when it becomes griefing against the masses!

Must everyone move high above the ground to avoid seeing those damned signs? I just cannot think of anything right now that will force LL to take action against this pollution and land griefing. As you all know they can be very stubborn when they want to - no matter what us, the residents of SL say. Saving of the Classified forums is a proof we can make LL change their mind. That's sadly also the only exception to the rule I know of

I have all sympathy with people who wants to tier down in protest. And it may put a pressure on LL if a huge amount of residents do so. Or leave SL. I just doubt it will happen. But some day I belive one of the many creative intelligent persons in sl will come up with an idea that will put a stop to this. Without cooperation from LL (which is futile, they have said the Bush signs stay). I just hope it will happen very soon, before it's too late.

I think this easily wins "most incisive post of 2005".

A back-of-the-envelope (without envelope) calculation put personnel and hosting costs for SL conservatively at roughly $8M/annum (+/- 50%). I have little basis for estimating revenue but guesses at land and premium accounts gets me only about $3M/year. Even if I am short by 100%, that still makes for a rather red ledger.

I think you are spot on at "stubborn enough" which I read as sort of complimentary to LL. Unfortunately, stubborn doesn't make payroll or investor return. There was minor hoopla at the infusion of $8M by Yahoo(?). As this covers a year of run-rate, could the picture be as bleak as I'm guessing?

Yes, speculating about privately held firms is a dicey proposition. Please poke holes in my guesses.

I am not a land owner but i do rent a store in a fairly large mall, and behind this mall is about 15 of thoes same signs, i dont have any political views myself but i do think things like this should not be in second life it ruins the enviroment and makes the offender even richer, it does not have anything to do with SL or anyone in SL so they should be removed. this is not right we need to take a stand against this sort of thing, it is happening everywhere on a very large scale, could possible be an orginised type of scheme, anyway lets hear more oppinions on this.

Haha, I read this as "started throwing up" - lol, that would work, too!

There is an easy short-term solution to this: Make him remove his signs on the basis of one of several justifications in the TOS; my personal favorite is the one about spam, which this is.

No need to ban the guy. Just make him remove his signs.

No need to get rid of basic accounts, either.

Just remove the diliterious behavior.

For the long-term solution, maybe not allow such tiny plots to be bought up all over the place, for any signage reason. Or put a limit to them - three such plots per person, for instance.

The good news: The Lindens will fix this. They have to. The guy is ruining the game, and more are coming where he came from.

coco

~applaudes Gwyneth~