Dear Linden Labs

I'm a newbie at building so I don't know all of the technical ramifications, but...

Would it be possible for the neighbors on the sides of these plots to put up high fences that would effectively "fence in" the plots with the annoying signs? This would be a community action, a way of non-violently "shunning" the intruder and showing that the neighbors want nothing to do with him. The fences could be attractively colored so they would not be an eyesore.

Well, covering up textures, or "walling him in" from more than three sides, are interpreted by LL's to be "violating ToS", so they're not allowed.

It seems that even the simple trick of walling him in with prims set to phantom and transparent from the inside (so you're not blocking his view, neither the access to his parcel) are, again, LL's interpretation of "blocking access".

Strangely enough, LL's interpretation of spam, abusive behaviour, unwanted and undesired content by the community, trolling (in the sense of inciting worthless discussion), harassment, etc. seem not to cover Lazarus' case. It's really hard to understand why not. But I'll keep in mind the ambiguity of LL's decisions whenever I'll need it. One never knows what neighbour will come next.

Really, "freedom of expression" does not apply here. I'm a bit tired of explaining that you cannot use your freedom of expression to deny others' freedom of expression; that doesn't work. So, Lazarus is benefiting from special "protection" by Linden Lab. There is certainly a reason behind it, and I can only wonder why. The only one that comes to mind is a threat to sue LL if they remove his signs — that hardly would work, but would get LL bad press — since I can't imagine how strong that threat can be backed up in order to completely freeze LL in their tracks. I remember quite clearly the official answers from LL, which I asked them for several months, to know what their policy was — "if the content offends the community, we will remove it". It seems that Lazarus is the exception.

I'm baffled, I can't understand what's going on. Worse than that, now I fear the copycats. That way, one day, SL will only be a forest of political signs. Well, I still guess that's part of the plan to get rid of the mainland and push people towards planned communities and private islands...

Hardly. Lazarus, at a worse case scenario, would simply drop from SL, sell all his property to an alt, and start from scratch, with a "clean" reputation and a new avatar. Nothing would be accomplished by that, sadly.

Most reputation systems are excellent to deal with technical issues, but this is a social one, tied into an ethical question.

One way to overcome this issue technically is to have a system that "mutes" other people's buildings, ie. make them invisible to the renderer on your SL client. This has been suggested and commented upon —*technically, it seems that LL has a way to implement that.

However, this will then raise a new question: what happens to the concept of a shared Multiverse? "My Metaverse Is Not Yours" — what I see is not what you see. These signs are the equivalent to adware/spyware/pop-ups on your browser. The only technical solution known on the Web is to get counter-software to delete/disable them; but people are always cleverly finding ways to overpass all types of countermeasures. So I wonder if that's what SL is going to degenerate: people trying to overcome technical solutions by hacking and gaming the system, thus demanding more technical solutions, which then will attract more technologically-savvy users to overcome the hurdles, and so on, in an ever-growing spiral that will constantly tie human resources — the developers — in "feeding the monster" instead of introducing more important things: better performance, cleverer features, more improvements to existing tools...

Social and ethical issues are not dealt well with technical solutions. Just because you're wearing completely opaque shades doesn't mean that the fire in front of you doesn't burn the whole forest down.

Noone's figured out how to hurt this person. When someone figures out how to hurt him, the residency will have a weapon. Until then, he'll continue to terrorize the world with the Lindens' blessing.

I really don't see a problem with stating in the TOS something like: "If a user uses alts to circumvent limitations imposed on them by reputation, they will be banned." Besides, say his main avatar gets a bad rep, and one of the limitations is "below rep X, you can't own land", and boom, it's all gone. Then he makes an alt, transfers all his money to it, and starts over. That alt gets a bad rep, boom, no land. He builds another, etc.

There are more of us than there are of him. The reputation system would work because of the sheer numbers involved.

Is there an plan of action about the Impeach Bush signs embedded in this quote?

The design of the Impeach Bush signs is based on two factors.

1. The signs are large and ugly to offend neighboring owners.

2. The signs carry a political statement because if Linden Labs removes them, propaganda that Linden Labs has political prejudice can be spread.

Lazarus knows that his signs will be removed, his plan is merely to delay the Lindens enough so that he makes money. The Lindens were doubtless hoping that he would just go away, that residents would be smart enough to not buy Lazarus's land and he'd lose incentive. Neither has happened, because residents see inaction from Linden Labs and assume that unless they buy the land, nothing will change.

There is one possible way to make this easier for the Lindens. Someone with large landholdings needs to put up a lot of ugly signs expressing an opposite viewpoint. It can't be a lot of people, it has to be one. After this is done, Linden Labs will be able to crack down on both landowners and say that spamming political signs is not allowed. This removes the appearance of political favoritism.

All these signs and everywhere. What happens when Bush leaves office?

lol, have we thought of that?

http://www.slpublicradio.org

How does not seeing a sign dilute immersion? You won't even know you aren't seeing it.