False / Deceptive estate advertising in the forums ?

a few times weekly one will see an advertizement for private islands, suggesting you actually buy the land.

specially with terms, like: why rent if you can own

since it clearly targets un-informed / new residents (*which are luckily forum readers, and will be mostly aware), why is it not moderated ?

you own nothing in SL; everything (not only land) is owned by linden labs.

You pay to play the game and you pay tier to rent space on a game server.

As with all things in SL... caveat emptor

Yes i have been seeing a lot of it. people selling open space sims and not telling anyone they are open space sims. targeting newbies who dont know better.. Calling them LOW PRIM SIMS and guaranteeing ownership with Estate rights and able to reclaim land . but in all actuality they are only added to the estate with rights as a manager.. And never own the region Paying higher tier than they would if they would just go thru linden labs
Pretty Cheesy

Report abuse>fraud

they are alot of people who say this as justifacations for trying to lie,and it's not cool nor ok

yes it's pay to play for owning land but that is not nessarly the case when you rent you can pay your rent and get banned for no reson the next min. and then your out your L$

report the post using the report link at the bottom

doubt mods look into the fine prints in that thread or have any additional knowladge wth happens inworld

Oh, gak. If I hear this chestnut pulled out yet again, I'll barf all over Torley L.

I'm sure you were that aware when you first joined that you knew the difference between "buying" mainland and "buying" from an estate. And that there are places called mainland and estate land. And that you were "buying" nothing. But the general public (which LL desperately needs to entice and keep) does not have a clue. Do most SLers know what a game server is? Or how all that works? Should we have to know everything technologically and sociologically and legally about SL before we step in? Apparently so. That might just be why many people try SL, but do not "buy" SL. Oh, I mean rent SL.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to flame fires. But let's be honest: if everyone is simply renting/leasing server space then the words "sell" and "buy" must be removed from SL real estate language and advertising. "Buying mainland real estate? Oh no, you don't buy. You're putting down a non-refundable deposit and then you lease it by the month. You might be able to transfer your lease at a profit. But maybe not. Caveat Emptor."

Who ever got that speech when they joined?

Yes, so it would seem the best message to give newbies is DO NOT buy any property, at least until you have been in world a few months.

And if LL wants to encourage more people to "buy", they might think about how they are marketing what they are selling, and yes, a good start would remove the term "buy" from anything to do with real estate..

Unless they are ready to let us host our own sims on our own servers..

well i think a few differences should be noted, the chance that LL will force you from your land without good reason are nonexistent, this can not be said for a quite a few of estate owners.

also a reputable estate-owner would not try to trick his customers into thinking they own it as they would mainland or a full estate.

Everything is leased, we own nothing.

Not much of anything here is moderated in any proactive way. (Why that's the case is too difficult a question for me.)

But it would be hard to really "moderate out" language that the Lindens gave them to use. The operation of "buying" private estate-owned land exists in the UI, and that land is "for sale" in Search, even though what happens as a result is only ownership in a role-play sense.

It was before my time, but I'll bet that, back in the day, big estate owners pleaded with LL for just this language. And I'll venture a guess that they now very much regret getting what they asked for, as their market is cluttered with fly-by-night competitors who use that language on the unwary. The ones who've earned a good reputation suffer as a result: it's very difficult to beat the cost structure of unpunished theft.

While I agree that the terms used on the "land" transaction dialogs is misleading at best, yes, I did have at least a basic understanding of what I was "buying" when I purchased my first plot of virtual "land" less than a week after I joined SL more than two years ago. Because I made the effort to actually look for the information.

If people are too dang lazy or too impatient to bother actually reading then sometimes they get what they deserve.

The information is available and NOT that difficult to find. And, it is easy enough to just ASK someone if you aren't sure.

Yes, there are far too many scam artists in SL and, yes, they should be reported. But for goodness sake people, open your eyes and look before you leap.

There are a few things to consider...

LL does not allow estate owners to change the wording of how people facilitate the transaction. Saying "buy land" is correct when talking about renting land to someone. Not all estates simply rent land, but they also allow the resident renter to alter their land settings. There is a difference between using a land through a group, rather than having full control of your land. It goes back to the word "buy"...with the intent to rent. It would be wrong to suggest that abuse is occurring based on a sentence "why rent when you can own"...or something to that effect because its a true statement. Nothing in this game can you buy and actually possess it, its all virtual.

You CAN actually transfer ownership of an island from one person to another... I believe both parties need to contact LL to confirm, and RL monies are exchanged via PayPal.

yes and no

paypal is an option for both parties
L$ transfer afterwich the tickets are submitted (where most scams lied)
these days payment is done by LL at the moment of transfer for the agreed price in both parties tickets, if anything doesn`t matches, the transfer is cancled and no money lost (was added due to all the scams)

In the land business there is a difference between buying and renting and either is totally acceptable. There is a hierarchy of course, LL (Server owners), Estate Owners, Land Owners, Land Renters. Renting can be, not always, a totally different experience than owning. I see no problem at all with the phrase "why rent when you can own" or other phrases used differentiating between rental and ownership. Just my humble opinion.

I still see forum posts that want you to pay the person selling BEFORE the ticket is submitted. I assume these are being reported

Eventually LL wil have to take the hard road to redemption by outlawing certain words like "Buy" where land in concerned, if you look thru some of the LL literature you'll see they have toned down that word too.

Regardless of where you "buy land" be it on mainland or estate your still only perchasing the right to use as LL does indeed own everything. if they don't then I will pay for shipping MY 21 servers to my home. but I doubt thats going to happen!

Right during the changeover of people handling the finances for sim transfer themselves and LL taking care of it, I bought a sim from someone, and there was some confusion about if the sim was paid for, I dont think every case of outsider transactions is fraud, but I do think that the moneys should be handled 100% by LL

I think the term "buy" has a meaning similar to its Real World use when we talk about buying Mainland.

In RL, one buys land, which has this effect: you get the legal right to use a specific area of land in accordance with local/national laws & ordinances. This right can be taken away through various legal means, and if your government falls, all bets are off. In other words, the rights of landowners in RL aren't guaranteed beyond the guarantees of a government.

The rights of landowners in SL aren't guaranteed beyond the guarantees of LL.

In RL, if one rents property, one receives the rights the actual owner chooses to confer. Most jurisdictions have controls over how this works, but you never own the property in any sense, no matter what the owner lets you do there.

In SL, we have the same relationship between renters and owners who offer property for rent, but without the legal controls.

So, there is a difference, even though the whole thing could be destroyed if the electric bill isn't paid.

It really depends upon the deal. If you can resell I don't see the big issue with saying own although I use terms such as lease and rent myself.

What does bug me is when the headline says something like "Buy land for L$1" and then you read the advert and the price is a lot more than L$1, I think that should be policed. Even if you're using L$1 as the reserve price, you shouldn't imply in the headline that that is the price a resident pays.

All someone need do to transfer an estate is increase your USD balance if you are buying an estate from another resident. There is no reason for the seller to get your paypal info. They can get the money from LL.

Although this is certainly true, it also skates over a genuine difference between 'buying' a parcel on the Mainland and 'buying' a parcel from an Estate Owner.

In the case of the Estate, you run the risk that the Estate Owner could leave SL, and the Estate could revert to Linden Lab due to non-payment of the Estate tier.

In the case of Mainland, you run no such risk.



This is not to say that all advantages are with Mainland---there are plusses and minuses on both sides.

But to say 'why rent when you can own' with reference to an Estate seems deliberately deceptive to me (except in the case of someone actually purchasing the entire Estate, rather than just a parcel carved from it).

As a strictly Mainland geek, there's something I've never known: aside from the ability to "resell" through the land tools (if granted by the Estate owner), what other features are available to the Estate parcel owner that cannot be provided to a renter with the right set of group permissions?

Can the Estate owner give parcel owners access to some of the Estate Tools? Like, especially, the ability to see top scripts or any other Estate-only performance tools? (If so, I may have to sell up some Mainland and rent myself an OpenSpace!)

What else are my renters missing out on?