Large scale subdividing of land

This seems to also eliminate a much more benign business practice: that of subdividing larger parcels into smaller house/shop lots of useful size. Subdividing parcels into 512s and 1024s is an SL business I and many others have engaged in. The adjective "large scale" is ambiguous: cutting a 2048 into 4 512s is smallscale, but what about, for example, buying a whole mainland sim and making 64 1024s or 32 2048s out of it? That is not microparceling of the sort which led to the old adfarms, and it is in fact one of the most common and least controversial business practices on SL--- but it could be construed as "large scale".

LL are in a position to follow the IPs, emails, payment infos, groups and the money.
It's possible that they are applying clue.

Having the ad policy cover parcels no matter what the size means the unlikely scenario is covered.

Jack said in both the forum and the blog:

"The aim here is not to stop you using your land in different and creative ways. We agree with your comments that there are plenty of good reasons to own small parcels, and we have no desire to interfere with that. We are also not looking to take action against people who have bought small parcels in an attempt to gain prim allowance or to simply expand their holdings or use their free tier.

We are specifically talking about the small number of Residents who are cutting land into many tiny pieces for profit, and often doing so across hundreds or in some cases thousands of micro parcels."

He's talking about cutting and selling micro parcels. He's not talking and has never been talking about cutting parcels down to a 512 from a 4096 and selling them.

Bullshit.

It's not "unlikely", it's "impossible".

It's a possibility that won't happen. But the people who were LEGITIMATELY putting large parcels up for sale were getting whacked by the G-team.

Covering the unlikely policy broke REAL use cases.
And we should believe that the G-team won't screw people over the way they screwed people over because the adfarming policy was inadequate... why?

This is my question too. Not that I buy and split full sims. What worries me, is jacks wording. As it does seem to be all inclusive.

No it's not, Umnik did it as final hurrah, he purchased 8192's covered them with his bloody silly logos, split them into 16's and stuck his fingers up at everyone. I was there when he did it. He could have kept it as an 8192 and still put his bloody logos everywhere. It's probably because of this that they made it so an ad plot was one ad per bloody location.



Having too much detail broke the policy, mentioning for sale signs by name broke policy. I didn't object to for sale signs, indeed I pointed out I'd found them useful. It was due to mentioning for sale signs that I raised questions about hippo rental boxes as I'd have been pissed if they were included, they're not.

Jack said:

"We are specifically talking about the small number of Residents who are cutting land into many tiny pieces for profit, and often doing so across hundreds or in some cases thousands of micro parcels."

It's about micro parcels and only about micro parcels.

It's always been about microparcels and only about microparcels, but that didn't keep the advertising policy from going off the rails.

No he didn't, you just said he split them into 16s.

Without the microparcels there's no business model. "A last hurrah" isn't a business model. It's "oh, this is annoying, but it's over, it's not going to happen again".
It's not "having too much detail", it was having the wrong detail. Trying to keep the farce of advertising parcels instead of addressing the microparcel problem in the first place.

Yes. The vagueness puts Residents at the mercy of the particular individuals who happen to be working for LL.

These individuals may all be saintly people (who would never differentially apply the vague policy, as a favor for a friend or for other personal reasons); and may all be people who are never overworked and thus whose minds always work with the clarity of the deity of your choice.

Or: not.

Luck of the draw.

There's a good reason for the fact that societies which define laws fairly closely tend to prosper more than societies which permit vague 'crimes against the state'-type accusations to be used to control their populace.

Not that SL is a democracy. It's a private business, of course.

BUT it's a business that will do better (I believe) when Residents know what the rules are and how to avoid breaking them.

Vaguely-worded policies that permit LL to act against people who have nothing to do with 16m's, as this one seems to do, are counterproductive for SL's growth.

When LL leaves itself the option of (say) seizing the SL assets of someone who buys a 32,000 square meter parcel at auction and divides it into 1,024's---for the very act of dividing teh 32K into 1024's---then what you have is a degree of uncertainty that will discourage people from putting RL money into their SL experience.

Argent he bought 8192's, in brand new sims too. Cutting them into 16's was pretty irrelevant, it was a contiguous land mass. If you've got an 8192 and you sell a 16, it's not bringing your tier down. Thus it's not impossible at all to have an 8192 and be an arse.



With advertising Argent, it wasn't just micro parcels that people were objecting to. Huge spinning in the sky for sale signs were being complained about. This is why for sale signs are included in the policy. Personally I'd have been happy with them telling people to take down said signs without any need for a change of policy, you don't need the level of detail that says you can and can't use a certain type of sign.

1024's are not micro parcels. Jack specifically mentions micro parcels in both the blog and the forum.

That's right. But why not mention it throughout the policy---unless they are trying to leave themselves the option of taking action against people who never cut anything smaller than a 1024m?

I'm saying that leaving the rules so open to interpretation is counterproductive for SL's growth--not that Jack never mentioned micro-parcels. (Because I agree that they are mentioned.)

They have the any reason or no reason clause in the TOS, that's the biggest gotcha going, people still happily invest time and money here.

True enough. But the deliberate vagueness (as to parcel size the policy might be applied to) gives them further 'crimes against the state'-style coverage.

Before this policy was announced, if LL, say, seized the SL assets of someone who had, say, offended some Linden, with the excuse 'our TOS says any reason or no reason', there would be a massive outcry--and worse, bad publicity.

But if that occurred after the policy was announced, and the person whose assets were seized went to the media, LL could show that their policy is:

"we will no longer allow widespread subdivision of land on a commercial scale on the Mainland"

...and the media would say, hey, person whose thousands of US dollars of assets were seized, LL says right there that you can't buy a lot of land at their auctions and subdivide it for resale!! You have no case whatsoever!!



Of course the reality is that LL benefits greatly from the labors of those who pay hundreds of US dollars for parcels in the tens-of-thousands of square meters range. The people who cut the land into sizes saleable to those just starting out with land ownship are performing work that LL would have to pay for (and not just salaries, of course, but benefits).

So LL doesn't really want to stop that from happening. It would cost them money.

But with the vagueness of the new policy's wording, they leave themselves the option of taking action against people who never deal in parcels under 512m.

If you continually ignore Jack Linden's comment that this policy is specifically aimed at micro parcels then I guess you could draw that conclusion, but his statement exists in the main blog on Linden Lab's official site.

The point I believe is being missed here is that statements such as the one I quoted--and others in the February 12 posting--which do NOT restrict the policy's scope to microparcels, could be used in the way I describe.

Just as the Ad Farm policy was extended beyond that policy's INTENDED scope, this one could be, too.

Specifically: 'Does this policy include signs advertising Parcels for sale?' in the September Ad Farm policy was taken out of the intended context of restricting Network Advertising sellers offering space to land-sellers on their ad towers---and the scope was then extended to an area that is NOT related to Network Advertising (namely, to individuals putting a For Sale sign on their own property).

It's happened before. So it can happen again.





I should say that I'm not trying to label the Feb 12 posted policy as Bad. It's got many features I admire.

I just wish they'd add a couple of qualifiers to some of those very broad statements.

This is not about "being an arse".

This is about "the economics of microparcels that allow you to cheaply be an arse all over the grid at once, and thus profit from it".

I realise this is going to sound cold, but boing cold is absolutely the thing to do. You can't solve all problems at once.

Those people should have been ignored, because they weren't dealing with the problem that fucked up the mainland.

Really.

Linden Labs problem with the adfarm policy is not "too many rules".

It was "this was a broken policy". It was trying to solve the wrong problem. Which is why they had to come back and do it over. And if they get it wrong again, they'll have to do it again. Which is why they need to make damn sure, in the written policy, what the limits are.

History is full of statements about laws by lawmakers that were left out of the laws because they were "obvious", and sometimes the laws get abused exactly the way people were concerned about before the lawmakers responsible finish their term.

I agree that they got their priorities arse over tit on this one, the initial ad farm policy change was 12 months ago, they had to revisit it. However too many limits lead to people circumventing the policy and pointing out "You didn't say we couldn't do this".

The Human Rights act is being abused by smartarse lawyers left, right and centre.

We told them it was broken when they did it. We had the whole argument we're having *right now* back then. This isn't "we've learned better", this is "this was broken right from the start"... because it was all about "network advertisers", not abuse of "microparcels".

Like this is about "landcutting", not "abuse of microparcels".

We told them it was broken when they did it. We had the whole argument we're having *right now* back then. This isn't "we've learned better", this is "this was broken right from the start"... because it was all about "network advertisers", not "abuse of microparcels".

Like this is about "landcutting", not "abuse of microparcels".
I was thinking more of the DMCA and RICO.

I can see advantages for being explicit about limits, and for being explicitly vague. The problem with vague, though, is it requires competence on the part of the enforcers, and some understanding of the problem that the rules are really trying to solve--and we have over a hundred microparcel-sited casino ad crystals on the grid in a glowing, blinging purple demonstration that the previous policy achieved no such understanding.Well, right: they have to get the intent correct in the first place, and address the real problems. As stated, this policy still addresses a symptom rather than the root cause. I don't know why LL persists in this self-perpetuating game of cat and mouse.

Maybe they'll somehow fix it in those "discussions" with the perpetrators, but as of now, the sims are still pock-marked and the roads are still lined by the same useless hyper-priced microparcels as they were before the policy. Too soon to tell, but also too soon to celebrate.

There is a Law that applies to the mainland and any other estate. Its the Covenant.

In the event that a parcel owner on a private estate is judged by the Manager of that estate to contravene the Covenant, or is just being a half-wit about it, then the parcel owner is summarily booted out of the estate. The Private Estate Manager is the sole Judge in these matters. There is no right of appeal or review unless the Judge allows it.

The private estates in SL are in the condition they are because their Managers exercise their authority to Judge. The mainland estate is in the condition it is because LL chose not to, until recently.

The big question on the minds of those of us who live and build on the mainland, is will LL as our Estate Manager, judge fairly ??? We will just have to wait and see ya. If LL do not then people will pack their bags and leave. Just like people leave private estates when their managers do not judge fairly either.

As Estate Manager of the mainland, LL shouldnt be expected to have to have their authority to judge diminished, curtailed or over-regulated. A Private Estate Manager would never put up with this. The more successful, peaceful, law-abiding and just really nice places on the grid, are those run by estate managers with very little regulation and a great big gavel.