Restrict land sales/rental on private islands...the only way?

This stuff is really getting me steamed. I've kept out of the recent threads along this topic line, but over recent months I've gone from saddened to angered.

Every time one of the crooks out there rips someone off, everyone suffers. Pleading with the Lindens to add restrictions and limitations are not the answer. Why? That will hurt only the legitimate, honest people. The crooks and ripoff artists will simply shift to a new method of screwing honest folks out of their money.

"A few estate owners are crooks so lets punish them all?" No. Wrong answer.

You want to stop the criminals from committing crimes? The answer isn't to penalize everyone with unnecessary limitations and restrictions. The answer is: Go after the &#$()*(& criminals! Yes, LL should do something, but what they should be doing is looking at what estate owners have a pattern and/or history of complaints or ARs against them, and take action accordingly.

I'm an estate owner. Tomorrow marks the 1st anniversary of my estate's founding. I don't sell land, I rent it but I do use the 'sales tools' as it gives the residents, my residents, my customers, instant access. Nobody has to waste one of their (only) 25 group spots, nobody has to be online to facilitate things, they just pay the 1st month's rent with the built in tools and pow, the land is theirs and away they go. In the year since I started, I have never ever evicted anyone - I have never had a problem with a customer and I have never heard of a customer having a problem with me. Some of them have been with me since the beginning. I don't usually blow my own horn here about my estate because I almost never have any vacancies. Yep - I average 100% occupancy. I like to think I'm doing a good job, and I think my residents think so too.

To those who have been the victems of these scams, I am sorry for your loss, and I hope it hasn't ruined SL for you. To those who are the perpetrators of these scams, may you rot in hell, and may it be soon. Sorry for the rant. The anger's gone and I'm back to just feeling sad about all this again.

-Atashi

It would be more accurate

Also replace the land tab with

Land for lease

Land for sub-lease

and

Land to rent.

Course this makes a lot of sense

BRILLIANT!! Words count.

Eric, I'm puzzled how you lost a lot of money if you were simply renting; in that situation you would have lost 1 month's rent.

It sounds like you "bought" instead, and you lost that one-time, large, payment? I think semantics ARE important here. If you "bought" estate land, then I agree, this loophole either needs to be closed or education about it needs to be MUCH more widespread. I suggested on the blog this week that the Land FAQ in the knowledgebase be updated to reflect this problem.

I think the straight rental market, with no "purchase", is a healthy one, and I see no reason to restrict estate owners in this regard. (And no, I am not myself an estate owner, I'm a renter.) I do agree with those who would prefer the "lease" and "sub-lease" terms instead of using "buy" at all.
,

Mainland buy, estate lease (when you pay the up front price) and estate rent should all look different. The thing is, allowing estate land to be "sold" for rental, when the price is for say one week's rent is useful for both renters and landlords, it's a very efficient system. Sorry, I'm going off on a tangent.

That could work too. I think the actual words are not so important; it's very difficult to come up with definitions based upon rl parallels, but I do think those words should be different on the two types of land. A change like that would not hurt any respectable above board estate communities, it will only hurt those who take advantage of the misunderstandings that result from the two types being labelled the same way.

I raised a Jira issue asking for the estate purchase to look different. For example when you buy estate land it says your tier payments won't change, that message is redundant on estate land and should say something like "You will have to pay tier to the estate owner".

I believe LL cares and hears our words.

I believe they will do something about this. Giving truly reprehensible estate owners a taste of their own medicine, possibly revoking their "ownership" rights without refund due to blatant abuse, might be the end result.

I will wait, hopeful, for the resolution.

-Iva

Poetic justice.

The problem for confidence in the SL economy is that there is no embedded reputation system.
SL Exchange, Ebay, whatever. The buyers rate the vendor.

Any card-carrying freakoid nutcase can become a business owner in SL for a very small amount of investment - that's 'very small' compared to RL costs.
I've come across some people whose profiles appear to indicate something wonderful but turn out to be evil/insanity incarnate.

On the law of percentages, amplified by the diminution of empathy common in the on-line world, awful things are going to happen to some people.

Build a reputation system into SL.

Get happy customers to rate positively so that a negative rating by someone who is lacking in understanding, or who is abusing the system can not carry weight.

It's not a perfect answer, I'll have to admit.
Nobody could rate another unless they have transferred funds to that person.
So then someone could use alts or friends to up their rating. Just move some L$ to and fro.
In that case, people can only be warned by reviewing the details of negative ratings.

The control?
How do SL Exchange, Ebay, etc. deal with abuses of the ratings?

Interesting idea.

But shutting off 'land buy' won't stop estate land usage for for an instant.

* * * * *

Why not? Well, not everyone uses the 'land buy' functions for land transactions, even now. I sure don't.

The Caledon community helped beta test these functions back in the day; we tried them out a bit... but I ultimately didn't like the perception that the "land buy" splashscreens gave incoming people. Too deceptive, and/or not explanatory enough for what was going on.

We didn't have covenants on parcel tabs back then, only notecards explaining things. Also, the land buy function didn't cover tier; many fresh new users in early 2006 expected "free land for life" if they paid the initial fee. We had to leave a parcel meter and a notecard-giver out on the land, and pray the newcomers found it.

That worked about as well as expected, considering many people don't read. If they did, the acronym RTFM wouldn't exist.

Thus I discontinued use of the 'land buy' feature via search utterly, and used it only as a mechanism to grant parcel control to a specific avatar. It is deeded over for $L 0, or I join the resident's group temporarily and deed it over to their group myself.

* * * * *

So how does estate land rental work now? It doesn't take much - not even land! Honestly, for the price of $L 10 to upload a map texture and about 30 prims as little mapmarkers, you are in the land business.

That can be done reputably or disreputably - it's not the tools, it's the intent and the follow-through.

For instance, I've pre-booked an entire region this way just this week. People paid me roughly 1000 USD worth of $L so far, I've ordered the region, and it's due to show up any day now. If you want to see the solid booked map, port into Caledon VictoriaCity, SE corner, and it's on the first floor of the Guvnah's mansion.

No 'land buy' function. Not even a region - the order hasn't even processed yet. Just pure reputation and trust.

Naturally that is going to be a lot harder for a scammer to do, but it illustrates the point: taking away tools won't stop *anything*. Take every last tool away, and land deals will still be done via yahoo instant message and paypal. In fact, the tools are terribly inadequate as they exist now - I wish I could use a standard grid feature and not have to make my little maps and markers each time.

As long as anyone can rez a prim on land they don't lease directly from the Company, there will be land business - and probably land scams. Think about it.

* * * * *

What I think needs to happen is:


1) The tools can to be modified for clarity.

I don't use 'land buy' or 'land search' or any of those things. But for those that do, I think it should say 'land rental' aaaall over the place. Not 'land buy' even no matter how reputable somebody is.


2) The tools can to be modified for enforceability.

The Company can come out and say: "we'll enforce TOS if all parties agree to deal only in terms verifiable by us" - that means no paypal transactions.

Make an optional (and I mean: *optional* - not mandatory) system where tier in $L or USD credit can be paid via About Land, with rough guidelines. Eviction of resident within ten minutes: automatic full refund. Eviction of tenant within ten days: automatic 25% refund. Something like that; details can be hashed out. Maybe not perfect, but a decent operator can declare themselves "Regulated" as an indicator of consumer trust, and still get by without being taken to the cleaners by rotten residents.


3) The tools can be modified to have transparency.

Let me show my residents that I have at least the tier reserves in USD credit that I say I do, via my profile. Make it an option for me.

Let me clearly and obviously 'put a lock' on my account that shows: "The Company won't let me cash out below X months worth of my held-land tier in reserve." Make it something that can only be reviewed/updated annually.

Let me show what regions I actually am the payor for, which ones I have as orders pending, and which ones I have up for sale.

All of these can be made 'opt in.'


4) The tools can be modified to show a bit of accountability.

Show the number of residents renting a parcel from me. Show the number of reclaims I do that are for anything besides nonpayment (requires using their payment system, and yes, innocent reclaims to set someone's lot to a new group or something need to be handled differently). Again, opt in.


This won't stop every scam. But it will sure make it tougher on scammers. A lot tougher. Let reputable guys opt in, so we can air our clean laundry.

Alright, for those that keep seeing this as "pleading" or "begging" for this to happen, pay attention.

I'm NOT asking for this! Did you read the entire thing I posted? I said that the way it looks, the ONLY way this would be "fixed" that seems plausible would be this route. I even said I don't like it but right now LL is dropping the ball and falling so far behind that the only thing that seems to be a possible future answer given is this. I don't want it to happen either, because I have a nice quarter sim my house and store rest upon.

However, with the extremely high amount of scamming going on recently, and the very easy way to do this, it leaves a huge vulnerability. Face it, at any time, anyone here that has rented/bought land on a private sim could have their land reclaimed without any need for a warning, a reason, or a refund. All the money they put into it could be wasted with no chance of anything in return. I trust my landlord very much, but there are many out there that could see this and take advantage. Think of things like copybot...glIntercept...two things that weren't that well known or used and were made for a MUCH different purpose but were severely abused and now are huge problems in SL.

As for the land I "rented", you do end up having to pay rent up front. I paid the month's rent, and ended up being booted two days later. No refund, no reason...nothing. I wasn't the only one either. About 4 other people (including one who bought a small portion to test this theory out, ended up only lasting 4 hours before she was banned and had her land reclaimed) put in tickets on this. All we got were shoulder shrugs and "nothing we can do".



ACTUALLY, I just got a great idea...

Why not set up a rent system for private sims? When someone rents from a private sim, it's done through escrow of sorts. The person rents it for a specific amount of time for a price set on the land. When that person rents it, the land is theirs and CANNOT BE RECLAIMED. If there is an issue with the land needing to be reclaimed, the person has Concierge service anyway. A Linden comes, assesses the reason why, gives fair warning to the owner of the land so they may offer an appeal, so on. If the person doesn't pay rent the day it's due, the sim owner is given the chance to reclaim it at any time. That way it's regulated through SL, eliminates any worry of scammers and thieves.

If they were honest, they would present their side. But in our case we have been residents of a few estates and many of the owners have posted here and in slex defending our position. The have all been muted because there was no excuse for what happened.She took the land and the tier muted us and banned us. If they are honest they would try to work it out. But we are not concerned so much about ourselves now as the bad name its creating for other estate owners and the exposure it poses to our fellow residents.

If someone's a crook (or just plain incompetent to run a business), that is going to be the case regardless of the tools available. The overwhelming majority of estate owners are honest, and many of them are good businesspeople, too. You're calling for something that would hurt a whole industry just because not every resident does their homework before renting/buying estate land.

Should we ban all videogames, books, and movies because some idiots get ideas from them and do dangerous things as a result?

Don't forget dancing...

Rene you are right and it was posted more than once that there are only a few scamers but unfortunately the thread was closed and later deleted.
But sorry to say your post is not productive - what shall be done to eliminate this 0.1% wich has such a big influence. Wouldnt u cry out loud if YOU were harmed?
So we had multiple ideas here so far - black list - white list, rename to lease, restict land sale on estate.. etc ... every idea so far has its advantages and disadvantages.
MAINLY it comes to that we need a strong lobby to declares our will (not only the "few" scamed) -
We the residents of SL want resolution of predatory business behaviour!
So we need to manifest this through a group and declare it to a governing body of LL.

Whoa there partner, thats way too much for me to take in, I doubt any sim owners that lease/rent/sell land would stay in SL if those right s where to be taken away from them, from LL point of view that would take away so much monthly revenue that it would bankrupt them. They could try and turn all the abandoned sims into mainland but that would crash mainland too and the revenue would still not be there

Solving a problem isnt as easy as just sweeping it away, the only choice here is to have LL step up and start holding some type of accountablity on the sim owners part, make a system of estate ratings, make s system of comparative covenants and defaulted land percentages those are real solutions. To wipe out estate land sales not only is against the agreement many of estate owners purchased under, but is also sure suicide for LL

Good for you!

Im not agreeing with the OP or this method of thinking, Balkan you know me, as you have been a resident of mine, and you know how I operate, and how much time and effort I put into making a nice place for everyone to enjoy, I have my process, and to suggest anyone forces me into a business model that they feel is better is grounds for serious debate and serious repercussions, your suggesting that all estate owners myself included conduct business thru rental boxes, but what good is a rental box do? you can still kickout and ban a resdient off the land they paid for, in the end the idea doesnt solve the problem one bit, but does change the lives of many estate owners to the point that we'll no longer do business at all in SL

LL needs to realize rampant fraud is bad for its business, and deleting threads that point out the fraud will not solve the problem...

Har, you feel that estate land is rental and mainland is ownership, thats apoint that can and has been argued many many times, but ultimately the conclusion is they are both the same, only estate land is done thru a 3rd party and not thru LL, please say that 50 times to yourselff

ALRIGHT, LAST DAMN TIME I'M SAYING THIS!

I do not think this is a good idea at all. What I based this off of is LL's track record of how they deal with things. Sadly, this is my PREDICTION, not my DESIRE.

Good god...I wonder how many people actually read the entire thing and saw that I very blatantly stated that.

AGAIN, FOR THOSE THAT KEEP THINKING THIS IS MY SUGGESTION TO LL, IT ISN'T. You want to see my suggestion, look at my post explaining the escrow renting system through SL.

And the gospel chorus sings "AMEN!"

You are right Jackson- I knew estateowners would complain. It was just to be understood as an idea. But see the others side if nothing will be done by LL the current business model will fail. And only the good and hounerable estateowners like you are will remain- wich will give almost no chance to startups. They have no repuatation at all. So plz read post #42 and u will see my statement. Its all about us to have estate owners and renters to establish a strong lobby to declare our will.