Stopping the "Estate Land Sales" scam

That would be very easy to do

if would require a very simple LibSL bot that to respond to 'payment' of that object by setting that land for sale only to the person who paid the rental box.

automation is your friend.

There is one flaw with your description. When I rent estate land to my tenants, it's in their name.

There actually is no difference, other than who your landlord is. In one case it's LL, in the other case it's another resident. All land is rented in SL. You stop paying tier (rent) to LL, they take your land.

And for the record, I set my rental parcels to the price of the first month's rent, 0L down. This allows the purchaser to have the land in their name without me being there, and allows for no confusion as to the terms. It's really the only honorable way to handle Estate land rentals, and I applaud those who do the same, and resist the temptation to use 1L land sales as a tactic to lure in renters.

All sounds very good except when the land is transfered into a residents name you MUST go thru a land SALES dialog. that in itself should tell you what it is your doing.

But seriously someone should start a thread and try to pinpoint down with the general community, exactly what is rental and what is ownership. once its finished, the definition should be posted and Strife, I think if asked would make it sticky

Hmmm a lot of people claiming their way is the correct way to do things, and many of them describing different ways.

Personally I think the honourable way is to abide by the contract you have between your tenant and yourself. That's the most important issue.

OK, since we've wandered OT again --

If you pay recurring fees to LL in order to maintain the existence of what you are paying for, you own it - in as much as you own anything in a virtual world without RL deeds.
If you pay recurring fees to someone who has in turn to pay recurring fees to LL in order to maintain the existence of what you are paying for, you are renting.

Shorter:
LL is landlord = "own"
LL is your landlord's landlord = "rent"

Negative, you must go thru a land sales dialog, no doubt what the intent was, unless perhaps people think they know more about LL intent then LL

Okies. Your thread, and you have it OT so I feel no guilt in continuing OT


If LL intended that a resident who goes through a "land sales dialoq" with a PI owner would own that land in the same way that a resident who goes through a "land sales dialog" with a mainland owner, then LL would never pull the plug on a PI where residents had gone through a "land sales dialog" to get control of a plot in a PI.

The "land sales dialog" for PI is just a mechanism to allow the standard parcel control facilities that are available on mainland, without having to divide the sim into separate group ownership lots. That's it and no more.

Because then it wouldn't be integrated with the rental system, which would still show the land as available. And again, I'm not necessarily going to be in a position to inform the rental system at the time the rental is taken out.

I used to operate a notifier on my mainland sales, which im'd me when a plot sold together with the purchaser. That would work in this case, except that a lot of the time it's bought for a group, not an individual, and a script can't work out who bought it if it's group owned.



I'm not in a position to leave a bot running 24/7.

you dont have to run it on your home pc

you can run it on a shell on a colo pc, or your webserver pc 24/7

shell accounts are very very very cheap

cheaper then be a scam artist, no....change is hard i understand

If what you were saying was true then you wouldn't be able to sell PI plots. That's not the intent by LL allowing this mechanism to be available to estate owners. LL's intent is clearly to allow the estate owner to act as a third party landlord. The very fact that these plots appear in the land sales section tells you that.

However, estate owners have discovered that you can control a plot well if you allow a person to have ownership powers, it certainly prevents people going over their prim limit for a start. So sell plot for L$1, then no need to invite people to a group, no need to keep counting prims, no need to set roles. It's actually a very good system and one I'd like to see intergrated into mainland. Restrict resale, allow the resident to control the plot. Ideal situation.

I'm not sure I follow you here, what difference does the price make? If you charge one week's rent or L$1, surely then it would not still show the land available.

Because if I charge 1L$, I can then tell them to pay a weeks rental and it registers with the rental system. If they just pay their first weeks rent by buying the land, the rental system never sees it.

It doesn't apply in my case, but it would affect any revenue sharing handled by the rental system too.

My point was that the "land sales dialog" is a kludge.

"Restrict resale..."
Bingo!! If you can't sell it, you definitely don't own it.

"Selling price" is meaningless for PI, as the overall cost depends on the recurring amount.
That recurring amount varies by PI owner. On mainland, the recurring cost is fixed in the same structure for all land.



Getting back On Topic:

L$1 as a selling price on PI is no guide to overall cost.
L$<anything> as a selling price on PI - ditto.
I honestly don't see any *practical* difference between a falsely advertised L$1 and a genuinely advertised L$1. Read it :- "*practical*"
In both cases, the eventual deal is based on an up-front of X and a recurring of Y.

In the falsely advertised L$1 case, both X and Y are unknown in advance.
In the genuinely advertised L$1 case, X just happens to be known in advance, but Y could be anything.
However, knowledge of X is useless without knowledge of Y.

Couple comments...

1. Re: own -vs- rent.

I don't think the word "own" applies to anything anywhere on the grid, with the possible exception of IP rights and copy rights.

Proof: Notice how our service provider got rid of that word in most places.

They use phrases like: "land enables" or "land allows" or "get land" or "hold land" - but I'm having a real hard time finding the word "own" these days. It used to be everywhere.

Betcha there's a reason for that, which even a team of high priced lawyers on retainer can't get around.


2. Land bots.

LOVE the idea. Devil's in the details, though, and may the gods help you if in any way it was hacked.

Especially if you have a few dozen sims. You just might wake up to a wasteland and hundreds of angry residents. Low chance of that happening, but HIGH consequence if it does. Rollbackfest... if you can get them fast enough.

Definitely agree. I had considered using bots to update mainland prices back in the day in response to shifts in the market (and at the time, I was shifting a *lot* of land and had a lot of land to reprice when needed), but one minor bug could have ruined me. Especially as LibSL is written in a language I'm less familiar in, and quite frankly, don't like.

An island is just a standard mainland server with some of LL's "god" powers in possession of the estate owner. Sadly they did the bare minimum they had to when they made this modification, so many things left over from mainland is still present, including this "buy" option. The right thing for them to do would have been to do a more thorough modification of the server code to clearly differentiate mainland from Estate land, however, that hasn't occurred , so we are stuck with what we have. I 100% agree it's misleading, which is why I say as clearly as I can wherever I can, that It's rental, not a purchase. While It would be nice to get a down payment every time the land changed hands (and very profitable), I feel this in itself is misleading, and therefore don't do it on principle.

Actually, the ability to buy estate land was only added a year ago. v1.12, I believe, which also introduced covenants and the group roles concept.

Edit: I'm right, this is from SL History (secondlife.wikia.com):

- 1.12.0(13) August 23, 2006
New features
Support for Covenants
Covenants may now be associated with Estates
These documents detail land use rules and restrictions
Available in About Land
Covenants are visible to anyone
Estate Land Sales
Estate owners/managers are now able to sell land to other Residents for L$
“Allow Land Resell��? Allows estate owners and managers to set the land for further resale beyond the initial buyer. The land can be set to sell at any time, however, without this option enabled.
Estate owners/managers may specify rules for land sale and usage in Covenants
Buyers of the land on private estates may be limited in their ability to re-sell land depending on settings determined by Estate owner/manager

However if you're restricting resale, it really shouldn't be in land sales at all. This is one of the failings of the system. I've said before that estate land purchases should look different, the UI should be different. For a start they should remove the mention of tier fee not changing, as tier fee isn't going to change unless you're buying a whole island, this shouldn't be mentioned at all.

As for recurring costs varying, that's part and parcel of having a third party run the business but if all land was equal, we'd see more of an even pricing structure, however private estates often cost $100 a month more to run, mainland tier will always be competitive.

If true resident hosted servers arrive then we'll see even more of a discrepancy and quite possibly more confusion.





From what I can see, listing land as L$1 is now so common place that people don't see an issue with it. I agree largely with you, but it really just points to the system needing an overhaul.

The other issue of course is that if you list your land for sale at L$1 you get a free advert for it. People are bound to want to take advantage of that.

Correct. I helped beta test it.

In addition, looong before that, there was some temporary functionality that was later redacted.

There was a bit of a dust-up regarding this whole issue back then, when it first surfaced. Once upon a time there weren't any private estates, so when the first ones came, there was a much higher 'consumer education' bar to get over.

Here's ther JIRA for this exploit

Please go and vote and let LL know its a important issue that makes unfair economic advantages for the exploiters

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1162

Yes, nice to know when. Doesn't alter the fact it was a poorly done job of altering the standard mainland sim code.

According to the Jira this has been fixed internally and is awaiting public release.

Did I miss that? lloks like bedtime for me

I voted anyway, just to be sure it DOES get released.