Land For Sale from *, a potential rip-off ?

With all respects, i reason that the "dumb thing" would have been not to ask before i hand the $L's.

And yes, this seems to have been a misunderstanding that would have been avoided (in my view) if the seller (i never bought anything) would have been more prepared and direcected me to places where i could have found answers, as others have kindly done here.

Still, Kazike, your gaff in posting the seller's name in the thread should not be allowed to be forgotten too quickly.

Yes you must pe punished for this unconsciable violation of the Forum Tao. I suggest 90 Days as Ruth.

Plus a continual bumping of this thread.

If on private estates they renamed "purchase land" to "lease land from another resident" or something similar I think it would dramatically reduce the amount of land confusion and also the number of people falling for scams.

I think the "purchase land" should still be used on the mainland, so its easy to see the major difference between the 2 places - that mainland land, like RL purchased land cannot be taken away from you (providing you pay your taxes)

I expect many less reputable estate owners to not like calling it "lease" for fear they would lose potential customers, or they would demand the mainland sales be also be called lease so the people who dont like the idea of leasing would still go to them.

You still don't own the land when you buy on the mainland - LL do.

Well I dont know if there is any fraud sounds like you ran into an island owner who hated answering questions. In any event as far as the banning goes yeah people ban for all kinds of reasons "your world your banstick" hehe but it sounds to me like its not a landlord I would be interested if they could not take the time to explain stuff. I probably would have explained it and then suggested before you get land to research it more and tell you to feel free to come back later and not sold/rented you any land because its looking like you didn't have all the important info. Also on the side of being suspicious with regards to the large amount of scamming that does occur in SL its better to be banned for asking "to many questions" and not loosing any money then to be ripped off for asking to few or parting with your money to easily. I'm pretty sure you wont be one that gets scammed because you are erring on the side of caution so being suspicious has its up side when it comes to virtual environments and this is one of them.

Real world identity I think you will find very few people willing to give you their real world identity for more then a few reasons. The top reason is that well its just something that asking for in any environment is a no no. The reason being that for all I know you could be some crazy person who wants to hunt me down in real world or resort to identity theft of something so that's the other side of the coin and one reason that people wont be volunteering it easily in many cases. Roleplaying is another big reason you slip into your avatar and that is who you are in SL if i gave you my real name everyone would wonder who in heck that was and I would have to tell them the second life name for them to make sense of it. In second life for all purposes including any money making ventures my SL name is who you will be getting to know me by and its what you will use to identify me over time and if somenoe scams its the avatar scamming in the game and the real world name is only something LL knows so to connect the info for us regular folk we will also go by the avatar name and ignore the real name >

Sounds very much like my first encounter with a landlord. I hadn't really grasped the details about mainland and estate at the time, and went looking for a place to set up shop. I read the covenant, realizing that the landlord still essentially retained all rights to the land, and was about to 'port out just as the landlord appeared and asked what I was looking for. I told that this land wasn't really it, since I was looking for something where I had the management rights. The landlord rather aggressively told me that no such thing existed; this was how *all* land in SL was sold, and I was a fool for asking. I insisted that I had heard about parcels you controlled yourself, rather than one which I could be evicted from without notice (which the covenant warned about), and the landlord proceeded to call me an newb idiot, and orbited me!

For the longest time I tried to figure out which protocol I had broken, and how I had so completely misunderstood everything about land, until I settled on the explanation that the landlord was, simply, a rude moron.

I was land shopping in January or so, and came across this guy who told me he had land for sale. He was sitting at the teleport point for another plot. So I went with him and tp'd to his land, and it was covenanted island land. I had already done my homework and knew the difference, and I was pissed. Why was he trying to sell me land that another resident could take away? He wasted my time. Granted, it was resellable land, but that made little difference to me then - and little difference now, as illustrated by many of the woes spilled on these boards.

And as for this:Purchasing mainland is as much ownership of anything as you can own anything in this game. It is akin to holding inventory - LL will not destroy it, take it away, or deny access unless you violate the TOS or something is wrong with it. Buying Mainland IS ownership of the land. That it is subject to the same rules as everything else does not make it a lease.

I said this yesterday in another thread: No owns land through and through, in real life or second life. But we still have this term called ownership, and it's based on a grant from the sovereign entity (in real life, it's the state or country you live in. in SL, that is LL). Land that is fully paid off from mortgage can still be taken away if taxes are not paid, the equivalent of a violation of TOS and/or failure to settle your account.

So as much as you can own real land, you can own virtual land from LL in SL.

Island "ownership" should not be called as such, however, because the island owner is not a sovereign. It's rent, as clearly shown by many of these posts. No matter how much you put down for your plot, you are still subject to eviction in the event of a new island owner, or the winds of caprice blowing the wrong way, or the unfortunate rl death of the island owner, wherein the island is either sold or reverts back to the sovereign.

Nevertheless, if Phil turned off the servers tomorrow there would be nothing you could do about it.

Right, but that doesn't make it a lease. Since we don't really own anything anyway, there is still a degree of access and security that lends itself to the term ownership, and it's just not there with private islands.

if god turned off the world tomorrow you wouldn't own anything either... kinda the same thing

No, I'm not religious... at all. But had to say something lol

Except Phil exists.

Your metaphor is actually quite appropriate, given that Phil created SL because of his God complex.

In my beliefs god might exist...lol


But I don't particularly care. I'll do what I do, anything bigger than me can do what they do lol

And well.. Phil is god in a sense for SL, isn't he?

If that is the case, they should not do business because they will establish their reputation quickly enough!

You earn and lose sales with your customer service for sure.

That's not true. The rules state:

moderators will have the option of:

editing aggressively offensive personal attacks to remove those statements that violate the community standards (with an accompanying statement explaining the violation and reason for edit), please note language, such as "fraud, liar, cheater, griefer, troller, jerk, scam artist" etc is strongly discouraged, but will not be removed.

It is true. I found it for you in your other thread.

Basically you were looking for it near the top of the guidelines document - but its nearer to the bottom.

No no no, sorry but no. If I downgrade to a basic account, the land you say I "Own" will swiftly be repossessed because it's leasehold and if I don't pay the lease, I lose it. It's not ownership at all.

That is because you changed the terms of your agreement, part of LL's policies. Your ownership is dependent on account status. The sovereign's rules - if you do not conform, you do not get to own. Just like real life, if you don't pay, you don't own. But it does not make it a lease.

yup the land is as much LL as yours you have to abandon or sell it before you downgrade in both cases of estate vs mainland you can loose land if you default in some way. IN the case of LL you loose your land if you stop being premium or if you stop paying for a private sim etc because its rented

If you rent from an estate owner okay he is a middleman just like some realty companies manage rentals for owners in real world if the realtor is taking a cut (kinda like estate lands in a way in SL) and makes the rules and enforces them then you can get booted just like in SL

both are leases and in both cases you stand to loose if you dont do things right. If the private estate guy is worth his salt you can easily sell your land after purchase. I live on dreaded dreamland land and when i move I sell the land and get my money back just as if i were on mainland or unlike with LL if i am in a tight spot this estate manager will buy land back at her wholesale price which will give you back about half or 2/3'rds of your money but if you downgrade with LL because your forced to you loose your land and dont get a dime back. In some cases estate land can be better depending on the baron doing it. If i were forced to leave my stuff in SL tomorrow I would much rather loose half of my original payment or 1/3'rd (her prices fluctuate) as apposed to all of it with LL. There is very little difference if you have a decent land lord. In the end it has to do with the integrity of the baron and whether they are honest to start with. If they are you stand to loose far less then with LL to me that's a good thing hehe.

It all depends on perspective and in both cases you can loose your land and no LL doesn't have to shut the servers off to take it from you

Of course it's a lease, that's what the membership and tier payments are for. You do not own the land, if you owned the land then downgrading would mean you still owned it. Earlier you compared owning land with inventory items, I won't lose my inventory items if I downgrade to basic, I will lose my land.

Land is leasehold.

Downgrading is the equivalent of not paying your taxes - and it gets taken away. It is owned just as much as you can own rl land.

Not where I live it isn't. People go to jail for tax evasion, they don't generally lose their land.

Except where they haven't got the money to pay the taxes they owe, then all property (land included) is siezed and sold off in most civilized countries.

There is a difference between willful criminal tax evasion and defaulting due to lack of funds, bankruptcy etc. The former can land you in jail,usually in high profile cases, the latter usually results in seizure of assets, and sometimes restitution agreements.