Feedback on Ad Farm post

I think your concern doesnt bother anyone mr extortioner, for me it seems like whining anyway, the sooner llc bans people like you the better. For every clown like you at least 100 new creative paying residents !

btw ... relative of that other extortioner "Ausprim Wallyard (supplier of overpriced microplots) " ? Looks like the two of you were born in the same cave.

I encourage every resident to avoid buying from these extortioning clowns and spread on the word to all others. Let them bleed on the tier

Your decission to regulate advertising is bad.

"Philip Rosedale and the Board of Directors are highly skilled engineers with little or no knowledge of economics, economic history, strategic planning or customer relations. As Second Life grows from a technological startup to a mature business, they are out of their depth. They are making serious mistakes. They are destroying the wealth and confidence of the entrepreneurial class who risked enormous time and money to build Second Life in the first place. More importantly, they have lost sight of their original vision.

Second Life was about user-generated content, remember? It was about “your world, your imagination”. That was the business plan and founding principle: to create a world that was VIRTUAL, VOLUNTARY and ADULT - framed by the philosophy of individual liberty and responsibility. Second Life was NOT intended to be a pale imitation of real life. It was NOT meant to be a playground for Republicans and Democrats to ‘govern’. It was NOT about majority rule through public opinion. Yet this is what has leaked into Second Life since 2007, drip, drip, drip. The sad irony is that now, out of ignorance and a naive desire to ‘do good’, Linden Lab is poisoning the very world they created and seek to protect.

Reassert the founding principles of individual liberty and individual responsibility. Resist the temptation to sanitize Second Life. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; the desire to protect residents from themselves will only lead to a downward spiral of regulations to offset the harmful effects of other regulations. Also, Second Life is NOT real life. It is NOT a nation-state. Second Life is virtual, voluntary and adult. We are here by choice precisely to escape the restrictions of real life - and there is no Berlin Wall to prevent us from leaving. As for those who want SL to become more like Disneyland, well, Disneyland already exists. We don’t need another one."

Deltango Vale

You may think so but I would beg to differ on that particular point, The residents who sit on 512 or 1024sqm outway by far the number of "advertisers and other business" they are the main source of all inworld business revenues.

They pay far more to LL in tier per sqm than larger plot owners and without them the commercial attraction of SL would be non existant.

You and your sort have driven to many of them away, is my guess and that is probably the reason LL is about to stop your actions!

Not because a few people in a forum see you for what you are , but because you are a nuisance in the big scheme of things.

I am sure LL will be delighted to see you telling everyone that they are complicit in harassment and extortion of their customer base.

His absolutelly vague formulation is here only to calm down virtual communists and give them a false hope of future price revolution in their neighborhood. You get too emotional, mate. Just mind your business and you will feel much better, believe me.

That's bullshit, like everything you've posted before. Residents "sitting on their 512 or 1024" create revenues by paying their tier. Many of them create revenues with their shops. They buy furniture, houses, plants etc. creating revenues.

It's obvious that the only revenues that concern you are YOUR revenues. I'm sure LL wouldn't take action if they didn't expect any positive effect - on "public park lovers" as well as on the market.

And another thing - the expression ‘exploitation’ he uses has figured prominently in Marxist theories, it is frequently invoked in ordinary moral and political discourse. It only proves my point that we are really marching toward virtual communism. To exploit others is to take unfair advantage of them. Which is absolute nonsence in our case. Nobody forces you to buy my expensive land. But you force me to give up my right to ask what I want for it. Monstrous and funny.

Hmm well I dont want to share anymore thoughts.
Just one more..
Ad farmers are residents as well, they have the SAME rights as us.
if they buy a piece of mainland, they can do whatever they want.
Ofcourse, placing these stupid ads is a bad decission, but they paid for the land.
Either you leave when its blocking the vieuw or you ask the adfarmer to change a few things.

With this new policy LL is excluding ANOTHER group of residents.
We had the gambling group a few months ago...

So maybe its wise to find another solution?
remember that SecondLife needs Ads, to keep our l$ running.

Personally if I had a club or service I would not place those big ads, but again if one paid for the land, one can place ads on it.

I will shut my mouth now, since not all point of vieuws are being accepted here.

Here is a radical new idea.

A few adfarmers want to ensure virtual communism doesn't take hold so lets, dissallow unfocused advertising completely.

Get focused and make advertising actually work by targeting its market audience.

The Lindens create more content inworld like places to visit, based on a set themes already known to be popular in world, leave them to gain traffic ect.
Then these new areas are offered out for sale by auction similar to the standard way land is.
People who wish to advertise in these areas purchase them as a job lot, and place targeted adverts to their individual audiences.

This may actually result in the Lindens getting more RL genuine advertising companies inworld and more medium sized companies who would like a presence but don't want to take the risk of an island outlay.

The popularity of places pushed by the Lindens is proven to work, by the likes of bay city so traffic would soon mount up in these areas.

The idea is a sort of small zoned advertising area, but would need some sort of central attraction to ensure traffic remained high.

Try that in reality and see what happens. you will eventually in up in jail. why? Because there are rl law governing what can be done on land even if you own it. So, the same should hold true for sl. Nowhere does it say you can do whatever you want when you pay for something. You are paying for a rendered service not a physical product.

I'm not sure if this would work. Have a look at Bay City: Auctions started three months ago but until now it's not more than a ruin, 'cause "clever" people bought lots of land and try to sell it now for astronomical prices. 1024sqm aren't worth hundreds of thousands of Linden Dollars, even on a themed SIM.

I understand that it's necessary to put up a brave front in hopes some folks will still buy some extortion parcels before they're banned. (Hint: It also would be wise to cash-out frequently, while the IP address still works.)

Sorry, but an extra layer of bluster doesn't turn bullshit to gold.

When joining SL, one agrees to terms that allow the supplier to change the service. That they should do so to remain competitive and to attract new customers is LL operating as a rational agent in a free market--the exact opposite of "Communism." That's the Real Life reality.

Even if we leave reality behind and jump levels of abstraction into the virtual economy, Communism still has nothing to do with restricting the impact of moral hazard. EVERY real life economy does that, one way or another. If you overgraze your sheep on the town commons, either there will be a law to make you stop, or the townsfolk will just drive you and your sheep out of town. That's not Communism, it's absolutely universal.

Luckily for the extortionists, in SL, there's no provision for the townspeople to pass laws or drive anybody out directly, otherwise this problem would have been solved long ago. The only option is to petition LL to do it. And that succeeds when the RL business viability of their grid is at stake--when the "commons" have been so ruined that nobody wants to settle in the town anymore. And it's pretty obvious that the Mainland is currently in that condition. And it's pretty obvious why. Hence the new policy.

I've tried--perhaps not always successfully--to refrain from attacking the personalities of the extortionists. They merely respond to the virtual economics of the grid, as defined by LL. That is, if there weren't a R___ M___, one would emerge to fill the niche. But as we've seen, once they've found one mechanism for profiting by destroying value, removing that mechanism only drives them to find another. It is they who are inexorably driving the grid to greater regulation; land extortion is just the next mechanism that will have to be addressed to keep the Mainland a viable RL business.

So you had better get out while the getting is good, right?

[Or are you just trying to start a 'Red Scare'?]

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Could one of these clever people be Luke or some of his likeminded friends?

Perhaps they will learn one day that business flourishes by being astute, sensitive to customer needs and wishes, in addition to having a sensible well thought out pricing strategy.

Business make money through quantity of sale, not just the profit of a sale.

On the contrary, those are the most profitable square meters for Linden Labs. A sim full of 512m parcels owned by individual residents represents over $US9000 per year, assuming ALL the residents opt for the cheapest possible plan. That's almost 4 times the income from a single resident with a sim's worth of property.
Crikey, nobody has a gun to their head forcing them to play Second Life either. And nobody's got a gun to YOUR head forcing you to try and make money by giving people a choice between buying you out or selling their land at an even bigger loss to get away from you, either. But if you *really* think that's justification for your microplot extortion you need to spend some of your take on therapy.

Crikey, nobody has a gun to their head forcing them to play Second Life either. And nobody's got a gun to YOUR head forcing you to try and make money by giving people a choice between buying you out or selling their land at an even bigger loss to get away from you, either. But if you <i>really</i> think that's enough justification for your microplot extortion you need to spend some of your take on therapy.

In my 'rural' mainland sim, all sorts of 16 m2 parcels surrounded my plot. They would throw up an advertisement banner. I would find out who owned it and then ask the price. I would make a low ball offer and in everycase it was taken. I then owned the plot. Keep in mind Avatars, the price of land is NOTHING compared to the TAX on the land [tier] - Tory Micheline

Hey Carl, that was very interesting. Were you able to dig up any more on this? Its interesting to read everybody's opinions on what LL should and shouldn't do...but ultimately we have to see what LL takes away from it all and ends up doing. Do you know where we could get any more "official" info on this?

You do not have to wait till 1st October. Fill up you little abuse report to Big Brother right now!

Quousque tandem abutere, the Leech, patientia nostra?

No, we're not marching towards it, we started there. From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs. What needs do avatars in SL have that aren't met for free? I can't think of any... we don't even need to mine for fish to eat. I've constructed mines and wells and power plants and even waste-water outfalls, but it's all decoration. Avatars don't NEED any of that.

Second Life is a simulation of a post-singularity world, where "people" are indestructible, mutable, invulnerable... we can fly and teleport and create anything we can visualize purely by thinking about it. The "state has withered away", and creating new things is the highest vocation. An entrepreneur in SL has to earn money by creating, by adding value, not taking it away.

What exactly are you creating?

Don't call Puppet and Puppet's friends communists. That will make me a sad doggie. Puppet is a happy capitalist! But Puppet also has a heart, and doesn't believe in being greedy.

How can it be communism when LL is a private company, and they are making decisions that they feel are best for their business? Yes, while some of us are overjoyed that LL is taking action that most residents want, don't forget that it is a business decision, ultimately. You may question the business decisionmaking skills of the people behind the company, but ultimately, everything that happens here is their decision. You've been around long enough to know that the company's primary motivation is making money so they can keep the servers running, and they act accordingly. And they will continue to do so, I suspect.

You are absolutelly missing the point. Licences for gambling is needed only when you play with real world currencies.

Talking about banks, just days into 2008, without consultation or discrimination, Linden Lab banned all banks, regardless of their history, reputation, structure or business practices. In a matter of minutes, SL’s evolving financial system was demolished as sound and responsible banks closed their doors in the ensuing panic. More residents lost money because of LL’s clumsy intervention than from all bank frauds combined. Good businesses were crippled and good people hurt - not so much by scammers as by Linden Lab itself!

Destruction of banks, casinos, voluntary adoption of VAT, markets flooded by Linden Lab land (Linden Lab itself has destroyed the value of your land more significantly than anybody else) and now advertising regulations (and again only two weeks time for SL businesses to completely re-think their strategies) is nothing but sign of total incompetence of Linden Lab. This time, I am pretty sure, many businesses will take this matter to the court rooms. Prepared regulation is nothing more than populistic decission.

I quite like Carl Metropolitan's 7-point plan. I think one improvement on point #6, which in its current form bars people who might not have access to the required RL cash buy-in fee, would be to use a system similar to what car-hire companies use: take the person's CC details in lieu of a deposit so that if any damages / contractual violations occur they are automatically charged against the person's credit card.

The main point to bear in mind is that advertising is a real business and should be treated as such. For too long LL has taken an extreme laissez-faire approach to businesses in SL and for the most part it's been phenomenally successful. However there do seem to be areas where more proactive regulation is required for the benefit of the commons as well as LL. Advertising is definitely one of them. Real estate is another as there are a whole raft of issues relating to the real estate business in SL that desperately need to be addressed some of which are surfacing in this thread.