Feedback on Ad Farm Post - Part 2

Well I don't think Linden Labs should respond to AR's on a blocked sign because it would only be blocked if it is in a bad position.

I know people don't like the roads idea but I really don't see an alternative to placing adverts on the roadsides, otherwise they will be blocked by people who don't want to look at them.

I like the idea of new commercial Sims with ad spaces built into them.

This would mean high traffic from shoppers and be good for the advertisers to.
The sims could have roads built into them to ensure lots of space, and have large plots for shops and small plots for adverts, everyone would be happy the adverts would fit into the commercial theme of the Sim.

If Linden Labs wanted to be really adventurous they could have seperate eras for the Sims to Futuristic, Modern , Historic etc.
I know I would love to see well thought out Sims like this, and think many others would to.

In these threads its hard to tell where satire begins.

Weedy didn't say "intent", Weedy said "attempt". There's a difference between intending to murder someone and attempting to murder someone. There's a difference between intending to commit extortion and attempting to commit extortion. A failed attempt is still an attempt.
Even if it interferes with the gameplay of others?
A difference of degree. A comment attributed to Winston Churchill seems appropriate: "We've established what you are, madam, now we are negotiating the price". You're describing a difference of degree, not kind.

When Elex said the only book he read was "Atlas Shrugged" that was made completely obvious. There's no need to keep hammering the point home.

OK... another "columbo moment".
If there's no "right to visibility" why does it matter whether it was invisible on one, 2, 3, or 4 sides? The TOS talks about *access*, and a phantom prim completely hiding an ad tower doesn't do anything to prevent *access*.

If it looks like a Turkey
Sounds like a Turkey
and walks like a Turkey

Yes

You got it

It's normally a Turkey!

Same goes for 16sqm parcels.

...and snow covered, city like, suburban...

Everything old is new again.

If I put banlines on around the ad tower there is no side access, allowing access means any plot owner with a hole in cannot ever use banlines.

That seems very discriminate, This leads me to suggest access from the side is not an issue.

From my house, in RL, I can not see a single advertisement. If I were to put up an advertisement on my lawn the Homeowner's Association would be on my case just as fast as they were about my not filling in the hole they dug on my lawn. The ads inside my house, including banner ads on websites, are with few exceptions brought in by my choice (yes, I choose not to use an adblocker in my browser) and in almost all cases directly and significantly subsidize a service I use (whether that's broadcast television or Google).

Ads don't subsidize SL, any more than spammers subsidize the internet. By reducing the demand for mainland and encouraging people to abandon land they are a net cost to Linden Labs... if they weren't, we wouldn't be seeing this thread created by Jack Linden.
No, I was playing this game before the Impeach Bush guy and "Mr Lee" created the adfarming industry.
No, the adfarmers showed up after I bought my First Land.

Next?

That's a good point. I'd actually like to see a Linden Labs comment on that.

Ok

/me pokes tongue out smiling.

I meant zoned where the builds have to conform to the era so you get sort of themed commercial Sims, I love that sort of thing!

/me grabs bag ready to go shop.

They still have access from above or by TP

Not that I really approve of banlines--unsightly as they are--and how they hamper flying at low altitudes to see all the wonderful builds.

Doubts there will be any clear answer; . . . have you noticed how infrequently Jack (or Katt or any Linden for that matter) post here? Jack in fact responded only once very early in both threads. (yes i've read every page)

"Did Oct 1 still apply" . . .
no, the Sept 12 blog post clearly states that "instead we are going to cover ad farming activities (and the operating of network advertising businesses) under our Terms of Service, specifically as Harassment under clause 4.1." That clause was already there.

"what sort of a compliance time will farmers have"
That will depend on LL response to ARs, & how they react to the offenders reply.

"what is the next step if the ad farmer says 'no'."
That right there is the big question. IMO they will say ok, sorry to have bothered you... and warn the resident who filed the AR.

The ONLY apparent change is that Jack held onto his 50 limit thing:
"We will allow no more than 50 advertising locations owned by a single individual, whether personally owned or via groups in which you are a member, unless you have written permission from Linden Lab to exceed this limit.Use of Alt accounts/groups to circumvent this restriction will be considered a violation."

Now, you can continue to disect ideas on use of alts, tactics, strategies etc., but nothings going to change because the fact is the extortionists etc are some of LL's biggest customers. And the customer is always right. Right?

While I sincerely hope you are wrong here, this thought has been nagging at me throughout this "conversation".

I've said it before and say it again... I'll believe it when I see it.

Indeed there is.

Linden Lab themselves often say "You cannot break any real life laws".

Gambling, banking and ageplay are some examples of LL's hand being forced by real life laws. Extortion and price gouging are two real life laws which need to be applied to the Terms of Service as well.

In real life, home owners can be expropriated by government, if the need for that property is for the common good and must pay the owner "fair market value". The owner has every right to dispute the seizure and price. Any judge in any district could and would re-assess the value of the property and make a determination accordingly. If the owner demands an exorbitant price, the judge will rule, and the home owner will likely not prevail.

It's true, any "attempt" is the same as "the act of", with respect to extortion or price gouging, in the eyes of the law.

Insisting that someone "not pay" does not absolve anything. Likewise, anyone that does pay, does not absolve the action either.

Price gouging is the same thing. If the government orders an evacuation of a city, gas stations cannot needlessly inflate the price of gas simply because there is no other alternative.

Ad cutters and extortionists are attempting to thwart real life laws, by exploiting a free market economy where little or no alternatives exist. Linden Lab has no other choice, than to provide alternative resolutions to these issues, otherwise they can be seen as facilitators of the crime. The TOS, abuse reports and current policies are greatly deficient and must be revisited.

The same thing applies to auctions. Too many times, I've seen extortionists "up bidding" parcels to prevent motivated neighbors from buying certain parcels or needlessly driving up the value, except in this case, only LL is the benefactor of a devious act. Turning a "blind eye" to this, is not an excuse and whether they know it or not, are walking on thin ice.

Elex claimed, anyone who pays their fees and buys land, is entitled to the freedom to do as they please. I disagree. You can buy a ticket for the theater, but you cannot yell "FIRE". This is one of the oldest fundamentals of free speech. Nobody is expected to "ignore" them and be dis-alarmed.

Jack, this is a no-brainer. Delete the accounts of the bad actors. Period. It's that simple.

That part isn't accurate. Remember, a Premium account paying no tier at all can deface 35 sims; net of stipend, the revenue to LL is trivial. And even the largest only carry a few sims of tier. Total revenue to LL from in-world "advertising" and associated scams probably foots the bill for one Linden to attend SLCC.

That's not to say I have high confidence in LL follow-through on this one. So far, we have a good backswing, but the ball is still very much on the tee.

I'm not sure that real life laws apply as closely to virtual property as you may be implying here. You don't really own land in SL (certainly not in any sense that Ayn Rand would recognize ), and there are laws on the books limiting the rights of real life landowners that go far beyond anything that anyone would want to see in SL. Real life laws in this situation are useful as analogies, they can be used to shed light on how the laws of SL should be developed, but they're not directly applicable.

If I'm inferring more into this than you meant to imply, apologies.

Um, we're talking about ad networks on, what 300-1000 sims?

A 300 sim ad network requires 4800 square meters of tier. That's not even 1/10th of a sim. I've got more land than that.

A 1000 sim ad network requires 16000 square meters of tier. Less than 1/4 of a sim.

There's at least people in our land group with multiple sims of their own. And we're *all* small fry.

All together, I'm pretty sure they're not even covering the salaries of the people dealing with the abuse complaints about them.

And 1/4 sim tier is just under L$20k a month so if they sell more than 5-6 parcels a month, they're ahead of the game.

Just ban 'em all now, Jack!!!

This did occur to me.

At first glance it seems that way, an easy conclusion for LL's inaction, Many people state they have watched the blight increase over the last two years.
The continued lack of will on LL's part to chastise the few trouble makers, could be these people have large stakes in the platform, possibly numerous private Sims.
The blight would also aid business as people quit the mainland.


Then on the other hand if true would it be prudent to risk many thousands of dollars over the relatively small profit made through extortion, not really.

So I don't think its down to not upsetting a big customer, I think its more likely LL have simply not decided the best way to proceed yet.

Hopefully this is a good sign for the future.

To be effective though LL have got to be prepared to cease accounts on the worst offenders, whether they have very large accounts or not.

When the $L can be sold for real dollars, the two become inextricably linked.

The purposes of extortion and price gouging are not limited only to griefing in a virtual space.

They are ways and means to unreasonable real life profits by racketeering.

Actually, if you break down the numbers, it is *much* more profitable for LL to have a sim with a lot of individual owners of 1024 m2 than it is for one person to own it all. Two other things to note too:

Land extortionists break their holdings into lots of really small lots spread all over. Just one of these small lots can be enough to make the land around it unsalable or drop the property values. Meaning LL has 16 m2 as part of someones tier but maybe several thousand m2 around it nobody is paying for (or land that drags their economy down).

Land extortionists are concierge customers. That means phone support and so on.

Basically, the numbers do not help land extortionists. It is good business sense for LL to permaban all of them.

That is surely an illusion. If 100 adfarmers each owned a 16m on every mainland sim, that would be only 2.5% of the potential mainland tier income. So their repulsive activities need only cause a 2.5% drop in takeup of mainland by paying customers for them cause a net loss of mainland tier income to LL.

Then of course, all of mainland tier is dwarfed by that from islands, diminishing the significance of adfarmers much more. It takes about 6000 16m mainland plots to pay the same tier as one private island. How many adfarmers have more than 6000 adplots? And how many private islands are there?

Adfarmers (through that role, they may have others) are insignificant contributors to LLs income, but are significant in turning other paying customers away. That is why we have been invited to the discussion in this thread.

The hypothesis under discussion is that acceptable advertising could contribute to LL by stimulation of trade, while repulsive advertising will detract. The problem is to determine what is acceptable in these terms; that is, what will produce most net benefit to LL.

All discussion of rights and rules and ethics and aesthetics is secondary to, although crucial to, this end.

Sorry to interrupt the fighting and stuff. But I wanted to share something with you.

I am here looking at my prim land in the Disl sim, and I actually see... PROGRESS. Several of the worst rotating ads have come down just in the past day or so. There are still some that are way too tall, but it's looking better around here already. Is it Linden intervention, or did some adfarmers actually take the new rules seriously? Of course the land is still for sale at outrageous prices, but at least it's not making me dizzy anymore.

Is anyone else noticing any change? This is the first significant change I've noticed, unless you count the group that just alpha textured their ads and left them.

Puppet. Yes, there is progess, but two things.... fisrt it seems too slow to reach compliance with the rules by Oct 1st. Second, I have even seen today a huge adboard complete with extortionist price (5900 for 48m) which is even against the old rules. Inertia is great. Much LL work will be needed to overcome it.