Feedback on Ad Farm Post - Part 2

If you are trying to work on something on your land... it just makes it slower, thus more harassment and extortion potential.

In the event you see my Email you will see that I am not pro ad farms, but I can not avoid one questions:

1) Why you buy a land with a Donout?

You must be joking.

We have a parcel 16sqm in the centre of the Sim with a price tag of 9999L

This week we have nothing on it
Last week I had ban lines before that a tower
Next week I will have something else and the parcel will be taken off sale
Then after a couple of weeks it will be 9999L again
Nothing has changed this was a fu**ing joke

So I am going to make me some small parcels now the lindens have fu**ed us all over again.

Eventually they will have to open their eyes and see the real problem and that advertising was just a tool.

Thanks for turning your back on us Jack

Oh and my parcels will not be for sale they will have 50 information boards that will be moved around whenever I can be bothered, to warn all users of the hazards of buying plots in the mainland.

RTFoM: Read the "fine" original message. The prims in question were not on microparcels, and they weren't over the height limit. Or are you saying that the rules mean you can't have two identical prims on a region? No, of course not.

My question was about the possibility that LL had set up a global ban system for specific prims. That would be very tricky to do right, and easy to accidentally destroy legitimate content. In this case it seems that the prims in question were self-destructing, so Linden Labs does not seem to have actually set up such a scheme. Which is a good thing.

Er.. You mean the capability to whack every instance of some object with a given asset id? I think we already know that they have had that for a while now..

That's an absurd question. Think about it.

Someone can simply go anywhere, buy up 512sqm plots, cut holes in the middle or the corners, sell the rest for the same price (or more than) they paid for it, then hold the hole or corner for ransom later. They can replicate this on 4096 plots, or ruin a maximum of TWO MILLION SQUARE METERS of land, for US$195/month. That's L$50,000 a month. If they set them to L$5000 each, they only need 10 sales to break even that month. Any more above that means they can go out and ruin another large chunk of land.

After a while, with DOZENS of people using this scam, there won't be hardly any contiguous land left that doesn't have holes or missing corners or anything.

You KNOW that these people DO plan for this, right? They figure that they will be able to continually strategically cut parcels until the whole mainland has a peppered distribution of these holes such that you won't be able to get a contiguous rectangular plot without paying them for their extortion tax. That's the way they want it, and have been feverishly working towards this end for many months now. Many of them own several region's worth of land, destroying millions upon millions of sqm of mainland in the process. In fact, it is becoming more difficult all the time to find a mainland sim which DOESN'T have extortion parcels in it.

So, why would anyone want to buy a donut, indeed!

Let's not even talk about what happens if you plan to expand some day. That just makes it a whole order of magnitude worse. People often buy land, say 512-2048 sqm. Then they decide they want more prims, a bigger house, larger shop, more room for their entertainment venue. Well, that's just fine, too. The more you expand, the more "extortion mines" you will get to navigate. Oh, and you can EXPECT them to snap up and cut any plots as close as possible to any active plots, just because they KNOW that people will want to expand some day, and they want to be right there with their hand out when they do.

They bought it cause it was cheap and now they want to extort the middle from whoever!!

They do to a degree, it depends upon what the prims are. It's more of an or gate than an and gate.

It's probably a funny reversal in your mind, Robo, but I am afraid the rest of us aren't stupid enough to buy it. Why?

Simple. Let's say that the extortionist buys the 512 at L$2000. They cut the corner out and dump the rest for L$1900. Joe Schmoe buys the remaining plot (for whatever reason), and then decides "gee, I would really like that corner, as it makes me able to make a rectangular building as opposed to a rectangular building with a corner missing". Let's say that average land prices are L$10/sqm right now, so Joe offers Mr. Extortionist L$160 for the corner. That's L$60 profit over what he paid, but Mr. Extortionist won't hear of it "Why, that would be like giving away my land for free!", and promptly sets the 16sqm corner for sale at L$9999, or L$625/sqm. Well, yah, Joe figures "What a bargain!" and promptly buys it, right? No. Seeing that any offer he makes is continually rejected, he now has land that is less valuable to him, and the extortionist is always there, laughing at him, sending him the occasional IM, showing up and raising the price, or maybe lowering it a little, taunting him. Or even better, putting up his own little 3-prim house and ARing Joe because he built his missing-corner building up on the property line and claiming "he's harassing ME with his build! I can't see out of my little house!".

Even better, let's say that Joe legitimately bought a full 512sqm in a region and built his nice house/building. Soon after, the 512sqm plot next to him gets bought up and a 16sqm gets carved out adjacent to his property line. Some time later, Joe decides he would like to expand, and the 496sqm plot next to him is a good price, but the hole is curiously not for sale. He tries to contact Mr. Extortionist to no avail. Eventually, he decides to go ahead and buy the other plot, with the hope that Mr. Extortionist isn't really an extortionist, but a decent person who would be willing to deal with him fairly. Right after he buys it, the hole now becomes for sale at L$14999. "Oh gee, yeah, I can jump all over that!".

Regardless of the examples, the point is that the WHOLE INTENT of Mr. Extortionist is to act as a parasitic opportunist, preying on people buying land. He isn't buying land for ANY OTHER REASON, which becomes beyond clear when you look at all of his land holdings. Joe, on the other hand, wants to use the land for a purpose, to build a home, or a business. There is sufficient difference and evidence of intent which anyone SHOULD be able to look at and say "gee, ya know, what Mr. Extortionist is doing is, well, WRONG, and should be stopped", just like when any other form of scam, fraud, or harassing activity is encountered.

And where they are, but two small prims that aren't on microparcels?

The microparcel issue is less important. In your case, have you contacted the guy behind the arbor project boards? I'd gamble (if we could ) that plenty of ad farmers AR'd them out of spite.

Well, first, objects don't have unique UUIDs. Every time you rez an object all the prims get new UUIDs. Second, they have the capability to whack objects that meet certain criteria (such as containing scripts with certain UUIDS, or using texture with certain UUIDs), but they don't seem to use it other than for things like grey goo attacks. For example, they've responded to DMCAs by whacking specific assets, rather then the objects containing them. My concern is about something like a system where you can AR someone and the Linden who responds pokes at the prim and *poof* all over the grid.

Why the **** are you asking me? I'm not the original poster.

Ah sorry, I thought you were the person who had the boards considering you kept mentioning where they were and what size they are.

Some people have created donut parcels and covered the gap with signs or plants. These parcels show in About Land as being 512m, but that's because a 16m block some distance away is part of the parcel. See JIRA MISC-920 for an example.

When new people buy land, they don't always know all the ways that sellers can cheat them. Some here would argue that no one should buy land without knowing all the pitfalls.

I think due diligence is a great thing, but lack of fraud would be nice, too.

It is certainly any sane person's responsibility to avoid being cheated. But that doesn't mean deceiving people is in any way ethical or acceptable.

Yup - no answer yet, though.



Good suggestion - will do. He's not online at the moment, though. I wasn't aware of any self-destruct system being built into these, but that would be a good explanation for them vanishing.



Try reading what I originally posted. They were not against the rules.



I hope this is what happened - it's scary to think of LL doing this and accidentally destroying a gazillion unrelated things.



Oh, you bet they AR them out of spite!

At any rate, the mainland is starting to look a lot better these days!

Only in response to other people who had also not bothered to read.

So don't be the one holding the middle when someone owns around you.

At Jack's Office Hour, I asked but didn't get an answer to whether posting of transcripts on the SL wiki could happen. I have a hunch that there's some weird twist of "chatlog privacy" that they're afraid to get near, the public nature of office hours notwithstanding. (Unfortunately, I was running on a different machine than usual and it didn't save a log, so I don't have one to post on an external site. Perhaps someone else was more organized.)

One thing that Jack said was that landcutting was the next thing they'll be looking into. It's not obvious to me exactly what that means, but it could be a pretty good step to buy time, if they (somehow) halt creation of any new extortion parcels.

Not surprisingly, Jack seemed to think that high prices for microparcels will automatically correct as a result of this new policy. Granted, the policy reduces one of the threats a microparcel poses to its neighbors: while it can still turn into an ad overnight, now that ad can be only so offensive. But as I've described in an earlier post to this thread, this is not nearly enough to much reduce the extravagant profitability of chopping up new microparcels, so unless LL acts to prevent that somehow, shredding of the Mainland will continue.

So, what happens if they successfully prevent landcutting, without addressing existing exorbitantly priced microparcels?

All other things being equal, personally, I'd pay the ransom for most of the hugely overpriced microparcels around me. The reason I don't do that now is that I know for a dead certainty that margin paid for those parcels is guaranteed to cause more such parcels to spring up in somebody else's backyard. If that weren't a risk--i.e., if a landcutting ban were in place--I'd be willing to pay much, much more than I am today.

But of course that's why all things won't remain equal: The holders of overpriced microparcels surely understand that a landcutting ban would remove that barrier to demand, so they'd immediately raise their prices. And so, existing extortion plots would just remain pretty much as they are: a handful selling every month, covering tier on the others, exorbitant prices very gradually rising.

Not an ideal outcome. With such a landcutting ban in place, any new continents (zoned or not) wouldn't be plagued by microparcel extortion, so they'd quickly render all the old continents comparatively much less desirable. For a while, this would fuel bids for fresh sims at auction, but eventually old continent sims wouldn't generate net-positive tier revenue as residents abandon their parcels. Then LL will (again) face the unpleasant choice of letting sims run at a loss, shutting them down and leaving holes in the Mainland, or finally cleaning out the extortion parcels.

Anyway, that's what I'd expect as a result of just a landcutting ban. Without a landcutting ban, LL will have to face that same choice very soon. Either way, eventually, the extortion parcels put them right back where they were with the ad spam towers on old unzoned Mainland.

Which was why I took Jack's continued laissez-faire attitude towards the overall problem a bit more ascerbicly than normal. It is still clear to me that he "doesn't get it", and probably won't until more of the mainland gets destroyed / damaged beyond repair.

It is quite clear that LL is continuing to operate with the same quantity of hubris as has been repeatedly demonstrated since time memorial. Fortunately, this was expected, so there's no disappointment over it from my end.

The problem CAN NOT be solved by attacking only one aspect of it; it is like a hydra; you can chop off one of its heads, it will grow two more back. No, you have to BURN the whole creature at once to be rid of it. Why we cannot seem to get LL to understand this concept doesn't baffle me, really, but it does frustrate me to no end.

So, even with battles won, the War goes on, because, as any competent commander will tell you, winning a battle or two won't win the War, so you can't quit until ALL the important battles are won, and the enemy is either wiped out, or has surrendered.

I certainly don't expect the extortionists to surrender, so I guess the choice of action is fairly academic.

Especially vexing because the sim was full. I am guessing there were more than 40 interested people on the topic as I was not the only one hammering at the sim border. I got in and had my logging on, but missed most of it.

New mainlaind will more then likely be zoned like Bay City he said. So dont buy old buy new. Problem solved. There is a saying in RE location location location. Guess you bought in the wrong one. You could always sell the donut cheap to the owner of the hole. As you are trying to force them to do! LOL

I stay away from the munchkins at DD.

I was never much into donuts. But theres one easy way to figure out who was there first. Read the purchase date. Remeber location location(also U GET WHAT U PAY FOR)! Its not poor me I bought a donut. Its more like what are u Fishing stupid u bought a donut.

I dont make donuts and I dont feel bad for the dummies that buy em. If they tricked u thats one thing, but otherwise your beat. (your prolly the same fat kid whos suing Mickey Ds for supersizing him-OH they made me eat it)

Wait for new zoned mainland and move. You can pay 200 for every sqm there LOL. Instead of 5k for a hole. The hole will be a cheaper addition im guessing.


Lets assume a bunch of crack dealers moved in next to JOE, or S&Ms, or a club, a loud motorcycle dealer. or someone with purple and pink freckles. Lets assume I just dont like his avatars name. Hmmm shall I go on. Maybe Joe should stop crying or close his account. WTH people this is a game in fictional realm on a hard drive, how do all these Joes survive on the street thats what I really want to know.

TL I assume u should just leave SL, and close all ur RL blinds and RL doors cause if u think SL is scary the real world must terify you.
Lions and Tigers and Dragons-Oh My



Have fun in ur SL-Dont be afraid its alright JOE!
ur pal
ROBO

Well, according to my original plot date of Oct 26, 2006, I was there before ANY of you SFBs.



Oh, no, you never cut donuts.. BULL****

Dude, you have cut plots every way possible to feed all the other adfarmers and extortionists combined. We have so much dirt on you, we could fill the effin' Grand Canyon with it.

As for who I am, at least I am someone who is educated well enough to not think of the letter "u" as a word.



Yeah, that makes sense. Someone should have the right to use a tiny 16sqm parcel to force someone with a 30,000sqm parcel into another sim. That exemplifies my point perfectly. If it wasn't about extortion, then what else COULD it be, if that was the case? Why couldn't the 16sqm owner move to another part of the sim, or to another sim? Draco knows there are MORE than enough 16s out there to trade, and I would be happy to PROVIDE one, if said person was willing to deal instead of extort. I mean, worst case, he can always CUT another one.



I've never complained about my REAL neighbors. You know, the ones who are PRESENT and DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE with their Second Lives, unlike some people here. I don't have a single neighbor whom I don't get along with; we work together on everything, including fighting the adfarmers and extortionists.



Hey, well, ya know, you have been getting your wish. The more people you harass and the more people you extort, the more that give up and leave when they have had their fill of sociopathic wannabee anarcho-capitalists who add NOTHING to the world, but instead TAKE TAKE TAKE from it, all the while harassing those who DO add value.

I mean, after all, if the Joes didn't matter, WHY is Linden Lab bothering to bust you all over your actions towards them, Hmmm?

As far as how the Joes do in RL, they do pretty well, apparently. What is your excuse?



No, I don't think I need to take pages from your playbook.