The Question of Land Cutting

Allowing this kind of use case is specifically why the improvements in groups were made and group roles were created.

I won't disagree with that. However, like everything else, they *CAN* fix it, if they are willing to put the requisite effort into doing so. It's been done well elsewhere, so I *KNOW* it is possible.



I have no idea why it would be against the policy, unless there was more than one in the sim, or there were more than 50 by the same owner.

Regardless, I agree that it was dumb to lump large plots with for sale signs into the adfarm policy, though I think the problem was that they failed to consider intent and actual harassment issues, rather than setting a hard "size" limit. With a hard limit, the rule would be gamed, just as it it gamed now with the "limit of 50 per owner/group".



..and I am saying that too much specification leads to gaming. It's the same reason why the spam rules you so dearly love DON'T specify numbers or hard limits, precisely because they will be gamed (hey, this is YOUR ARGUMENT, remember?).



I think the rules as I posted them will work just fine, with a competent and consistent enforcement initiative. They are specific enough to identify the kinds of behavior which are proscribed without becoming so specific that they will be gamed.



It also doesn't involve hard or fixed limits, and assumes that ANY "bulk emailing" for ANY reason is "bad". Even in the other argument, you conceded that there is no "fixed" number which is used to determine what is spam and what isn't across the vast majority of "ISPs and spamfighters".

Also, the domain in which these rules has to apply is VASTLY smaller than the whole of the internet, plus LL has COMPLETE and TOTAL autonomy over all aspects of the domain. Quite a different situation than the one dealing with spam email in RL.

I think that sometimes can be usefull cutting land into small pieces to rent them.
I try to explain me better: If I have an elegant plaza with a lot of little shop and I cut the land all around every shop, every shop owner can choose the music to playing, include his little shop in the search and have all those features that a normal shop in a not cutting plaza can't have.

Talarus, I'm pretty sure that most, if not all, mall owners 'rent' these small parcels out to people, not sell.

OF COURSE THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE IN THE SIM AND MORE THAN 50 BY THE SAME OWNER.

If they're on 512m parcels, WHO CARES IF THERE IS MORE THAN ONE IN THE SIM OR MORE THAN 50 BY THE SAME OWNER?
You're making my point for me.

Linden Labs has too many people in the governance team who are incapable of making a sensible decision based on intent. Perhaps they're overworked, but regardless, you can't depend on Linden Labs being able to base this kind of thing on intent.

Some do, some don't. The Breidbart Index has hard and fast numbers because Usenet spam has very little leeway. Email spam has no hard and fast numbers because there's a factor of thousands difference in scale between "this number is small enough that it doesn't matter" and "this number is so large it MUST matter". In any case, that situation would be like saying "we're not going to say how small the parcels have to be, but we're not going to enforce these rules for large parcels". It still involves size.
I didn't "concede" that, I made that point specifically BECAUSE there's so much leeway. If you send 10,000 messages, you'll be treated as a spammer, no matter what your intent. The point is that *intent* doesn't matter when it comes to whether something is or is not spam.
Yes, it's more like Usenet spam, where... surprise, surprise... there ARE hard fixed numbers.

I'm well aware, that's why I want a policy which doesn't hobble LL with too many specifics, or allow the rules to be gamed. LL's past handling of policies has bordered on the totally inept and incompetent, but there's no universal law that says incompetence cannot be remedied. With the right set of policies, and the right people with the right amount of training and organization enforcing them, this issue WILL become history in short order, with a minimum of collateral damage to everyone else.

It's not only possible, but relatively easy to accomplish.



Then you're arguing FOR the kind of ruleset I proposed. That's precisely why I don't want lots and lots of niggling specifics. Limiting sale prices or plot sizes or tier rates or what-the-hell-else is NOT going to work. It WILL be gamed, and it WILL cause collateral damage, because Lindens will be inclined to follow ONLY the letter of the rule and screw people over when it is discovered that the rule is flawed (as if THAT never happens to ANY ruleset).

Back when we clambered over each other to buy first land we attained a 512 plot then started to pay a monthly sub to SL and had the option of selling it to the bloke next door and moving on if they ran out of prims or wanted more than we did..

The land cutter’s bought sims big time and conned people into thinking they had a good deal at buying or renting small plots at inflated prices. Some of them will have made a few bucks in the process. It was the land cutters that Pee’d us all off with their advertising in the first place!

What is in place now for new folks and buying up of linden server sims? these days? Be interesting as to me there seems to be an overload again.

1. Do you agree in principle that land cutting needs to be a violation? No. If I've purchased the land, I should be able to do what i want with it. While it is true that land sales are "wild and wooly", that's sort of the way sl is. Additionally, the owners ARE paying tier on it. If their tier fees get too high, they'll sell, if not, let them continue to pay for the priviledge of owning lots of little bitty chunks.

2. Are there any legitimate reasons for land cutting (excluding profit) that we should consider when setting policy? Yes, absolutely! The one big one I see is that if I have a largish plot in a sim, but I am not at my tier land limit, it helps me tremendously to be able to buy up little 16 m2 chunks. That gives me more prims, spreads things out (with small vacant chunks), but doesn't force me to buy right next door to my land to get more prims. Its a good way to max out the prims allowed at my tier level without having to displace my neighbors to do it.

3. With land that is already cut up, but still mostly owned by the resident that cut it, should we ask that the land be joined back together? Sure, you can ask nicely. But there shouldn't be any penalty for not doing it. My "group home" has its land (which is contiguous) cut up into pieces so that each of our group members can have a little place to rezz their own items. If the rezzing goes wrong, then their items on THAT chunk can be "returned" to them without disrupting the entire group home. And they each still have the entire prim allowance for the property to rezz complicated items.

Finally, I just think you need to be VERY careful of changing the rules in midstream. While the solutions of my particular group may not be widely used, perhaps even unique, why alter the framework that we have built on? CAN we find other solutions? Probably, but when you make the rules, its helpful to be able to rely on them.

Local zoning changes. Laws change. There's no expectation that a 1930 law won't be revised in 2000. SL is a new thing entirely. To pretend policies shouldn't change is silly, it assumes that you knew everything that would emerge from a technology that is totally new.

People who allow such a change to make or break their experience here aren't really all that dedicated to it. People lost fortunes when casinos disappeared. People lost fortunes in banks. To pretend that a bunch of 16m parcels being absorbed and reallocated for the greater good is somehow egregious is, in my opinion, oversensitivity to the point that you probably don't enjoy the venue anyway.

If the pea spoils the mattress for the princess, she was probably not going to enjoy it anyway. If LL's bait-and-switch on openspace pricing, wooing people in and in a few months or weeks or days raising prices 60%, didn't destroy LL's reputation, beautifying mainland and getting rid of a bunch of people who happily annoy neighbors for a pittance most certainly won't.

I'm not making your point for you; I've already stated it MANY TIMES elsewhere.



That problem, like this one, CAN be fixed.



Yet not all hierarchies use it; they have their own, or opt out of the cancellations altogether.



I never claimed that the microparcel issue was identical to the email spam situation.

I don't care if my neighbor has 65,000sqm or 16sqm. If he bought it or cut it to harass me, he needs to have his ass kicked. Thus, SIZE DOES NOT MATTER. INTENT DOES.

I'm sorry you don't like it, but there it is. Any other policy that does not take into account intent SIMPLY WILL NOT WORK. I've been considering and analyzing policies on a near daily basis for a YEAR now. I have yet to see (or make) a single one which included lots of numbers, limits, and exceptions that won't be applied wrong by LL adhering to it blindly, or won't be gamed by the targets of the policy as intended.



Sounds very similar to "it does not matter that you aren't trying to be an adfarmer; you have 50 adsigns, and thus are the target of this policy". If you can't take into account intent, then you will have the SAME EFFING PROBLEM WITH THIS POLICY.

I want a policy that targets the behavior that causes the problem. I don't care if they say "small parcels" (fuzzy rules) or they say "parcels smaller than 256 square meters" (strict rules). I want them to be based on the actual problems, otherwise we WILL see people cutting 2048s to 512s being hit with "griefer ARs" over this, just as people selling 512s and 1024s have been.
Fix the training or resource issue that has led to the appearance of incompetence before handing them an armed nuke. If size is not a factor, that's what you'd be doing.
No. There's not a lot of leeway here. 512m parcels must NEVER be treated as "landcuts", ever. Just as one email must NOT be treated as spam, even if it "looks like" spam.

Sure it can.

Limiting parcels smaller than 256 to sale for no more than L$0 to a specific avatar WOULD work. Because landcut extortion depends on the ability of the landcutter to use Linen Labs as the bagman for selling a small parcel for an exorbitant price. Smaller figures than 256 may work, too, but there's not a huge amount of leeway and 256 is amply large enough to make it undesirable for landcutters, and smaller parcel sales between people of good will CAN be made under this proposal.

Malls on private estates could be "sold", since the estate owner can reclaim any land sold on his/her estate at any time. However, this policy isn't about estates, so the point is moot. The policy also, again, does not concern what people do within the confines of their own land for land management reasons, so this whole thread of discussion is moot.

That problem MUST BE fixed before any more fuzzy policies that can be abused by "griefer ARs" are defined.


Yes, I understand, that kind of argument has analogies in the spam world. There are people who say "I don't care whether they guy sent one message one 100,000, if it looks like spam, it's spam". The thing is, the economics of the situation are such that it is vanishingly unlikely that you're going to get spammed by people who send out just one message. And it's vanishingly unlikely that you're going to get harassed by someone via a 65k parcel. Now, vanishingly unlikely doesn't mean impossible, but it does mean that it's not a situation that should ever be considered in policy decisions.

Economics mean that landcutting involving "large parcels" is not going to be a significant problem. Ever.

If they can't sell 16m or 32m or 64m parcels with Linden Labs acting as the bagman, they won't be able to game it. I may be wrong, maybe 65m parcels could be profitably used. So I suggested 256m ones as the limit.
That's because the policy was incompletely constrained. Like, "it doesn't matter that they signed up to the mailing list". That is, that's why volume isn't the ONLY limit in the definition of spam.

When Linden Labs demonstrates that they can take into account intent, THEN talk about it. Right now they can't, and any policy has to take THAT into account.

You can rent parcels and even transfer them to other people without ever "selling" them, using groups, so it DOES matter.

If you actually READ my original post (which apparently you didn't; surprise, surprise ), that's a large part of what I said as an important part of the solution.



I don't see the link in the analogy. If a 512sqm cut was done with deliberate and obvious intent to harass or extort me, then it should be considered under the policy. One email may never be considered a "spam", but a 512sqm+plot cutting CAN be considered harassment. It is extremely unlikely, but I sure as hell don't want the Lindens to go "well, it can't be harassment, because it is a 512sqm plot!".



No, it cannot.



Landcutters are already acting as their own "bagmen". They don't put the parcel up for sale AT ALL, and ask you to IM them for a price, which is, of course, hideously expensive. They can easily set it up so that you pay them directly, and the land gets set for sale to you at L$0. Hell the smart ones could even set up a scripted system with a bot to automate it for themselves.

Also, you can link 16sqm microparcels spread across a sim into a single larger parcel and set it for sale at a ridiculous price. That's a common tactic of the worst ones, and thus would be trivial to get around that limit.

Sorry, but it simply will not work.

Is that really for you to say?

If nothing else, the number of prims assigned to a parcel that might be on the other side of a sim from a prospective buyer's main parcel, but still needed and wanted by the prospective buyer of the under-512m parcel, might well be non-negligible to that person.

So? If you aren't selling them, IT DOESN'T MATTER. It's not a part of the proposed policy, as posted, and I am not even talking about selling microplots alone.

Didn't you even *READ* what Jack said in the blog?

Could you please describe, specifically, how the cutting of a 512m parcel could constitute this 'deliberate and obvious intent to harass or extort' you?

I'm not being snarky---I'm genuinely baffled.

This would be a problem if all sales were so regulated, but why regulate all sales? I suggested earlier that minimum sale size exist for *open market* sales. Sales to specific people would not be disallowed in this scenario.

However, again, arguing about the size of the parcel misses the point. The reason someone is cutting land next to you is to ruin your Mainland experience. It is abusive. They alter the 16m2 of terrain, putting a hole or a hoodoo in your backyard. If you IM to negotiate a fair price on the land, you wake the next morning to discover who knows what built there.

This is similar to another land extortion technique, which is to buy a larger parcel, put ugly, annoying junk on it, and set it for sale at above-market price. If you've traveled Mainland at all, you've seen these places (think oversized pink lotus houses and sculpty horses). And that is *also* extortion, even without the parcel being a 4x4.

So the problem is behavior, not the size of the parcel. Jack has muddied the water by asking only questions about 4x4s and land cutting, instead of asking how he, as head of Governance, can make Mainland a better place to live your Second Life. The opportunity here is to talk about how to make Mainland better from a land-use perspective, rather than bicker over whether 4x4s should be illegal.

Jack: Make extortion a TOS violation. The other problems go away on their own as a result. The market libertarians can claim victory, you get the Arbor Project off your back, and some genuinely abusive people are gone from SL. Why is this so hard?

It doesn't have to be fixed BEFORE, but it DOES have to be fixed at least AT THE SAME TIME.



It does if your enforcement team is a bunch of robots who can only follow the letter of the rules, and inconsistently at that.



Who is to say? I've already seen some instances of "large parcel" cutting which needed to be addressed by a "land harassment" rule. Are you going to say that to the person who is trying to get LL to fix it "sorry, your situation is not significant. Ever". I'd have to say that is quite arrogant, even for you.



Wrong. Already pointed out previously.



That's not the point. The POINT is that, right now, they are going to follow the letter of the rules, and the letter of the rules cannot EVER take into account all significant situations regarding the rules.



No, it needs to be talked about NOW, because it covers more than just this policy. It needs to be taken into account across the board.

Rather than continue to make more bad template policies which ARE GOING TO BE GAMED as well as enforced like the words are welded into a cubic meter block of steel, it is time to make both a GOOD POLICY and a GOOD EFFORT at reorganizing enforcement, making it consistent.

Was it for me to say when they raised the price of our openspace by 60% a couple of weeks after we paid a non-refundable deposit? Was it for us to say when they closed the casinos, the banks? I think you are misunderstanding the nature of SL, and you don't really even seem to be addressing the matter at hand.

If someone has a small plot for prims that isn't for sale, I don't think it would be messed with. So far as I can see this will only effect land that is either for sale, or was originally cut in order to extort money from a neighbor. If your land is abusive to someone else, I'm sorry, but that is the problem, you should have considered it when you bought it. If it isn't, I dunno how this really effects you, beyond the amount you lose when it comes time to sell, which probably wouldn't buy you a fast food lunch.

Stuff has to get done. Some things we don't like, some we do. So far LL has courted the people who sit in their mom's basement in their underwear and dress their avatars in business suits as if they were real estate tycoons. God bless them and I hope they are successful legitimately, but if they are behaving in a predatory manner, it's a matter of karma.

In the end we end up with evenly set out parcels, actual right of way and access, and higher land values as a result. If we reduce this to a situation where any little annoyance nixes the deal, then said people in their underwear will continue their obstinate behavior in protest, and nothing will get done. Progress is never painless.

Why? The purpose of a landcutting policy is not to prevent all the mechanisms by which one landowner can annoy another, it is to target a specific problem that is out of hand.

Just as the purpose of a spam policy is not to prevent all annoying or commercial email, but to target a specific problem that is out of hand.

Yes, I *do* want the Lindens to say "this is not landcutting, because it's a 512m plot". It may be harassment, but this is not "land harassment policy" we're talking about here, this is "landcutting".
512 square meters or more at a time?

And then they set the land for sale to you, at that price, and Linden Labs comes in and makes sure that the trade goes through, reliably, even though the two parties involved do not trust each other. That's what I mean by Linden Labs acting as the "bagman".
Would you pay an extortionist just because they promised to do so after they paid them? Far fewer people would do that than are willing to buy the land as a guaranteed-by-linden-labs transfer. And of they did it the other way around, many people would be more than happy to buy the parcel for L$0 then NOT pay the crook who was standing over them.

Yes, they CAN go out and set up a mechanism whereby they sell you half the land, then half the remaining land, step by step, but that STILL creates a pretty steep barrier, would massively reduce the potential sales, would eliminate the sales of 16m parcels, and would just generally make the whole enterprise massively less profitable.

Buy a larger parcel. Chop off a 512 corner, preferably in a sim corner. Sell the smaller one to your alt. Set the larger chunk for sale at a small profit. Someone buys, you set the smaller one for sale at absurd mark-up, set the land options to never autoreturn, allow anyone to build. Every now and then junk starts piling up there. I wonder who did that? Before you know it there are ban lines, large objects, particle emitters, light sources....

That would be extortive behavior, and should be a TOS violation. Right?

Here's another way: Your neighbor wants to get out of SL. Instead of talking to you, they set their parcel for sale at L$2m2 or something, hoping to let a 'bot buy, and get out from under their tier payment. A 'bot buys it, and the next day your neighbor's 8k parcel has been chopped up into 4m-wide strips and priced so notorious land cutters will buy them. Now you have 8k worth of 1024m2 and 512m2 strips next door. You can either buy them up before the 'bots get them, or suffer the consequences as they terraform your neighborhood into a geological curiosity, with 4x4 holes and hoodoos all over.

Chopping into strips would be extortive behavior. Either you buy or your neighborhood is ruined. In fact, it's likely to never be healed from this kind of behavior. Don't believe me? Head for Noguri or Agravain or Laserlight. There are many other examples throughout mainland, too.

Agravain is an obvious example; the east half is older than the land cutting, and is pretty stable and has actual builds and stuff. The west half has been for sale in it's chopped-up form for at least 8 months. Note the bizarre parcel boundaries, the ugly landscape, and strategic extortion parcels left simply to make life hard for the next guy.

Why, it's enough to make you want to buy estate land from the landcutter's alt, isn't it? Which brings us full circle. How do you extort someone with whole sims?

What about those who have 16m2 plots for their land bots and scanners so they can have a bot TP in and buy low cost land so they can make a profit selling it quickly?

I personally think this keeps land prices high and helps land barrons buy low where others are never going to see lower prices because of this unfair advantage. those 16m2 are often holes in other people's land also and they refuse to sell them. Let's see the bots gone and eliminate these practices that force high land values and allows bots to grab up low cost land.

I'd add that I don't have a problem with the real estate industry in SL. I have been hoodwinked a couple times, sure, and it has given me a no-tolerance attitude to people like the ones this policy addresses. Sorry for that.

There are two choices. You can let LL tie this up in rules and enforcement, or you can create a system that by its nature makes doing things like this unfavorable. So, if the problem is people selling the land, address the sale of the land. The risk of the investment is just way to high for people to treat 512s like 16m plots, and people can still cut them out and use them legitimately.

The only drawback is the loss of the investment on parcels less than 512. Sure, as you say, for some people who have gotten their 2k prims by buying up a bunch of postage stamps, it will suck. I firmly believe it won't suck very hard compared to the popular perception of the mainland I see related to me every day.