The Question of Land Cutting

I made a blog posting about this at http://sl-international-business.com/blog/2009-second-life-policies/microparcel-cutting-ban/

I think this policy would be screwed in so many ways it's stupid.

This is fighting against the laws of economy, and joe average SLer doesn't even notice this thing.

Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't. It depends on the economies of packaging. I've many times found that it was cheaper to buy four six-packs of soda than a case. And when buying *bulk goods* that aren't packaged then you pay the same amount per ounce whether you buy an ounce or a pound.

Sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't. There are certain sizes of land that are more useful, and sell for higher prices. There's no economies of scale for anyone other than Linden Labs in selling land (and that's reflected in tier)... all land is "bulk packed".

And, well, even if there was a "packaging cost" it wouldn't cost several times as much to buy four 16m cuts out of a 512m parcel as the whole rest of the parcel combined.

You're talking about a theoretical situation that does not exist in the actual grid. The high price for "landcut" parcels are not a matter of basic economics... unless you're talking about the economics of extortion.

Bravo for you, forgive me for not being able to recite every word you've ever typed.

In places like Bay City, that would be rather cheap, so yes there is a market for expensive parcels and yes people do prices much higher than that.

Knives are cheaper than guns. Banning knives resolves nothing. It's absurd.

Removing rights from every resident because of a handful of misbehavers, is equally as absurd.

Of course not. However, I don't think rules which strip--and-body-cavity search bank customers for guns and bombs when they come in to transact business are all that great, either.

In addition, putting a price cap or similar policy is not the same as making a law against robbing banks; what it is effectively saying is "don't transact more than $X using excessive force" at a bank. When you make a law against robbing banks, you make a law that specifically focuses on the actual problem, not some parameters of the problem. Almost invariably, the law either embodies intent in the proscribed behavior, or provides for describing the motivation behind it which is actionable. That's why there are several "degrees" in many felonies, because intent is what determines the severity of the charges, as well as the punishments.



Determining "intent" is tricky in only a small percentage of cases. In the last year, I have seen literally thousands of examples of adfarming, extortion, and harassment using land. In a very small percentage of them did I have to spend more than a few minutes determining the intent. Most of them were done by the same small handful of people, and once you have determined intent for one of their instances, the rest are pretty much academic. So, based on that experience, I would have to say, no, it's not tricky at all, for the vast majority of cases of this problem.



This is not true.

Mr. Four Corners' plots show the same intent across ALL of them. Every instance. He's even admitted to his motivations. I've had HOURS of chat logs with the guy, and it took no more than the first page of chat to figure out what he was all about; the rest was window dressing about his RL situation that could be 100% BS, but it was definitely 100% irrelevant to know *precisely* what his "game" was.

LL doesn't HAVE to devote the personnel to scratching the ground cold. Hell, over 100 residents have cheerfully provided factual documentation for a huge number of cases. All they have to do is examine the evidence, make sure it is legit, and gank the abuser. When you have a large contingent of people doing most of the hard work (and it REALLY isn't all that hard; just fly around the mainland and look; it doesn't take long before you come across plenty to act on) for you, the "hassle factor" is quite low.



Injustices are ALREADY occurring, and HAVE BEEN occurring for *years* now. Will LL make mistakes? Probably. Can they improve themselves to limit the collateral damage? Definitely. However, if they keep coming up with policies that only cater specifically to "letter of the rule" implementations, we will not only see the existing injustices fail to be curtailed, but even more will come about precisely because the "spirit of the rule" will be ignored. This has been borne out with the two previous adfarm policies. In both cases, they didn't go far enough, and there was a lot of collateral damage to people who did nothing wrong, precisely because of the way the policies were constructed, and the logical implementation that followed.

There are no "easy button" policies when it comes to making rules to curtail aberrant resident behavior. When it comes right down to it, you HAVE to take into account the "whys" and "wherefores", and apply the policies in a just and fair manner for all. Often, that includes making judgment calls where specific policy parameters have to be waived.

Yeah, and pricing a 16m parcel at L$100,000 is an example of how the system is abused to manipulate the market, or use the system as a weapon.

There is no such thing as a truly free market. Without regulation and oversight, the market would find itself regulated by the land barons. Too much regulation, and the market will choke. What we need is a balance of regulation/oversight and free trade. Without a balance of both, the system fails.

The problem with this, as you will note in real life, is that some idiot with an agenda will come along and try to tip the scales in their favor, on one side or the other.

The concept of a truly free market may sound like a great idea... but it will not work. You cannot have order without at least some law.

I heard a story recently about Buddhist Monks who were being tortured, and their only concern was that they would loose compassion for the people who were torturing them because they knew that those people were not acting out of their own conscience.

With that said, and you being one of the most prevalent perpetrator's of destroying the mainland, and our experience here $L10 pr sq m for your lot's sounds fair enough.

Thank-you ROBO, and I hope your fellow destructive grief ridden land cutter's follow your lead, so we can get back to enjoying our SL experience without you stealing from Linden Lab, and the community on the mainland, by making it impossible to own land without having to pay for your greed.

Thanks Again, Best Wishes, and Take Care,
Sincerely,
Stephan Mrigesh

Well we wouldn't expect one of The Capitalist Pigs to think any differently Funny group name Robo.

You've lost this one, you'd be better coming up with some constructive ideas on how to protect your investment and get something out of this, you of all people should know when you're flogging a dead horse.

Well, while I'm not an expert on things such as land prices, and how to drive them up or down, I do know there are legitimate reasons for someone to cut up their own land into small parcels. Such as media content changes in different rooms/areas, how about using html content in one section and quicktime media in another? different radio stations in different parts of a club, multiple djs...with the limitations concerning media in SL, cutting your land is definitely an obvious, and usually, only solution. As a supplier to many clubs in Second Life, I've seen many clients use this method.

I think there needs to be some common sense in play when it comes to considering whether a violation to this ban has been committed. If a landowner wants to parcel his land, and NOT set it for sale, only being required to re-join it when putting it up for sale...I think this would be a step in the right direction here. It would also make policing such a policy much simpler. Only land for sale which is cut to within a size limit would be flagged as violation.

Don't you wish that were true? Guess you haven't read most of these posts...

They price they are sold at is IMMATERIAL as to whether they are causing a nuisance to the sim. It would be the same nuisance at 100 L as at 2000 L$ if it were a nuisance. Nor can you claim the simple existence of the parcel for sale is a nuisance, no court of law in RL would back such an argument, they'd laugh you out of court and all the way back to your mom's basement.

Yes if anybody should be banned for selling land at extortionist prices, its those nasty Lindens and their Nautilus parcels.

Let me tell you a parable about law:

There was a platoon of chinese men on their way to militia drilling by the Great Wall one day. A bridge was washed out, so they were delayed in crossing the river. As they sat there, their lieutenant said, "Well men, what is the punishment for being late for drill?"
"DEATH"
"And what is the punishment for rebellion?"
"DEATH"
"Well men, we are gonna be late for drill"
So ended one of the great dynasties of the tyrannical Chinese Empire.

LL does not operate with "some law", the penalty for pretty much anything is death and confiscation of your property.

There is no means by which land barons can regulate each other, your claims are unfounded and without merit.

At this moment, there are hundreds--if not thousands--of 16m parcels that are priced higher than the per-meter average for inland parcels, but only (maybe) double or so that average. In other words, priced at L10-30 or so per meter.

Under the rules you're advocating here, what would stop anyone from buying a few hundred of those, repricing them at L1000 per square meter, and practicing 'terrorforming' or any other annoyance they can get away with, given the number of Lindens and the size of SL?

???

* Do you agree in principle that land cutting needs to be a violation?
Land cutting yes, so long as it is not going to take away the real solid legitimate reasons for cutting off one or two 16m2 plots, and selling or buying them.

* Are there any legitimate reasons for land cutting (excluding profit) that we should consider when setting policy?
In my now approaching 3 years in SL I have owned a great deal of land, I have bought land and sold it including 16m2 plots... let me tell you how I used, why I bought, and why I sold these small 'useless' plots...

bought
1. to gain more land/prims in a given sim (yes to use on another plot so that one was always empty and always terraformed after purchase to blend into the surrounding area)
2. to clear the view of awful ads or prevent them to start with
3. to fill up the tier we had available (I'm paying for it I will be damned if I am not going to use it all if I can)
4. To place servers in a less lagged region then my home (I at one point had two casinos go in around me. My home was always also my workspace and where I kept my servers rather then in my shop for easy access. Sadly the effects of that were devastating on the lag of the previously lag free sim. Building became a chore rather then a joy and my servers started to miss deliveries or not work at all so I went and found a sim that had no clubs, casinos, or malls in it and bought 16m plots... in the end to place all my servers required more then one tiny plot none of which were combined... The plots all 'looked empty' though the one with my servers had a small platform in the sky with the servers on it with the servers placed 'within' the prim of that platform... and YES I put ban lines on for this plot... I rarely use all inclusive ban lines however having my servers sitting out in the open made me uneasy and well I knew much less at the time then I do now about SL and was being careful.
5. To fill up land holdings allowed to a group... guess what those 512 plots can't be bought with the bonus of all levels... every time we upped our land tier we filled the tier and then went looking in the same sim or if that failed in another sim to fill that tier allowed amount... If we couldn't get land in our own sims we already were in we would buy in another one when we could find prices in line with market prices and hold those plots until land was available in our own sims... selling those back off at market prices and buying the land in our sim.

sold:
1. to reduce land held so that I could buy another plot with my tier (when you can hold for example 2048 and you have a 1040 plot and are looking to buy a 1024 plot you have to divide that land you have extra off and yes that means cutting a 16m plot off and selling it (and praying the whole time that a horrid ad isn't going to go in there)
2. to 'even out' a plot by cutting off the odd bits and selling them (offering them to the neighbor on the other side first ...yes I am a tad neurotic about my land and always hated odd jagged bits that were not due to being roadside

Otherwise divided:
1. to force landing to one spot while restricting it on the rest of my land.
2. to set a different Media URL for one or more location(s) in my shop video or audio tutorials, instructions, or demonstrations of products, features or services.
3. for allowing group residents who did not own land to set home but keep it to an unobtrusive location
4. again servers... to have a secured location for my servers within a piece of land I owned at one time my partner and I had a castle we kept our servers in the two side towers, each having an office space we both set ban lines on to the public, so if you were not one of us you would have seen in the middle of our land two squares of ban lines set up rising out of each of the two towers (again I knew much less then about SL then I do now but I still believe it is legitimate use
5. To allow a location for customers to rez and open packages in my shop when the rest of my shop did not allow rezzing by non group members because the prim litter issue is a pain and with it comes opportunity to grief which we decided we were not willing to leave ourselves open to after an especially bad incident.



* 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?

If it is just a bunch of divided 16m2 plots then yes but I do hope you will not take away the legitimate uses of this ability to cut off one or more 16m2 plots weather for sale or to hold but have divided for various reasons. When I used the plots for various media my own land looked like a grid of tiny plots but was indeed used for a legitimate reason. I hate the ad farms as much as anyone however I fear that action on this might take away some very real uses of it.

I have to add I am happy to see that LL is taking a look at the mainland... it has truly grown largly ugly and while for the longest time I swore I would not move to estate land I have now done just that because until I choose to buy my own sim I am fed up with dealing with the ugliness of the mainland, unresolved issues of parcel encroachment, and other issues (including the lag and ad farm issues.... as an estate land renter I yes pay more then I did on the mainland but at least I know that if these issues pop up the estate owner or manager will take care of them within reasonable amount of time....few things to consider for further improvement... issues of parcel encroachment... how about a way for if a prim is sticking more then a tiny bit into your parcel for you to return it even if the majority of the object is not... 3 examples... 1 a neighbor with a tree sticking about 3 meters into our shop blocking use of a portion of one of our walls, 2 a neighbor who was clearly new to sl who bought a 512 meter plot next to (actually sort of nestled into our shop who then dropped down a freebie house, put up ban lines and never logged back in for months... that house was sticking about a meter into our shop on two sides, only solution as LL did not ever respond to this issue was to thicken the walls and deal with it... 3 a neighbor who tossed out a mega prim moved it 'into place' and had it completely sticking through a small shop making it impossible to even shop in the store as you couldn't get into it.... time for resolution about 4 weeks if my memory serves and then I don't know if the neighbor or LL dealt with it... I loved mainland, I loved that I had no one else but LL 's rules to follow, no one could dictate how I used my land (other then the PG or M rating of it), and well you can not beat the price as estate land is more expensive so the estate manager can make their money too!

I'll ignore the bad analogy (I know you're smart enough to know that's a bad analogy) and note that what I'm proposing won't remove the ability to cut small plots or even to sell small plots... you'll just have to trust the people you're doing business with, and be trustworthy yourself, and I reckon you qualify there.

Since that's not actually true, the rest of your message is nonsense and can be ignored.

'Wishful crypto-anarchist claptrap' ends up being a big winner for LL on Mainland. Look at all the land bought up by land cutters! Look at all the alts paying Premium! Look at the way any extortion purchase moves the average land sale rate up incrementally! Look at how it forces neighbors to up their tier payment in order to buy any land that could be a threat!

Works out pretty well, don't you think?

Estate owners of the kind you mention want to deliver the service of a good place to their customers, so the customers stay. LL doesn't have that in mind for Mainland. They look at the aggregates and say it's good.

Remember a while back, when the new Gaeta continents came online? That was despite the fact that Linden Governance told residents that no new continents were in the works. That was about the same time as Bay City came online, too. Later Nautilus, after a similar statement that new land wasn't coming.

So Bay City and Nautilus are two places where there are covenants. Land can't be joined or subdivided (as in, no cutting allowed). The value of land there is very, very high. Some might say inflated beyond reason. In fact, many of those flipping Bay City and Nautilus land happen to be the same people as those despoiling the rest of Mainland (either overtly or through alts). This is one reason why there is exactly *zero* need to renumerate the land cutters: They made their money, and really the tier for microparcels are just a cost of doing business for them. Anything they make off them is gravy.

And certainly this all works out well for LL. LL can say that these new developments are good, they can point to the absurd amount paid for the parcels, and the general beauty of the builds.

So what if thousands of customers' SL experience is ruined? It looks good on paper.

So the real solution to this problem, from LL's 'wishful crypto-anarchic' perspective, is to solicit bids for development deals on groups of sims. That is, LL buys up groups of Mainland sims and sells them to developers with strict guidelines on how to develop them. Consider this as the privatized version of the Department of Public Works. When developed, the sims will have rules in place such as those found on Nautilus and Bay City: No cutting and no joining. Developers would theme their multi-sim areas as they saw fit, with approval by Governance. The developers would then sell their sims back to LL for maintenance by DPW, and auction proceeds would be split in some way between LL and the development group. LL's cut would go towards the DPW exclusively, to pay for upkeep.

This process would roll across mainland, starting in the most barren areas and/or areas with fewest owners per sim. Perhaps start near existing infohubs. After that, add one infohub per development.

This way the market creates the solution. However, existing landcutters should be proscribed from participating in this, since they are the cause of the problem being solved. Also because ideally their accounts will be ganked for being extortionists.

And this, my friends, is how the problem of the 4x4 meter parcel ends up being the 4x4 sims solution.

i think it's ridiculous for anyone to come into this discussion and try to convince Linden Labs to regulate the land sales and force a price range on property you are paying tier on.

lets say linden Labs went ahead with some of these suggestions and set a blanket price of no more then 10L$ per m2 for land sales. well that sounds like a great price. a hell of alot better then some of the prices we're seeing around the mainland for land.

except for one thing. it can be abused.

someone with deep pockets can be a really pain in the butt and build a laggy club next door to you or mall or whatever till its too laggy for you to spend time on your land forcing you to sell it.

and they'll do it if they want your land bad enough. know why ?
because you cant charge more then 10L$ per m2 for it and they know it. and they'll just grab it up and move on to the next person till they own the entire sim.

and owning a laggy club or mall isn't against TOS.

and i'm sure some of these people in this forum crying to LL to regulate prices have this exact plan in mind. they don't care about you or anyone else, they just want your land.

Is anyone else concerned about the overall impact of reductions in landowners' rights in SL? I am. Although I'm aware that the TOS make it clear that LL can change the rules anytime they like, and although I often see good sense in the changes, it's still a potential problem.

I mean, if the basic rules of a game or a government -- either one -- are changed all the time, some people are going to be upset and leave, and others will decide it is not worth the risk to invest their time or their money.

I sometimes buy land, build stuff on it for fun, and then sell the land including the build. I sometimes do this with teensy little pieces of land, which means it doesn't take much money and it's more of a challenge -- it's hard to do something interesting with a really small parcel, especially if part of the game you like to play with yourself is making it fit in with and add to the neighborhood. I sometimes do this with my alt, with one of my rules for this game being I can't use any resources the alt doesn't have or can't get herself. Fun, fun stuff. It's what I do when I start feeling burned out on SL, and it saves me every time.

Some people here don't think that's important, and that it doesn't matter, and that little teensy parcels are useless for anything other than griefing. It's not true. Some of us do have other uses for those parcels, and find much enjoyment in them, and it's pretty lousy when others blithely demand that we no longer be allowed to enjoy SL in a way that isn't hurting anyone.

Those little parcels are, for me, the primary good thing about the mainland. Stop trying to ruin my fun with lazy solutions that don't really address the actual problem of extortionist idiots. Stop asking LL to make owning land a scary, unstable thing where the rules are liable to change and mess things up for you at any time. Stop asking to risk making the land market look like a crazy rollercoaster that anyone would be a fool to ride. Please.

Oh yah, and *wave* hi Alice!

Absolutely, which is why I'd rather have seen this issue dealt with via the existing TOS.

The landcutters changed the rules. The result is that many people are upset and have left. I would rather the Linden Labs G-team was capable of spending enough time on every situation and producing a hand-tailored and fair result under the current TOS, but they can't... so "doing nothing" isn't an option.

To me this thread is about figuring out what the least damaging solution that will address the current problem is. But "doing nothing" isn't that solution.

It's not "cutting" and the terraform/banline rules are already in force.

Jack seems very specific to not paint too wide a stroke and is taking the next step to curb the blatant abusers first. We all know who they are. The ones that buy 512s or larger, checkerboard it, sell the corners for 10k and the rest for a mixed bag of ridiculous prices.

Ridding the grid of annoying ads was the first step, and so far its a discretionary solution, that is working reasonably well. Now they have their eye on the extortionists, and I'm all for it.

Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.

Yes, this happens. It's a problem. It's not the problem being discussed here.
You have a parcel SMALLER THAN 512 SQUARE METERS that someone else finds desirable enough that they are going to buy a much bigger parcel next to you and build a club just to force you out?