The Question of Land Cutting

The landcutters have made a fine point in this thread, the last few prims in a sim are more valuable, that's basic economics. However, the damage they do when it's a small parcel is the issue, Linden Lab need to move to disallowing the small parcel sale. I'm very reluctant to agree to price caps, but Linden Lab should buy up the small parcels and then disallow the practice of selling them.

But it should be allowed to cut land without selling it when one wants to set different media streams and/or different permissions.

The landcutters have made a fine point in this thread, the last few prims in a sim are more valuable, that's basic economics. However, the damage they do when it's a small parcel is the issue, Linden Lab need to move to disallowing the small parcel sale. I'm very reluctant to agree to price caps, but Linden Lab should buy up the small parcels and then disallow the practice of selling them.

You can't build anything and advertising is no longer an option. Some say it's to place somekind of network devise or even Xstreet box but anyone who owns a premium account can get a 512 and one prim more isn't a big deal.

To be clear, we are not talking about creating one or two small parcels for legitimate reasons or as part of your normal land management, we are referring to the commercial cutting up of land, usually for profit and on a larger scale.

Personally I would like to see a minimum land cap of some sort so people had to own say 128m in a sim,if you need a 16m rent it from someone or put your backup server on a friends land.

The "different media streams" thing keeps coming up. I'm curious how often this is really the sole reason for subdividing-off a parcel, because it's so limited and labor-intensive compared to a scripted solution.

If this is really a common thing, later in the week I could dust off some of my old code, give it a plausible user interface, and set it for free distribution. (For all I know, it may be freely available already: it's really not all that complex, except for the UI part.)

There'd still be need for individuals to create their own separate little parcels for other reasons. It's just that this particular reason suggests people are going to an awful lot of unnecessary trouble just to get different media streams.

Even if you have disposed of the 'media streams' argument here (and I'm not saying that you have--I don't know enough about it), how are you going to dispose of the Permissions argument?

I have lots of separate parcels for my renters, belonging to separate groups, and I've often had to split, sell to self, re-deed, and rejoin different configurations of them. None exactly microparcels but, well, the whole discussion is beside the point anyway, since none of this is what Jack means by landcutting.

* Do you agree in principle that land cutting needs to be a violation?

* Are there any legitimate reasons for land cutting (excluding profit) that we should consider when setting policy?

* 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?

........
I am well aware that by allowing a legitimate use of microparcels the door is left open for abuse. Thus I fully expect microparcel-enabled malls and stores to be curtailed. ......

Do you agree in principle that land cutting needs to be a violation?

Are there any legitimate reasons for land cutting (excluding profit) that we should consider when setting policy?

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?

No, I'm not calling you an extortionist because 512m2 is not a microparcel, and you don't make a habit of doing it (I hope), though I think you should have bought the land back from the idiot who bought it no matter what they called you. And I'm not putting the tag of extortionist on someone who sets the price to 2 billion lindens, because nobody's going to pay that. I'm labeling people who set microparcels for sale for extortionate prices (prices that people are likely to pay to get the extortionist off their back) extortionists.

For example cutting a strip of land around the outside edges of your main parcel, and selling it to and ALT who then sets it for no-object-entry is a great way to block stray bullets from entering/exiting the main parcel.

Poppycock!

If i own a whole sim.....whom am irratating if i chose to cut up my SIM for my Mall?
This is done so that all my vendors have their own plots appear in ALL search, which might mean plots smaller than 256 sqm. I have a duty to my vendors to bring in traffic by any legitimate means! Sure if i ever sold the sim, all the plots would be re-joined again and the sim would be sold as 1.
I must be free to utilise of my land anyway I see fit, providing it doesn't violate TOS ...otherwise what is the point of owning any land on Mainland?

You can always win stupid debating points by oversimplifying things, but that doesn't change the fact that they're stupid debating points and the people reading your posts understand that they're stupid debating point.

The issue is the way that the current rules make harassment profitable, because small plots (a) amplify the ability of a single person to harass others, and (b) Linden Labs guarantees the process of selling that land, for any price.

There are two ways to resolve it.

* Increase the size of the G-team so they can take the time to make a personal and appropriate decision for every individual case, on an ongoing basis.

* Figure out a way to remove the ability of people to profit, by removing Linden Labs from the process of selling small parcels.

That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about banning small parcels, I'm not talking about making it illegal to cut them, or to sell them, it's simply to make buying a small parcel no different from buying from a scripted vendor. You pay your money, you trust the owner of the vendor to deliver your product. If someone set up a particle emitter on a parcel next to you that accepted L$500 to turn it off, nobody would pay it, no matter if they called it a "vend-o-weather" machine. If they set up a one-prim sculpted toilet on the parcel and set the parcel for sale for L$500, a lot of people would buy it to get rid of the toilet.

BECAUSE they know that once they buy the land, the griefer can't do it again. Because Linden Labs is the bagman. There's no reason that Linden Labs has to perform that duty for all parcels.

Again, this won't penalize people who want to sell small parcels legitimately, as prim reserves, any more than I'm penalized by having to have a scripted object on my land to sell through SLExchange does. It's fair for people selling objects. It's fair for people selling land. Yes, they'll need a bot. Most of them HAVE bots already, and this would be a far more legitimate use than most bots.

Because landcutting extortion using larger parcels is not economically sustainable. See above.

I'm not suggesting denying anyone the ability to sell land for a profit. See above.

As for WHERE the limit is, I can't say, somewhere between 64 and 256 seems reasonable to me, but it would be best to do some statistical analysis of actual extortion plots, see where the 95th percentile is, and maybe pick about twice that.

.......
Finally, it has also been suggested that parcels of 64m or smaller have their sale value clamped to be no higher than the current average price per meter. This would obviously involve development work so wouldn't be something we could deliver quickly, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Rene - Does not apply to the issue at hand!

THE PLOTS IN THE MALL ARE NOT FOR SALE!