The Question of Land Cutting

I want to buy a super-sex-eroto-bed but I've never heard of scripted vendors or stores so I try to set up an appointment with Sexpot Avatar, who makes the super-sex-eroto bed... need I say more?

The 'cosmetic aim' differs very markedly, though. In the case of restricting 'land-cutting', all that will be eliminated is a pattern of lines on the ground that's completely invisible to those who don't keep Property Lines turned on.

Most of the proposals in this blog introduce costs. I find it interesting that many who rail against the bullying tactics of the 'land cutters' are quite willing to propose their own bullying tactics as a solution.

That is kind of funny, I agree.

(In general it often seems the case that those who are avid to impose their own views/tastes/wishes on others are pretty darn resistant to having the same thing done to them. Not surprisingly, I guess.)

I haven't proposed any rules for others that I would not be willing to live under myself.

Perhaps, the best way to enforce mainland abuse and limit the "anything goes" is to start making a new general covenant for "new" mainland purchases so that people who buy land have a clear sense of what's acceptable and what's not, ahead of buying.

This isn't making sense to me as a rejoinder to the person who wrote about the problems any 'land can be sold only through IMs' policy

My opinion on ad farming, on renting or selling small parcels is this ;
People buying land should be able to do whatever they wish with it as long as it is not a TOS or rule violation. If it offends you, dont look at it!
QUOTE]
This is a creep answer. I'll crap on your head, it's my game so pay no attention if you don't like it.
The problem is that people see the trash of the malignant profiteers and don't look, by leaving on the first boat out.

We have set ourselves a goal to create the most enjoyable Mainland experience that we can. As part of this effort, a few months ago we took action to limit Ad Farming (especially adverts that are intended solely to drive an unreasonable price for the parcel it is on; think visual spam) on the mainland. The effects of that program and the response from the community have been overwhelmingly positive. We're continuing our mission to improve the Mainland and wanted to present a new issue, discuss some possible next steps and elicit direction from the community about the best way to move forward.

Let's talk about land cutting and why we feel this is an issue that needs to be resolved.

Land cutting is the deliberate chopping up of parcels into smaller pieces in an attempt to sell those pieces collectively for more than the value of the original parcel. Whenever you see land that has a grid of 16m parcels for sale that are all clumped together, or in a checkerboard pattern, then what you're seeing is an example of land cutting.

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.

This practice has a serious impact on the Mainland. Fragmented land is usually unattractive to look at which can lead to lower land values in the region. Rarely, if ever, do the segmented areas get consolidated back into large parcels, and if they do it typically causes more harm than good to local landowners.

Please remember that this issue only applies to the Linden Mainland, it does not affect the private estates.

In early February we would like to announce a policy that makes the deliberate and extensive cutting of land a violation, similar to how we dealt with ad farming. The owning of cut land would not be a violation (unless you cut it in the first place), rather it is the act of cutting it that would be the violation.

Before we do this, I'd like to canvas opinion from the community.

Here's a list of questions we'd love to get your opinion on in the forums.

* 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?

Please join me in the forums to provide your feedback.

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.

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Reposted from Jack Linden's blog post at
http://blog.secondlife.com/2009/01/28/the-question-of-land-cutting/

Why is there so much talk about price caps? They won't work...The bad boys will just require a large "donation" under the table before agreeing to sell at the price cap.

New to Second Life, but I want to see it really fly!

Surely not, caps should be a last ditch resort, the issue with microparcels is that tier costs aren't prohibitive to the practice of selling for high prices, on larger parcels that becomes an issue and therefore it's not in the sellers interest to sell parcels at absurd prices.

Why is this so hard? (sure, sure, streaming booths, peep booths, vendor squares, landing points, etc.....but we would adjust to the above policy, if we had to). Small price to pay to make the mainland a better place to live.

The problem can be averted by only allowing parcels to be cut in LindenLabs tier system

512sqm
1024sqm
2048sqm
4096sqm
8192sqm
16384sqm
65536sqm (lol)

But we must keep in mind that we will then need exact tool to cut the land in the allowed parcel size.

LindenLabs should work on the software tools necessary to make it happen too before implementing the policy.

Thanks.

I consider the term 'extortionist' to be intolerant hate speech in violation of the SL Big Six and abuse report anybody who uses such terms to describe legitimate land dealers.

There seems to be a general lack of understanding related to the landscape, the shape of available land in regions with protected parcels, and the EXISTING ownership of odd sized parcels by THOUSANDS of residents.

Requiring people to purchase land in blocks of 512sqm won't prevent price gouging, but it will break a lot of projects and upset a hell of a lot of people.

The G team is overworked. I doubt Linden Labs (or even a company like IBM or Microsoft) could afford to employ enough people to handle all the possible extortion and griefing scenarios that happen in SL, if they have to handle all the microparcel griefing incidents on a case-by-case basis.

You're making that up. Nobody has proposed a "land can only be sold through IMs" policy.

Land cutting is the deliberate chopping up of parcels into smaller pieces in an attempt to sell those pieces collectively for more than the value of the original parcel. Whenever you see land that has a grid of 16m parcels for sale that are all clumped together, or in a checkerboard pattern, then what you're seeing is an example of land cutting.

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.