The Question of Land Cutting

You state the problem is with these small parcels being sold. So keep the focus on that; people in this forum appear to focus on cutting the land as a problem. It is the sale of land in sizes that are too small to be viable for hosting prims on.

1. Refuse to list parcels for sale in search under a minimum size.
2. Add a tariff on sales of small parcels to make it less attractive.
3. Realize its my prerogative to cut parcels small and have them listed in search for 30L/wk if you want those out, increase the price to list on search.

So how would I buy a 80m2 strip from my neighbor? How do I trade my 64m2 block sticking into his garden for his 32m2 sliver on my coastline? My 64 is roughly equal in value to his 32. We negotiate. We transact or not. Are you seriously suggesting that our transaction be banned? Or should my neighbor and I have to fill out a long form and beg on our hands and knees for Daddy Linden to let us adjust our borders?

If you don't try to sell the small cuts at L$100,000 no one will bother you. Cut on your land, that you're not selling and there is no problem.

I thought about this. I may be miistaken, but I believe that, provided they are connected to sufficiently large pieces, all such transactions can be done with transfers of larger blocks with appropriate rejoinings and cuttings.

In this case, you join your 64 to another 224 of your main block, transfer that to your neighbour. He then takes out the 64 to add to his land, joins the 32 to the remaining 224 and transfers it back to you. Of course, if you don't trust each other, that could be a problem, as it would be with the smaller transfers, but more so.

The problem really arises with parcels which are already smaller, say a 224, which could not be sold alone. A transitional arrangement might be needed there.

I have frequently purchased lots in sizes of 224m2 in order to consolidate them into larger lots, which I then sell at market price. It is profitable to consolidate land EXCEPT when LL dumps three continents on the market and drives prices down to trash levels.

Just make it so you can't sell a plot thats less than 256m for more that 0. That would solve the problem but still allow people to have small plots for legimate reasons.

I agree. Existing plots already smaller than whatever limit is chosen would be a problem until they are consolidated, and this would require a transtional arrangement. It is hard to think of ways of doing this that are both fair and not too onerous for LL. But I still think this end result provides the simplest effective solution. Whether it solves the real problem, extortion, not cutting, is another question altogether.

PS. If you are really in London, you should have been alseep hours ago!

I cancelled my subscription to RL long ago. SL is "90% reality at 10% the price" (all rights reserved for that slogan). Late nights in London sim in UK continent are as close as I get to RL now

There are no legitimate uses for selling plots smaller than 64m2 other than extortion.

So I sell land to my alt 5 times increasing it by 25% each sale until I get it to the price I want it to go for?

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?

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

Depends on how you are defining "land cutting", first off.

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.

Land cutting is not a "new" issue, in fact it's as old as the hills.



Cutting land for the purpose of profit is not limited to 16m parcels. For example, purchasing a sim at auction, subdividing it into 512 sqm lots is "deliberately chopping up of parcels in an attempt to sell those pieces collectively for more than the value of the original parcel". Once subdivided, the sim will has the appearance of a checkerboard. My concern is, the new policy does not go far enough to define extortion and exploiting motivated buyers. All I read into this statement as it's written, is more legitimate users, needlessly coming under the microscope of scrutiny.

I don't need a ton of bricks to fall on my head to know the difference, yet the Lab continues to "pussyfoot" around this definition. Extortion is illegal IRL, period.

For the mostpart, ad farming was a grey area for extortion, by exploiting prims, boundaries and access restrictions to be annoying as possible. Ad farming was never really farming, nor advertising. Only a small minority of residents were engaged in real advertsing. These people fell through the cracks in the policy and alot of otherwise decent landowners, live in fear of of advertising their own products.

Since "ostentatious advertising" was greatly restricted, the cutters jacked up the prices of these lots to (even more) outrageous sums. Disciplinary action at Linden Lab on these offenders continues to be seriously deficient. There is no way on earth, $19,999L for a 16 meter plot is a reasonable price by any stretch of the imagination, even in high traffic areas. We have not heard a single word from LL in this matter, who have the appearance of "grandfathering the benefit of extortionists" as 10's of 1000's of these plots are still present on the grid.



Land cutting, checkerboarding et al, has been around since LL implimented the tier system. When SL had only a handful of residents and plenty of land, plots were "publicly" available to anyone who wanted to pay tier. Residents would buy public land at 1/sq, use it for whatever purpose, then resell it at whatever price it would sell for. Asking outrageous prices was neither practical nor viable, because land was still available at 1/sq, which in general, kept the overall price of land low.

Well, this was all well and good while SL was small and developing. After a time, there were residents who chose to exploit this policy in a couple of ways. First were the disgruntled residents who would buy public land and checkerboard it... for annoyance (as opposed to profiteering) by rendering land as unuseable for neighbors. Linden Lab frowned on this behavior and would discipline abusers.

So you see, cutting, extortion and griefing are not new tricks. Linden Lab had wide-sweeping discretionary powers to manage the problem from the outset..... and did.

What policy went out the window then? When that happened, we ended up with today's mess. LL had it under control, but then turned a blind eye to it.... for many more years.

Enter land scanners. A handful of residents began purchasing 16m plots for the purpose of running scripts. While this practice has always been allowed by Linden Lab, some residents used it as a cover to exploit high pricing. Many of us oldtimers remember Chance Small's laggy 18 script parallel land scanners and his plots set for sale at $1,600L.

Then enter Lazarus Devine. LL ignored "Bush Guy" for years. Despite the outrage and warnings from residents, his practice of placing annoying signage on his property was allowed to become epidemic across the grid, with nary a peep from LL. It was Lazarus' own undoing, that eventually stopped his streak of terror. LL flatly refused to see this as an actionable issue, likely because the bottom line was not affected, as the overall population, concurrency and land base was on the rise.

It only took LL 5 years to realize, this is bad for business?



There is way too much ambiguity in this statement. How much is "extensive", what sizes are unacceptable/acceptable? What uses are reasonabvle and which ones are not? For example, let's say I buy 4096 sqm for 15k in a new sim, cut the land into 32 128 sqm plots and offer each for sale at 15k.... is this cutting? The reason I ask, is because the extortionists will simply look for another loophole in the rules for the purposes of exploiting communities for profit.



Yes, I do, but not without clear guidelines as EXACTLY what is meant by "cutting".



Yes there are. Disclosure is a touchy subject though. While Linden Lab has the ability to inspect and investigate any situation internally, it's exceedingly difficult to state publically on these forums, specific details of proprietary information or speak to details under NDA agreements from clients.

Clearly, our group is not in the mood to broadcast our operations, practices and future plans.



Absolutely not. Unless a violation of the rules is clearly identified, LL must never intervene in disputes between residents.



No. Absolutely not. Many of our plots were bought and paid for at much higher prices than the current market value. Coupled with our labor, tier and customer service costs, many of our plots are valued higher. In some cases (particularily in full terra sims) we paid thousands for our plots. It is patently unfair to anyone.. to develop arbitrary caps, which will likely only punish legitimate users and excuse those who use loopholes.

Our groups overall valuation is based upon the network of nodes and a business model, as opposed to the value of the sum of it's parts. Although we have offered our group for sale in the past, we maintain the right to sell it for whatever we choose.

Simply put, extortionists will not put the plot for sale, but in some way, will arrange a third party sale outside of SL to thwart this development.

While on the topic of "outside" sales, I will mention we did this at oine time. We developed a procative solution to prevent Lazarus Devine from buying our small parcels. Neighboring residents had the option of clicking a cube on the land, which would IM notify us of their interest in purchasing the land.

This brings us to a very, very important point, which I cannot emphasize enough. Since LL co-opted public land for their own profitability, they eliminated a 100% automated system, for one which is a liability, causing thousands of hours of manpower to manage. Even with this change, landcutting, extortion and checkerboarding was rampant and multiplied prolifically.

When land was released publicly, it would go up for sale to anyone in-world. The land would (almost instantly) go from one paid tier into another paid tier. In recent times, land owned by Governor Linden often sits for weeks, months and even years, with no disposition in sight, or is unmarketable or useable. Why is this? It's because LL turned a blind eye for years at the plight of the mainland, by permitting extortionists and griefers to run roughshod. To this day, I put the onus of blame on LL themselves for allowing it to happen in the first place and for having the lack of foresight by expecting residents to do "the right thing". It only took a few bad apples to ruin things for everyone else, yet those people are still on the grid (as themselves or their alts), developing the next scheme, meanwhile "edge-case" users needlessly come into focus.

Never once, has our group been disciplined (or even asked) to change anything about our operation by Linden Lab, but we have borne much of the brunt of community outrage about land cutting. While 99% of requests from land owners for trades etc have been polite and amiable, it only takes one or two to ruin your day. Simply because we chose for our own protection, not to disclose or discuss our operations, does not imply anything nefarious, but there are those who will never accept that. We have been accused of some of the most paranoid delusions possible and even though we've never done anything wrong, I am quite sure LL has received alot of unfounded abuse reports against us. This is not fair to us, Linden Lab or residents at large, who have real concerns needing attention.

Several years ago, Philip mentioned his desire and the need for a resident land auction system. Why has this been shelved? Likewise, Philip also claimed "These things are better managed by the residents, themselves" Manually ticketing Governor Linden's land for sale is cumbersome, expensive and a huge strain on the staff.

LL needs to put a stop to this silly "cow-tow" ambivalence of the definition of "extortion" and throw their asses into the street. Period. Once and for all. They have the power and they'd get no argument from anyone. What part of this solution is too hard to understand, Pete?