The Question of Land Cutting

For those of you that are blindly jumping on the bandwagon, please read the blog more closely...you are NOT understanding fully what is being said there...

What I am seeing in the latest blog entry is that basically LL wants to, once again, mandate how land that residents pay tier on may be used...to satisfy the sensibilties of folks that dont pay the tier on that property, and to " create the most enjoyable Mainland experience" possible, seemingly by limiting HOW residents that do own the land can utilize it...and perhaps for other reasons, if the blog is read closely enough...

So let's take a look at a few of the statements made by LL about what constitutes land cutting..."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"...
By that definition...anyone that has ever purchased a sim to sell in parcels smaller than the original sim...and for one linden more than they paid for the sim...has participated in land cutting...

They also say..."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."...so, they have clarified it now...this STILL covers anyone purchasing a sim...and cutting it into ANY sized parcels...not just tiny 16m square ones...certainly they MENTION "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." but they dont LIMIT it to 16m parcels...that is only one "example" of land cutting, not the DEFINITION of land cutting, they make that very clear...it's ANY sized cutting, if done for profit...ANY profit.

So far, what I am seeing in this blog entry is not that they truly wish to control the practice of chopping land into tiny sections for ad farms, or to charge exorbidant prices...there is not any real reason to even practice any kind of control over that these days....since the banning of advertising on the mainland, you simply cant use the land for advertisements anyway, so the market for ad farm/chopped land has evaporated...so logically, there is no real CURRENT practice of buying land and chopping it up into tiny parcels for ad farms. What there are, is a great many legacy parcels that they want to clean up...and to do it, they want to mandate HOW they are cleaned up and at what price...

More dangerously, they have defined what "land cutting" is so loosely that anyone purchasing a large parcel and attempting to sell it in smaller sections, regardless of size...for more than they paid...will now be defined as a "land cutter". This means that anyone that is in real estate in SL...anyone that purchases large parcels, and sells smaller parcels, while making a profit would be in violation. This means that the only entity in SL that could LEGALLY do this would be the lindens themselves...because, according to their own definitions, resident to resident real estate sales for more than you paid, is going to be illegal, if you change the parcel size. So...should I buy a mainland sim...I would have to sell that sim as an entire sim to legally be able to profit from it...or...I can cut it into smaller parcels, say 4096 sq meters each...but I cant profit from the sales of those parcels...effectively being allowed to only sell them aggregately for the same price I paid for the full sim.

I think this smacks of LL attempting to increase their profits the way they always have...by selling land...and with this new proposed policy, they effectively make themselves the defacto seller of land on the mainland...because no one else will be able to do it for profit, legally...

Next, there is the final parting shot in the blog entry..."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."...the average current price per meter of land on the grid, has no correlation to what land is actually selling for on the mainland...right now, the "average" according to the LL website, is less than L$2/meter...please show me a parcel of mainland land in the search that is listed for less than L$2...you can't...because the "average price per meter" also includes all of the estate rental and sales land that is listed for L$0...skewing that average. The LOWEST price for mainland land per square meter at the time I write this is L$3.4/sq meter. Clamping the price of currently owned small parcels will do nothing but penalize those that purchased the land in good faith...forcing them to sell it for under market value.

And...I have seen a great many suggestions that there be a restriction on selling any parcel under x number of square meters...some say 32, some say 64...some say 512s...the problem with that idea is if that were to be put in place...there would be no recourse for small parcel owners but to abandon the land outright..since they couldnt sell it without joining it into a larger parcel before they could sell it for ANY price.

Personally, I think that if they do wish to limit something...it should be the size of parcel that can be sold...OR...the price per meter a small parcel can be sold for...but NOT both...enacting both policies will unjustly penalize those that own and use smaller parcels.

yes



yes, there are many, many legitimate reasons excluding profit, as already mentioned by others in this thread, including the ability to fill unused tier for those always urgently needed extra prims.



if set for sale... yes.

Suggestion: how about a coded solution, e.g. all sales prices (L$/sqm) for parcels below e.g. 256 sqm can't be set to a price higher then the average sales price for mainland in sl?

Surprisingly many responses here seem to be concerned with subdividing one's own land with no intention to sell. That's not what the blog post is about, as other posters have tried to remind us. But some of those off-topic responses are surprising to me, and seem to be trying to use the land tools to address problems with much easier solutions.

As Al Supercharge mentioned (@ #136 currently), it's easy enough to script media streams to target individuals much more flexibly than can be done by creating separate parcels for listening booths. This works for media streams only, however, not for the "land radio" audio streams. (I can imagine rare applications where one wants both audio and, say, web media streams active for the same listener; in those few cases it wouldn't work to devote the media stream to audio content.)

I'm not sure what the idea is about using parcel boundaries to delineate precise basements. Unless there's magic here of which I'm not aware, this would be limited to the 4m parcel resolution, which is the same as one can get by just selecting a rectangle and applying the desired terraforming tool to the selected area. But this is much less precise than one can get with 2m resolution of scripted devices or the smallest, 1m brush size of the manual tools. I scripted a freebie "Terraformer gadget" at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shinsa/141/127/54 that may be helpful to get that 2m precision. But if there's some other magic going on here, I'd like to know more.

It's wounderful that LL are hesitant to devote development resouces to this.

The best solution is one of Governance and "know it when I see it".
Set out a policy in general terms. Brief AR staff. Take them on a tour of instances of the problem. Brief them on the gaming moves. Give them an escalation procedure. The perps are going to scream about the interpretation of every word in any policy statement. The more detailed the policy, the greater the room for drama

You can either proactively bring the policy to the attention of the offenders, or wait for the inititial AR flood.


Quick-fix black/white solutions end up hurting the innocent and being gamed around by the guilty.
The focus should be on the behaviour of setting for sale or *offering* for sale of unviable parcels at prices that are significantly above market value.

Unviable parcels?
16 is small, maybe 256 is small.
512 might not be small, but it's unviable if the 512 is made up of microplots that don't share a boundary, or if the configutration leaves a hole in the middle.

Significantly above market value?
It's a judgement call, but normally it's a no-brainer.
"That land for that price is WAY out of line. Plus - this isn't a one-off. You're doing that in other sims. You have been doing it for ...."


As others have posted, there is no way of automatically limiting markup as a seller can simply pass the land around between friends or alts for whatever number of times are necessary to jack up the 'legal' price.
Automation based on parcel size doen't work where the parcel is not a whole rectangle.
Any moves to limit advertising of land don't have an effect as the land is intended for sale to landowners in the sim (extortion).



Desmond Shang has it right.
Whack the main perps up front. Ther's probably a 80/20 or 90/10 rule. Mop up the smaller fry later.

So in my case where i own a whole sim with no other residents owning any other part.of it .....are you saying i'm not allowed to carve it up the way i see fit? The fact that i might need to optimise it for commerical purposes? (not necessarily 16sqm parcels but certainly144sqm - 200 sqm)

Reading through the forum, reinforces my belief that restrictions/penalties should only apply when it comes to the sale of land - this is where the issue is rather than in how it is divided to suit a residents needs while they own it.

Great to see that something is being done against this form of extortion.

My view on the questions raised on the blog:

Yes, absolutely.

There are several reasons for cutting land into small parcels:

* Different land permissions for different parts of my land (e.g. vehicle rezzing area)
* Different autoreturn values for different parts of my land
* Separate parcel statistics (e.g. prim counting) for different parts of my land

There are NO reasons I'm aware of to set these for sale for a price significantly higher than the average per sq.m. sale price.

Not necessary, but I would not be against it. I think it's sufficient to kill all open sales for such parcels and to not allow new ones at extortionate prices.

I'm in full support of that one. It won't solve all the problems, but it is going a long way to make land cutting less attractive.

land cutting != selling small plots for blackmail prices!!!


not going to repeat all the legitimate reasons for cutting a bigger plot into small parcels.

As long as the small parcel is not _sold for unreasonably high prices_, or maybe even _not sold at all_ there should be nothing wrong with it; ad farming is already covered as a violation of TOS elsewhere.

How about this:

when you set a parcel for sale, you cant sell it for more than 1L$ per m² if it is smaller than (some arbitrary small size).

as in, try a land extortion scheme and sell your stampsized lots for 16L$ each, not 160000L$ each.

i dont agree. 16m plots are handy when you need more prims. i think all sims should have a grid of 16s so people can buy extra prims when needed. as long as the price is reasonable.

land can be used as extortion no matter what size it is. no reason to ban land cutting.

but it wouldnt suprise me if you did ban it as youve banned everything else on sl. why not just ban everyone now and be done with it!

RIP Second Life!

Yes


Yes. RP for example. But it is easy to ask the owner to have a large land aside and to note that in the land description and to avoid to sale that land separately.


Yes if the small parcel contains ad's or weird stuffs but no if the land description explains the nature of the small parcel.


Yes²

16 by 16 parcels are great. Particularly when it comes to sorting teleport points, having places people can set as home, rezzing plots, search engine use etc..So yes they certainly have a use both on private and mainland, people should be allowed to cut land as they please.

But I do see small parcels for sale at extortionate prices on the mainland. There's one 16 by 16 on mainland very near one of my businesses. It's a high mountain in the middle of flat land owned by somebody else x_x

The price for the 16 X 16 is 10K L$, now i know that this is not a high price compared to what some tiny plots sell for but nobody is really going to buy it...So it will remain a crazy hill in the middle of somebody elses land. I'd rather see a cap on what these very small plots can be sold for, don't mind so much with the other parcels sizes.

However a general guide posted to the blog for new people buying land would be great, prices go from superb to insane right across the board, i think a linden guide to what parcels should be priced would help out many, many residents who really don't know what to look for.

Get Torley back on the blog to do it

Oh and please please please have a Linden staff member open search and go to the 'land sales' tab. Type in zero, type in 1, 100, 1000 and so on. If these lands advertised arent actually for sale for the price advertised....Remove them from the land search.
Make it a search the residents can use to actually find some land for the prices they specify....

Land purchase and rentals are already very confusing for the newbie user, when the linden services are abused it makes it even more difficult.

Whilst youre clearing up the mainland can we have a policy about bots posted on the blog somewhere? One mainland plot i use has a store nearby with 10 bots laggy but hey I can live with it. Another plot has a store nearby with over 35 bots... This one in particular makes it very difficult for my own customers to get to the sim and when they are on the sim it's very laggy, the user of the bots has been ARd...but as of yet no action taken so am I to give up the mainland because of bots? I do wonder at times whether lindens cater to the bot or the resident....So some clarity on the bot situation, particularly with regards to their use on mainland would be great.

So what about all the 16m parcels Gov linden owns?...i been waiting 7 days for an answer to a support ticket requesting to purchase one that is a donut hole in my large land plot.
That same 16m sq been owned by Gov Linden for approx 3 months.
Seems a little ludicrous for Lindens to be asking these questions when they do nothing about all the 16m parcels Gov Linden own.
Why does it take 7+ days for support tickets to be answered? ... understaffed? Or just outstandingly slack service?

More like 14+ days

I own a small piece of cut land that only supports 3 prims. I use it to host xstreetsl box and some of my server scripts so that my income does not come to an complete halt when the sim my shop resides goes down (which we all know how often it happens).

I did not cut up the land, I merely purchased it to use as a backup area for server related scripts. PLEASE do not force merge these small pieces of cut up land. There is a definite need for small pieces of land on different mainland servers for redundancy, which we all know is very much needed in SL.

I like the following ideas.

Disable ban-lines on parcels smaller than 512 sq M
Disable terraforming on parcels smaller than 128 sq M and have it just match up with surrounding parcels smoothly.
Disable selling any parcel under 512 sq M for more than average price per sq M sold in last month.
I also like the idea of going after the worst of the abusers... maybe the top 10 or 20 people. Get rid of them and make sure they don't come back with a new scam. Maybe run a report that shows the people that have sold the most small parcels in the past couple of years at the highest prices and IP ban the scumbags.

What about making it so that 16sqm parcels can only be resold to the owner of adjoining parcels? That, and a price fix might curb it.

there are no reasons that I can think of for cutting parcels to 16 Sq metres and setting them for sale.


However there are MANY reasons for cutting your own land into smaller parcels, media settings, perms etc

Solution.

Do not allow SALES of cut parcels. unless sold to an adjoining parcel owner at around the correct market value, make it a TOS violation to try to sell at a very high price, or to try to sell multiple adjoining parcels to the same person. Wherever possible parcels must be joined and sold as one parcel.

Vender server plots. This is probably the only legitimate use of a seperate 16 metre 3 prim plot.

Solution.

Limit these plots to roadside areas only, and ( this is not something I generally like), sell these areas from Linden land, at a fixed low cost.they can be resold, but NOT joined to any other land. any servers placed there must be in keeping with the surroundings, ( a tree, streetlamp, small advert etc).

I do not believe that Linden Lab is 'soliciting help from the residents' concerning land cutting. BLAME IT ON THE MOB has always been the skirt LL has hidden behind when they have already made up their minds to take a specific course of action that would upset a large amount of people or is not supported by their TOS.

Instead of rousing up the mob's mentality in these forums use your own abandoned JIRA system to address policy issues. Community forums are not for this sort of distasteful undermining.

.

I am sorry Lias, I am sure that if they just went ahead and did something about the problem without asking first, there would be an outcry. OK, they have not always listened to us, but it does seem that at least they are trying, please give LL a chance and put forward some constructive comments

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

yes


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

yes, i have several 16m parcels cut within each sim i own, used for setting differnt landing points. This is extremly useful to my business


**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? **

again.. i have several 16m parcels cut within each sim i own, used for setting differnt landing points. This is extremly useful to my business.. it s NOT up for sale nor would it ever be set for sale. It is a business tool

* Do you agree in principle that land cutting needs to be a violation?
Yes I do.

* Are there any legitimate reasons for land cutting (excluding profit) that we should consider when setting policy?
I can't think any, but lets see the answers of others.

* 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?
Absolutely yes.

I do like the idea that plots of less than a given size (128 sqm, 256 sqm?) couldn't be put for sale or have a maximum price per sqm.

I've seem that many are complaining about the hability of use small or micro plots in order to use different streams, or so. Maybe you didn't see this:


To me, it seems that if you are not selling small pieces of your land, its ok

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

As practiced by adfarmers and "swiss cheesers"-slash-checkerboarders, yes.


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

1) Multiple landing zones
--- As used in malls, large stores, and rental areas. A 16sqm parcel can be used as a default landing point anywhere in height, and I've seen it used as an easy-in to a build way up in the sky. Large stores can have departments - and malls having a lot of vendor stalls - with each department having it's own landing zone.

2) As mentioned prior, for setting up different media streams (though I suspect the sizes for that would be larger than 16sqm since an avatar needs to be ON the parcel to hear/see it's tream...)

==============
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?
==============

Depends on the purpose. A blanket "must join all small parcels" will be problemeatic as there ARE legitimate uses. I'd say no, don't require it, unless you WANT to go through and check each parcel individually....

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

I strongly do not agree, especially if it is taken as "a principle".

I think there are several right reasons why people can think of cutting land (different streaming; making divisions between areas used for different purposes; protecting boundaries of rented parcels with "security areas"; fixing and naming different areas connected to different activties or classified; sharing of properties between members of the same group; adjusting the shape of a parcel to the use you need; allotting a fixed number of prims to the parcels you own; fixing a personal tp point on a larger land, and so on and on). I think it is not possible to assume to have a full list of such legitimate reasons.

Of course abuses are possible and do occur, but then, lets fix what those abuses are, rather than imagine a sort of general banning of "extensive land cutting" (and how much "extensive"?).

I think the rule should be freedom of cutting, and the ban a limited set of exceptions to that principle.

Btw, to be honest, the increase of regulation and intrusion in resident's personal decisions by the "authority", which enjoys increasingly wide discretionary powers, risks to turn itself into an abuse, and it adds uncertainty and the feeling of being under constant control which has steadily increased in sl...

I understand we need rules, but a good rule in itself is "proportionality" in the use of authority: which means the effort to limit the compression of individual freedom to the minimum extent needed to keep an open environment where one should not constantly think of being objected for his own actions.

In the name of a not measurable (without a real general vote) "collective well being" and "general ineterest" i see the increasing approach to limit individual prerogatives...

i dont like this approach and hope it will not be followed...

Well first of all, LL is responsible for the mess with these small parcels on the mainland as they allowed that to happened.

I don’t think it should be forbitten as many people need these parcels for reasons of placing stuff, set tps or media.

I would just limit the sale price for a 16sm parcel to 160 linden and let the market regulate itself.

If you say it is a valuation of the TOS than what do you do with the current landholders of a 16sm parcel, take it away? Sounds like a communist country like China dealing with their landowners.

The other thing LL could do is that in future only 64sm parcels can be cut, but please just for the mainland as private sim owners use that 16sm parcel for several purposes.

If you limit the cutting to 64sm and set the selling price of a 16sm parcel to 160 linden max, the market will regulate with the time itself.