Announcement Legal Issue

"By saying they did not anticipate and cannot maintain how the sims are being used, Linden contradicts its original claims to sell open spaces for residential or forest use, etc. (all of the things suggested in the original marketing)."

Didn't they even RAISE the cap on how many avatars could be in a sim after they offered openspaces at the new price? I think it is pretty insipid to think that they were selling literally THOUSANDS of openspaces with double prims for people to... leave empty? Fill with rocks and trees so they can... picnic?

MISC-1781 requests more robust estate and end user tools that would allow better self regulation of simulator loads that occur as a result of avatars taking a bit more than their fair share of the simulator's resources. Although these kinds of tools have been requested many times over the years at many town hall meetings, we're kind of at a critical state and desperately need them-- LL cannot justifiably use simulator overloading as a reason for the tier fee hikes, without making a reasonable effort to provide these kinds of tools to users.

"There are some posts there saying that avatar load does not bother neighboring sims. (Too many inefficient scripts might.) However, Linden's story might be about the entire grid not just the neighbors?"

A sim that I spend time on is near a very busy shop that keeps a dozen or more people in it constantly. Those people can see the sim I am in, and are viewable by me, when they rez in. So i have to assume that an openspace with a lot of traffic would create lag as those people rez for those within view distance, even though they are in a neighboring sim.

Actually, if i am not mistaken, there is a statistic offered for avatars that can view your sim whether they are in it or not. We don't have a visual wall between sims like some MMORPGs, etc. In order to see what avatars across a sim border look like, what they rez, what they fly or sail around in, etc., i have to DL the asset textures and whatnot from the asset servers, right?

A sim that I spend time on is near a very busy shop that keeps a dozen or more people in it constantly. Those people can see the sim I am in, and are viewable by me, when they rez in. So i have to assume that an openspace with a lot of traffic would create lag as those people rez for those within view distance, even though they are in a neighboring sim.

I think I am right about that, aren't I?

So, basically, if they want to operate in good faith, openspaces are just broken. They bait people into buying a service and then switch the service to something less desirable in price and use because of some perceived techical problem that they didn't deal with BY CHOICE. THe only option for them at this point if they want to save themselves the hurt of this is to discontinue openspaces and produce a sustainable alternative, leaving those who bought openspaces the right to use what they purchased, as they purchased it, and at the price they purchased it, for a reasonable expectation of time.

in this case it is about bad faith, and bait and switch.

if LL knew they were going to do this and continued to sell these, or worse, knew they would do this before they enacted the price decrease, then they were acting in bad faith (mala fides). Bait and switch is the marketing of a product or service with the knowledge that the offer cannot be sustained for a reasonable expectation of use, and once the consumer is locked in, forcing them to accept something else of lesser value or higher cost.

The excuse for the price change is the "abuse" of openspaces.

a) openspaces, while being abused in greater numbers, aren't being abused differently than before the original price change. The advertising of these openspaces implied abusive use, and they added prims and raised the avatar cap.

b) raising the cost of openspaces does nothing to address the abuse of openspaces, especially given they have the technical ability to adjust to the load now and limit avatar numbers, limit prim numbers, limit script use. Instead, they just raise the rent.

c) raising the cost of openspaces harms abusers the least, and those who use them appropriately the most. Those who use them appropriately are least likely to be earning a profit on them, and therefore will be less apt to pay the extra. Revoking the educational benefit is that much more excessive while not addressing actual use.

So, there's really no way to look at this price increase and not see it as being in bad faith. They have the ability to fix the problem, but they choose not to. They are making the situation caustic for NON-abusers, and retaining abusers who are apt to pay more. Obviously, this isn't about server use, this is about maximizing profit after the sale by changing what was offered.

This whole situation looks a lot like LL wanted an influx of cash to buy hardware, they invited a lot of people with incentives to buy that hardware for them with their setup fees, and now they want the hardware freed up to set it up again for other people. If that is the case, then there is no doubt that this action is across the line.

It seems like common sense that the more people who rez within yoru view, the more stuff needs to be moved around through the internets toobs, right?

So when they come and say "Well, we expected you to interpret our idea of overuse when we can't even really define overuse and can;t even present you with tools to figure it out yourselves."

This makes sense if you assume that each avatar carries about the same load of scripts. It is not always the case.

Is it worth fussing about the difference? I can't decide. Maybe it depends what the sim is usually used for.

Well, in fairness, if this were like email, and someone was using it for spam, it would be valid to talk about "abuse". In that they are using it exactly as it was provided, just in an excessive and abusive way. But... LL has kind of hung themselves on that.

They themselves set the cap on avatars we can have on a sim. They have capped the size of teh textures. They control script time. They control how many prims we can have. This is not an unregulated service, and they chose to present this service as it was presented. The uses were not unforseen, they just had to, like, see how they were being used.

So when they come and say "Well, we expected you to interpret our idea of overuse when we can't even really define overuse and can;t even present you with tools to figure it out yourselves."

well, come on. Sure, i can abuse my email by sending pr0n to random people, and the only way they could police that is by invading the privacy of my emails. That's a problem that SHOULD be addressed by terms of use. LL not only had the ability to limit this supposed excess technically before sale, but they didn't even bother to really define what excess is in terms of use.

So, sucks to be LL. They can deal with their lack of foresight. Defining it now in such a way that it undermines the value and enjoyment of the service they marketed, and repricing it in punitive fashion almost twice what it was before is a bad faith practice and I think more than borderline illegal. That is a problem with the ethics of the people doing business, not some sort of excess on the openspace owner's part.

Vye Graves: The exact link from the bottom of the wikipedia article, seriously? *rolls eyes*

Would someone who has in the past recieved the non-profit benefit care to post how much they paid, and how much they will now pay after jan 1, so we could see if this is the usual kind of price change in land tier fees that we expect from LL as the poster suggests?

Yesterday I found out about the price increase on OS spaces and the fact that you are denying the Education Discount to Educators and non-profits. The impact of this is that my costs are not going to go up 167% like most other people but it is going to rise by 333%.

In addition, the original 4 OS sims, which sit on a single server not being shared with anyone else, are now going to cost me $500/mth when a single class 5 server, even without the educational discount, would normally be $295/mth.

Agents (ie avatars) are arguable one of the biggest drain of resources. Now we can control that to some extent ourselves. But it is definitely true that you can see a difference when people wear certain things arrive.

I guess you're right. I can't see how LL can bait and switch someone with two months notice. How much notice do you think would be an appropriate amount if we assume they have to raise the price?