Open Space Fraud

For those of you that know me you also know I never post here in the forumns but read them often. Also I am far from being a noobie. I have spent so much money over the years contributing to Second Life I am afraid to even look at the amount. Most of that money I was happy with and had fun. But when I purchased my island from Fantasland
I was NEVER told it was "OpenSpace" land and was told it could be used for residenual and/or commercial land which is what I was shopping for at the time. Somewhere in this mess of "OpenSpace" the only people who seem to be getting hurt are those innocent SLers that had no idea that the $125 a month they spent was illegal or abusing any of the Lindens land rule. Some one has made a lot of money and taken advantage of peope who love Second Life and enjoy their time they spend. At this point I am trying very hard not to cancel my account and find something else to do with my money.

The people who made a lot of money were Linden Lab. They ok'd the usage, there was no TOS violation for how you used the land, there was no stipulation it couldn't be used for anything other than open spaces.

Linden Lab have pulled a coup by convincing people that estate owners are to blame, it has worked and plenty of people are now convinced they've been conned by evil estate owners.

However the truth is out there, the growth of the product, the increased prims, the ability to place them anywhere on the grid, these were all factors on how this product boomed and Linden Lab knew every step of the way the reasons for this growth.

You can fool some of the people some of the time and Linden Lab are managing to fool some of the people all of the time, but the responsibility for this mess lies squarely with Linden Lab, the truth is out there HoneyBabee, people really need to make themselves aware of who are the real guilty party in this mess.

I agree Ciaran.

Fraud? were? Dont blame this on the Landlords cous Linden Lab is the one and only how foold us!

I am not blaming the landlords.....the fraud goes to those that control the uses of the land....to sell land to someone in RL there are variances, zones with compliances...they can't be changed unless its broought before a committee. But this isn't RL its SL...so there is only one governing force....but to know that all these people have paid and are running businesses on certain land and then go back and say....oh yea, forgot to tell you....thats open space and yes I have been taking your money for months but now you are stuck with land that is useless...it's like selling swamp land to someone as a paradise, it may look good but it's sinking sand.
It all goes back to how SL is run....Sl is not a peoples place its a Lindens place....to do with whatever they choose whenever they choose.

Maybe that is because there was no illegal or abusing use...

Look at these statements by Jack Linden:

From an inworld meeting:[11:51] Jack Linden shouts: To be clear, we don't think that the change of use is a bad thing, we added extra utility to Openspaces ahead of seeing the popularity or net effects, and yes that is difficult because there are some that use them for empty space and many more that do not. So this isn't about stopping that change of use, it's about recognising the extra costs we incur, and the extra value residents are getting too.


From the Blog Jack Linden: 10/29/08
Thirdly, I wanted to clarify one issue. As mentioned in the post, Openspaces were intended for space, empty areas of ocean or forest. Take a look at the Knowledgebase article description here. By that criteria, the large majority of Openspaces have more going on than was the original intent. We are not suggesting this is a bad thing, and of course we’re delighted that people have found them to be so useful. And we’re not saying that everyone is abusing resources. We are saying that the use has changed, and continues to do so as people find more creative ways to use them. So the revised pricing is about recognising that change of use and the additional costs and value associated with it.


Further, and with regard to not knowing you were renting land on a low prim sim... any resident doing his own due diligence when purchasing or renting land has the ability to go to the about land tab an view what the sqm of land and prim ratio is. If the area is 65536sqm and the prim count is less than 15,000 prims you are on a low prim sim.

The assailant here is not the estate owner and anyone who has bought into LL's attempt to pit resident against resident in this debacle and thus take the heat off themselves to an extent should look again at the bigger picture here.

Openspace sims were being used for residences, etc., long before LL increased the prim allowance, and there's no way they could've been unaware of it.

Residential, etc., use of openspace sims was never prohibited as far as I know. LL did state in so many words that you were on your on with performance problems, but there were never any explicit restrictions on use.

I don't blame the landlords for this one, and I resent LL's earlier insinuations that I and other Openspace residents were "abusing" resources. This slander suggests to me that LL is not a reliable business partner -- even more so than the price increase itself.

However my OS was used for my home. Routinely it was just my husband and I there. On rare occasion we may had 10 avies there at the most.

Thank you.

HoneyBabee DOES have a point though, in that many estate owners bumped up the prim multipliers on their openspaces to make their sims LOOK like real sims and even charged regular-sim rates at times without ever mentioning that the sims they were advertising were openspaces.

I'd just like people to have their eyes open to the new scams with this going on. I've seen it in a few OS areas. Owners, pissed at the price increase are selling the land off to unsuspecting newbies, allbeit for large amounts with absolutely NO intention of continuing to pay the tier. They want to make money and run. Seven instances of people coming to me asking me if "this is a good deal" have come to me. More who actually rent are trying to get their money back since they know its going under.

This is breeding a viscous cycle and no matter how you look at it, residents are the ones who are going to pay for it.

Yes due diligence and all that....but there are still a lot of landlords out there, trying to flick off their OS for ridiculous amounts of money and not being honest about it. There are some who are taking advantage of peoples trust and innocence. I know this because I look at land almost daily and there are few who are up front about it.

I hope the poor person that buys an OS for 65,000L, doesn’t get to much of a shock when they realise the sim they bought is not what they thought it was.

There are plenty of people who are being quiet about the price increase in their advertising, I agree.

These people for example:

http://secondlife.com/land/privatepricing.php

haha yup

LOL Ciaran, mostly harmless you are hm? Nice link, thx for that one. Needed that.

While there are some honest estate owners renting homesteads out,there are many out there renting them and not disclosing what they really are to those who rent from them
In a way there are two guilty parties here, LL for lowering the price,raising the prims and allowing them to be moved to open water by themselves
Also estate owners who saw this as a chance to make money from them
We who did not abuse (as LL puts it) them are stuck in the middle.
We bought our OS (me $500) in good faith with tier at an affordable price we could pay,even with estate profit
This might not be popular but estate owners are partially to blame also,now so many of us who found them affordable have to make a choice and that choice is the affordability of keeping our homesteads
If LL did lower the price and increase the prims to bait people into renting them,it worked,they baited estate owners into buying OS to rent them out,well it worked and they bought them by the thousands to rent out for profit
As i said there are some honest estate owners but many who are not,
It is a mess and it's time to remove the middle man and allow residents to buy homesteads directly from LL,as i have said elsewhere $125 is affordable to us because we pay that now.
Sl is not about land barons making money,SL is allowing those who can afford things to purchase them without having to pay profits to a third party

And you can provide concrete numbers to back up your "many" claim? Or are you just making stuff up?

Ok....I think some of you have missed this whole issue....#1...I was looking for commercial land...which I told the seller at the point of looking at the land, I was told the land was either/or residentual or commercial. #2... I was NEVER told it was open space,
which I think needs to be disclosed in the covenment or told when the land is being viewed.
So, to me this is the fraud...to sell someone a piece of land and saying its paradise on swamp land is as old as time...mine just didnt happen to have the Brookyln bridge attached.

I do know this, should I purchas any land it will be directly thru the Lindens. They control Second Life and do what they want....the other land owners are trying to make money...which at this point thats what SL has become...people making money. I came to design...to meet people and have fun....I can find something much better to do than loose $125.00 a month plus whatever else I decide to do.

Oh for those that are selling their OS land for high prices, I abandon mine...let the estate
owner that sold it to me deal with it...I think at this point it was better to stop spending on worseless land where I could put a couple trees and maybe a dock.

I am little bit confused here about this issue... it is not a secret and it is not hard at all to know if it was an open space or not even if the landlord did not tell you, if you are really a person who spent long time in SL then you should have known what you are buying .... actually it does not need you to be in SL for long time to figure this out yourself ...right click on the land and check the prims limit and that would tell you all what you needed to know.

Well, looking at the numbers in the poll (though 68 users is hardly a representative sample) I think it speaks for itself. At the time of this post, of 68 respondents, 57 responded either "Yes I knew it was OS" or "I was told it was OS". 84% do not have an argumeot for being misled using these numbers.

As for the other 16%:

Speaks for itself.

If it wasn't for the land barons, SL would not have received the investment it has. LL now seem to be gambling that they can do without land barons, it's a big gamble.

Spending $1000 on a full sim, sub dividing it up and making cost effective parcels for other users is a land baron and the middle man is needed for this function. Spending a couple or few $1000 on a number of sims and setting it up with a themed environment as a private estate is a land baron is needed for this.

The Open Spaces, or in a few weeks Homesteads, are mainly stand alone sims. An individual buys it and pays the tier to a middle man. This isn't a land baron, it's an onseller, and given the way the OS lare largely used, there's no function being performed that LL couldn't do themselves and therefore take a larger slice of the income.

As Nikita has said, people are already paying $125 a month for their OS and many have paid the up front cost as well. I don't really care who my $125 goes to, but if LL sells to me direct I'll actually be getting more for my money since I'll have estate tools as well.

For the current estate owners they will get nothing extra from the price increase. If LL does sell directly, the end user, the one actually spending the money, get more, so there's no reason why they would feel betrayed by LL. If LL goes this path of OS ownership they will actually probably improve relationships with their end user.

If you are paying $125 already. You got majorly ripped off

edit: oops posted this in the wrong stop, ill leave it cuz it kinda fits..

hmmmm, what would SL be like if instead of mainland and estates....we all had Homesteads?

Since they are obviously more popular than over priced full prim sims, and more attractive than a largish mainland parcel....that is the direction this change would make.

I am not saying it is bad, but something I think LL is reacting to right now(or a few weeks ago) Mainland prices are at very low levels, anyone with a few fullprim sims has had a difficult time renting parcels due to the OS competition.*

Not saying that is bad, but certainly something to think about.

Maybe we would all be happier living on private personal islands, i know i enjoyed the privacy of mine.

But as a community...will that really help growth? Will we be so spread out the we could amplify the ghost town effect we have so perfected?

Then there is the performance issue. If we all lived on homesteads, the over all experience *could* be diluted.

Just my thoughts on the subject. =) I am not sure which way would be better for SL as a whole. I am pretty sure though that changes like this have much larger long run implications than are initially obvious.

Alisha


*((without confirming metrics --and just in my recent experience-- My full prim sims are now completely rented again.......as if the OS debacle never happened. As long as I can ignore the loss of My setup fees =/ ))

If I had my druthers, I'd only allow businesses on mainland or private full sims and only residential on OS's. That would insure we would go to mainland for shopping/clubbing, and then have a private, quiet place to live.

Let them have 16meter ad farms to their hearts content, busy clubs with screaming customers and all the things that make us flee to OS's, on mainland only. Then LL would make money on mainland, and there would be the social draw there to lure us from our nests.

We abandoned our two open sims and took the loss of the intial investiment, we paid $400 uds apeice for them, land is devalued daily in sl and that is a shame. I have almost completely left SL even though I have enjoyed many aspects of it during the time I have been here. The whole open sim thing has left a very bad taste in my mouth. I do not blame the estate agents, they were hurt as badly if not more than thier residents. I just know I will not contribute any more money into a failing economy. Land is a bad investment in sl.

I cannot help but wonder what is next for sl, when they refuse to listen to thier own customers, they cease to be a viable company.