Advertising as HArrassment

LL has no policy on outdoor advertising, and some residents take full advantage of this loophole to use advertising as a form of harrassment. My recent experience is with Sunny Designs and Manhattan Holding in Clearwing SIM as an example. The owner of Sunny Designs put up a huge sign over the land in direct view of my hillside windows, I nicely asked her to move it higher. She told me she would move it to the side and 'don't ask me to move it again because I won't'. It was still blocking my view, and I asked her not to be so inconsiderate. The owner never replied to my plea, but a few days later, she boiught an adjoining parcel of land that is directly in front of my windows. Within a day she had floated an even larger, uglier, bright orange YARD SALE sign up in the sky directly aligned in front of my windows , AND banned me and everyone in my group from her parcel. ( They never met nor knew who she is). THis is all the evidence of INTENTIONAL HARRASSMENT ( otherwise why the banning?). I originally appealed via IM to Manhattan Holdings owner ( co-officer of group) to intervene and stop this nonsense, but she never responded. Then I saw that the sign was MADE by that owner so she was part of this problem, not the solution. I told her by return IM that I intended to resist her efforts to harrass me. Her response was to mute me. I have filed an abuse report at the suggestion of a Live Helper who visited ,saw the signage,and agreed it seemed a TOS violation. However, I feel sure nothing will happen with such a report because LL has very loose guideline s on this advertising, and it is difficult to prove malicious intent. Destroying my rightful enjoyment does not necessarily seem malicious to LL.

I know I am not the only resident who has had their peace of mind ruined by inconsiderate residents trying to advertise their businesses with large sky signs in otherwise residential areas. It causes many First Land residents to regret their decision to buy when renting is so much easier and flexible. If some wannabe businessperson goes the low budget altID First Land store approach, a nearby renter can just move if the landlord doesn't find a way to correct the eyesore.

Nothing ruins the charm of a residential community quicker than these big ugly skysigns that are often placed over parcels where nobody lives.

I strongly feel that LL needs to regulate sky advertising with stronger guidelines. but they will not do so unless the SL community itself demands such action.

It does sound malicious, but on a side note, naming names in the forum is against the ToS also. Might want to edit your post before Jeska gets out her hammer.

I removed the names of the avis. I hope that is what you mean.

I SO sympathise. I know just how you feel. I lost a bit of sleep over it, being so angry, and as much as my husband tried to tell me "it's only a game" it still felt like a violation when it happened to me.

Seems to me that Second Life is becoming like the rest of the Internet - started out as a community and then got hijacked by money-making opportunists. Now you can't move for junk mail and pop-ups.

How long will it be before users vote with their feet and find somewhere less open to intrusive and offensive advertising.

Why cannot commercial areas be restricted, and domestic housing be protected? After all, there are laws in RL to prevent ugly building.

Here's an idea - why not force SL users to apply for planning permission for unusual buildings and signage in "conservation zones" or residential areas? If there was a mandatory neighbourhood vote on proposed building, it would avoid much or all of the recent trouble and angst.

Bonny

Placing an advert on a prim where you see it causes the texture to be transmitted to you, and they know this when they place it, so if you don't want to see it (ie, it's "unsolicited" you might be able to argue that they have broken TOS. (Although I asked Live Help about this and they said no.)

It's also possible that the only place that a user "uploads, posts, or transmits" to is LL, and after that it's LL who send it on (or not). But if that's the case that would seem to imply that it's LL's decision to not only authorise but also solicit all in-world advertising, in which case again you could read this as meaning that uploading an advert texture is a TOS violation unless LL asked the uploader to do so.

Um, or not. IANAL. And I guess there's a reason why not.

Something *has* to be done against all this sign griefing.

I have a few advertising signs on the side of my property, facing the road where it affects nobody.

I've bought a couple of 16m2 plots which I've put advertising signs up on, and nobody has yet approached me asking to remove them, so I can safely assume that they don't bug anyone. Two are actually water plots, so I've made a floating buoy and attached the sign to that, being inventive rather than just slapping a sign up in someone's view.

A while back, there was a time in TSO where people were paranoid of giving room-mates build permissions on their properties in case they came back to find that the house had been destroyed. I can see SL going the way that people are afraid to buy land because of all this kind of grief. Meaning less income for LL and less chance of corporate success.

Can we see some leadership here... or are LL going to keep their fingers in their ears and shout "lalalalalalalala cant hear you" forever?

Lewis

No, it'll be "people are afraid to buy land in areas that aren't zoned/managed".

Since those are the areas owned by land barons, they'll buy there instead.

Which feeds the theory that all of the people placing Bushcubes and intrusive ads are land baron alts.

I wouldn't mind ad builds so much if they were just a bit, well, better. Some thought put into them. If they actually did something that would be good as well. If you put up a glowing spinning cube with "FOR SALE" on it I'm just going to think you're a moron.

There's one of these:
http://nurikabe.sent.com/images/info_box.jpg
next to my land, which I don't mind; it's an actual kiosk, it doesn't flash or anything, nicely designed, and if you go inside it's got computers that give you property listings on touch.

The funny thing is, your comment is mostly true. But people are so blinded by defending free speech and that they can not put 1 and 1 together to see the whole picture.

But Im not here to ask anyone to tear thier signs down, leave them be! In fact I want to give them and the rest of us MORE freedoms and enjoyment out of SL. That is why I support Prop 905 - Area Filtering. Click my link below for more details!

She could just as easily argue that you were harassing her by making demands about how she uses her own land. You can try and work out a polite agreement with your neighbor but they are under no obligation to cooperate. If she doesn't you ARE obliged to accept that as her right. This sense of entitlement many people feel over land they do not own is in my opinion a far bigger and more serious problem than any signage. You don't have a right to tell your neighbor what to do. Period. If after speaking to your neighbor they don't want to comply with your demands and you continue to bother them about it, you are the one doing the harassment. Sorry.

This can be turned around, though:

- They don't own my land, why should they be entitled to affect how it looks?
- They don't own my land, why should they be entitled to affect its resalability?
- They don't own my land, why should they be entitled to affect its accessibility?

The only solution to that would be to not let anyone alter land they buy in any way whatsover. Give us all picnic baskets and SL can just be a big "sitting around in the grass" simulator.

Or to not let alterations to land affect anyone else's land. Which would be accomplished by foreign render control, or a number of suggestions that have already been posted.

I think parcel filtering is a good idea (in fact, I think I was the first person to think up the idea and suggest it many moons ago.) In the meantime we have to deal with the reality we have and the rights we have, not the subjective way we think things should be. Situations like the OP's have to be evaluated according to the way things are now.

I see some interesting turns with language here. I didnt see that the OP made "demands" ... and I did see that the OP was indeed polite and in addressing the property owners.

I personally find it very interesting how often words get substituted in order to sway the reactions of the reader. Oh, that's right .. there is a word for that ... "spin".

I'd like to formally join the ranks of those that feel some entitlement over land I do not own ... I want to enjoy the view as much as anyone .. and believe that it's selfish for people to constantly take the attitude that "inside these lines I can do 'anything' I please, no matter how it may look to those around me". Oldbies and their "been thru all this before" attitudes notwithstanding.

That is certainly not the way to build community.

I dont agree that this is the "only" solution, although it is one solution.

The other alternate solution is to mimic RL situations with either zoning or sign laws. This is just something that people dont want to think about for ideological reasons.

Most of the signs are about commercial actvity (advertising) or political activity (the Bush greifer guy). In RL this kind of signage has tradtionaly been strictly controlled by the community by either di-sallowing such signage altogether (in the case of political signage outside of election periods), or by controlling what zones of the community such signs can appear.

In recent years, (mostly the last 20 or so and mostly in North America), pressure from "open-market " capitlaist groups has severely eroded these laws and regulations. Tending to the theory that if there is space to put up a sign, and if you own that space (or even if you dont in some cases), then you should be allowed to put up "what you damn well want!"

This unusual and *new* situation is almost taken as the status quo nowadays given the immense pull commercial forces now have in our communities.

The reason LL will likely NEVER take leadership on this issue is that to do so would be to piss off the commercial sector and to restrict the "free market." It's easy to see that regardless of what should or shouldn't happen, in today's conservative world, with the open market people having the influence they do on our collective psyche, it just won't happen.

My advice it to just get used to living under the signs, and all hail our new capitalist overlords.

That's just a silly argument. A guy who buys a 16m square for a sign is not my neighbor. I've never seen or met this person, he doesn't live, work, or ever even visit this little square.

In my case at least there are 4 parties involved, me and three nieghbors own all the land within sight but this 16m square. He snapped it up before we noticed it was even for sale and dropped the bush signs right in the middle of our land.

Every RL city in the civilized world has rules about this kind of thing, and for very good reason.

Society requires common rules at some level to exist, we argue about where the lines should be drawn but lines of conduct, including use of your own land is well within those lines in most societies.

Go try to fill in a pond, divert a stream etc. on your own land and the EPA will slam you. Put up huge annoying signage on little plots in every residential area in a city and I guarantee they won't last long in RL. Cities have rules on signage, and use of your own land where it infringes on others and we should as well.

That's all well and good but you're arguing based on how you think things should be rather than based on how they actually are. You and everyone else are bound by our current set of rules, not some imagined future set of rules.

I have a different theory, and all this feeds that, too. That (a) the Lindens don't much care about the mainland, which they consider inhabited by the riff-raff, (b) they want to sell more islands, and this is a good way to ensure that, and (c) they agree with the message on the sign and hope to attract residents who do as well.

coco

I actually agree with this theory (sort of) in a different way.

It's not that they dont *care* about the mainland, it's that they realise that their original idea of a virtual community is now kaput, or at least on the way out. They have systematically removed all the previous "social controls" over the last year and are basically giving in to the idea that the mainland is just a big lawless "free-for-all."

It's not that they just want to *sell* more islands, but that they realise that this is where the future communites of SL are going to arise. There is nothing to stop some communities arising on the mainland (some like the Elves and the Furries already exist), but eventually even these will likely move to more seperate and more easily controllable locations.

The mainland is doomed to be an open-market, no-rules, no-holds-barred, "icky" kind of place, so why bother even trying to maintain order?

Not that theres anything wrong with that.

One way to solve this problem is in programming.

There needs to be a way to turn off all signs for "X".

X being a person, a land title, or advertisements.

This wouldn't be too hard to do and this capability exists in some form in almost every game on the Internet.

The problem here is, they want to do the least and get the most money out of it.

A concerted effort by users to change this however, might pay dividends.

Actually, the current set of rules is written such that the Bush guy IS breaking them.

But even if that weren't true, where rules are needed and don't exist, it's sensible to ask for them, and to argue for how things should be.

coco

This is a relatively new phenomenon. Hubs used to draw most of the legitimate business signage. Now the best location for a 16 sq.m. sign is right in the middle of the neighborhood. I'm sure more issues related to zoning will crop up in the near future.

But, I love P2P, and business is good.

This is a relatively new phenomenon. Hubs used to draw most of the legitimate business signage. Now the best location for a 16 sq.m. sign is right in the middle of the neighborhood. I'm sure more issues related to zoning will crop up in the near future.

But, I love P2P, and business is good.

Or, less drastically, as sensibly argued in another thread , "common sense" could be applied to the problem by those who have the power to do so.