An Open Letter To Linden Lab

An Open Letter to Linden Lab.

Re - LL Appropriation of Abandoned Land.

Dear Philip Rosedale, Robin Harper and Executive Staff of Linden Lab,

Shortly prior to the release of 1.9.0, your staff notified the residents of Second Life the following:



For reasons which have yet to be clearly explained, I have no idea why your company has chosen to effectively disband a resident operated business within Second Life. The closest I came to an explaination, was by an executive of your company, who made a defamatory comment about my business to a third party. The comment was "The problem is with land scanners and land swoopers". Having continually operating my business within the rules, I asked your executive for an explaination and was told the comment was "out of context" and was informed that I should advise my source, that disclosure was a violation under the Terms of Service. I disclosed nothing myself, and find it reprehensible that I am told to do LL's work by advising residents about enforcement of the rules. When I questioned further as to the reason why LL co-opted abandoned land, I was told "announcements will be coming in the weeks to come". Clearly, there is no justifiable reason, nor was there an actionable plan.

Please allow me to explain my background at this time. I am a 49 year old person with disabilities. I have been diagnosed with debilitating arthritis since I was a child, compounded with anaphylaxis from serious allergies. Although I am not physically incapable of employment, I am severely limited in my abilities with regards to repetitive motions, prolonged standing and heavy exertions. Likewise am forced to take time off for treatments and therapies. I am currently scheduled for followup surgery to remove new bone growth on serveral joints in my feet. At this time, I am employed as a producer/director of a small market radio station, but in the past few years have been cut back to minimum hours, which amount to 15 hours per week. These short work hours do not make ends meet. Consequently, given my age and physical condition, employment opportunities are limited.

Enter Second Life. In August of 2004, I discovered SL from a website at www.mmorpg.com. Having always being intrigued by three dimensional realms, I was impressed by Linden Lab offering server space to realize one's creations within. Additionally, I was further impressed by the Linden Lab's allowance to have in-world currency traded for USD. I spent the first few weeks exploring and observing and meeting other residents. I will always remember when Char Linden IM'd me and teleported me to my "Land for the Landless". For some time, we sat on the hillside in Luo and admired the view. I built a small native art gallery on the plot and erected a few totem poles.

Over the next while, I noticed that radios were almost non-existant in Second Life. I took that opportunity to create a simple 6 channel radio, which was set by voice commands. Needless to say, the radio became an overnight success. Within the next few weeks, I was complimented for my work and offered some very constructive feedback. As time went by, I gradually implimented these features and learned better coding from some the best scripters in SL to make tweaks and optimize the code to the best possible efficency and universality to all users which include group land, group sharing, lag reduction and user friendliness. Not all land situations are clearly understood by all residents, and therefore, in order to provide the best possible product to my customers, it also required extensive customer and technical support. To this day, I still answer every IM about my radios, and where necessary attend in person to help with whatever issues may arise. Afterall, if there is potential for a problem, my curiosity dictates that I investigate, in order to make improvements on upcoming versions. Although sales are brisk, the overall revenue does not pay the bills.

Enter land barony. I used to work as agent to a few land barons, but after being defrauded out of more than $2000 USD, I realized the only way to operate ethically was to conduct my own business rather than work for others, especially after being advised "Linden Lab does not intervene into disputes between residents".

During 2004, a few other residents were using scripted objects to scan for public land. There was quite a furor going on about one resident in particular, who used 15 scripts to perform continuous and concurrent parallel scans of sims from 16 m plots. Despite the protestations of residents, Linden Lab upheld this resident's right to operate within the sims where he owned land. Other actions of this resident were applied to the scanning aspect and land scanning became stigmatized as nefarious and greedy.

Having seen an opportunity to compete in this market, I set out to research the possibilty of operating "under the radar" of community scorn. In doing so, I sought to create a scanner which would not cause lag, therefore dispelling concerns about lag induction. My scanner while in its operating state, executed code from 9 lines of script, as opposed to 1000's of lines from the previously mentioned scripts. After extensive testing by some of SL's most talented scripters, it was determined that in most sims, took .5 seconds to execute the function. A 15 second interval was applied to rest the script. In other words, my scanner operated for 2 seconds per minute or less than 4% of the time. Only once, in 19 months was I told my scanner caused lag. After further investigation, the complainant admitted, they had no substantial basis for raising the issue.

This brings me to the next aspect. Land ownership. Never at any time, did I operate a scanner within a sim from which I did not own land, without permission or land not belonging to a group. The land where my scanners operate are owned by a group, where clearly I am officer and the object and script within each plot was clearly marked as myself being both creator and owner. All data from these objects were sent to me. I never attempted to hide or mislead anyone about my involvement in this project by using alts or sending data to anonymous or alternate avatars or recipients. I bought and paid for each micro plot (or shop location) with my own money to the tune of more than $2000 USD. That is a sizeable investment and numerous residents of Second Life benefited from my establishment on these plots. On a daily basis, I would receive IM's from residents who inquired about them or requested to buy, in which case I was always willing to trade for a plot elsewhere in the same sim. I have done this literally, hundreds of times. It was always my objective to be low-profile and to allow fellow sim residents the ability to correct contiguous borders and minimize my impact or movement and views.

Early in 2005, a global system came online which was known as lb_v2, where satellites would fly over every sim on the grid and scan for released land. This created a huge uproar among the community and raise multiple issues such as use of air space, rezzing objects on other's land and the use of global resources without permission or investment.
During this frenzy, Robin upheld that land scanning itself is not a violation of the TOS.

This brings us to scanning itself. Having a scanner searching a sim for public land, does not assure the script owner of gaining abandoned land. There is no possible way for a script to purchase land in absence of the script owner. The scanner owner must attend the property in person and pay for the land. This required one to be "on their toes", because others had scanners on the grid as well. There were a number of people involved in this practice, and although there may have been some animosities, they often operated collectively by employing unwritten rules and self regulations such as avoiding "checkerboarding", selling of the smaller claim to the larger claimant or "first come, first serve" practices.

Now, we arrive at what to do with the land. Firstly and more often than not, land needed cleanup. Returning objects, renaming and terraforming is often required to make land attractive to buyers. Personally, I preferred to sell at wholesale prices in order to make room within the current tier for future aquisitions. This was a boon to Linden Lab, because LL was collecting tier where no land was held. In selling land to resellers, I provided a valuable service and a good product to many "middlemen". Likewise, all residents in general had equal access to the "Find" Land Sales listings, and often were rewarded with nice land at below market values.

Quite a few times, land would be "released" by accident. These releases happened because the user was wholly unfamiliar with land use tools and having never sold land before, or were unaware of the different terms or tools available to them. Never on any occasion, did I knowlingly buy public land from any resident who made an error and retained it. If an avatar was in attendance, I would always ask if the release was intentional, mistaken or incorrectly opted. On numerous occasions however, I have witnessed rogue officers, lover's spats, misallocated tier and other shortcomings from land and group tools. Each of these situations were unique unto themselves and required some investigation and restoration. Many times I have been involved in coaching, mediating and returning lands to the rightful owners. Many times with Linden liasons present, most times who did little more than observe and have been complimented numerous times for bringing complicated land issues to resolution, without further support required from LL staff. How will Linden Lab deal with these issues? Email [email]support@lindenlab.com[/email], only to be told "Linden Lab does not intervene into disputes between residents"?

Much land which had been abandoned, was abandoned for numerous reasons. Motivation to tier down, junk parcels, small parcels and/or annoying neighbors signs, sounds or particle effects.

In the release of 1.8.0, Linden Lab included a new feature within its mapping which was available to all residents. It included an orange color scheme, which allowed anyone to find public land simply by viewing the map. Many older sims had no scanners and new sims would not have scanners for long periods prior to the availability of land. This feature required some detailed coding and stipulates that Linden Land upheld the public land policy, up to and including ways for anyone to equally. Likewise in order to avoid the possibilty of confusion, LL changed the term "Release Land" to "Abandon Land" and modified dialog confirmations in order to dispell any confusion residents may have. It's a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Likewise LL eliminated "pending" land from it's land buyers.

Then comes 1.9.0. For reasons which are still unclear to me, Linden Lab decided to retain all abandoned land into Governor Linden's tier for auction at a later date. Now, I am a reasonable person, but forgive me for not understanding the logic behind this. First of all, if I am not mistaken, the main reason for LL to be in business, is by selling land tier to residents. LL has done themselves a great disservice by co-opting land tier and in every sense of the meaning, by competing with its residents. In fact competing is putting it lightly, whereas "monopolizing" would be more accurate, by eliminating the competition altogether. Several tiers were bought and paid for by residents to accomodate abandoned land, which was paid for in Linden dollars, whereas the Governor gets land for nothing. The current auction system is flawed under old circumstances and I have seen nothing to indicate changes or improvements are being made.

So, to summarize, I operated a land salvage business within Second Life, performing a service which was profitable, beneficial to other residents and eliminated the need for LL staff to be mired with tedious and time consuming tasks. The result of the 1.9.0 update has reflected negatively and stressfully upon me, my passion for Second Life and my quality of real life. It is my belief at this time, that Linden Lab's assertion that "Come to Second Life and make real money" is misleading and does not reflect well on your company's reputation.

Signed with sadness and disappointment,

Weedy Herbst

Weedy, sorry, I'm on your side, but it's a downhill battle. They would only listen to someone like Anshe, so try getting her on your side.

On a personal level, I sympathize with your situation. However, nothing exempts you from operating in a free market - which SL is - and makes you immune from changes in the market or changes in the game.

A person in our group did not understand about release land and released 400 some odd sqm weedy purchased it ....i sent a IM explaining what happend and He/she ? sold it back for what he/she paid. That speaks wonders about the person.

It is LL's world and we just play in it. It is a good way to create a money sink for them or are they going to auction for USD?

In all thanks Weedy for having class while conducting business. Now find another opertunity.

I have had the same problem with Lindens a few weeks back when one the users in our sim abandoned hiss 512 lot. Instead of becoming public, it went to Linden Land, and they ended up turning it back into First Land and selling it to a new user. Land holders from my sim messaged the lindens asking to be offered this land for sale (we have very few owners in my sim), and the Lindens would not have it. "For the sake of fair access... blah blah, we're going to auction this land lot" is all we got back as a response.

On one hand Lindens argue about freedom of this and freedom of that, on the other hand anytime there's a market for anything sustainable, they go in and mess it all up. In this sense, truly Lindens act as gods, as in they're the bringer of entrophy to a system that is constantly trying to evolve towards less chaos.

This could be good thing or a bad thing. I guess time will show.

Troy

PS. Weedy is everything she says she has been and that much more. I can vouch for the validity of her business, her constant diligent attention to running a legitimate, and non-invasive business and her focus on her customers and community. My exchanges with her have always been great. It would be a shame to see her lose her business.

I expect one of the following two replies from LL.

1. Silence (most likely)

2. The TOS specifically states that LL $Linden has no monetary value, that LL can change the terms of service without warning, at its whim, and without explanation at any time. Consequently, suck it up.

Anything other than these two replies means that I have probably entered a dream state - either through narcolepsy or inhalation of some foreign substance.

I support this open letter, and will add that I agree with Troy's points, too.

coco

Weedy, I've always held you in high regard, and I'm certain you operated your business with the highest level of ethics. I hate to see you affected by this latest change so personally.

You & I have been in SL for nearly the same amount of time. Since I've been here, LL has made countless changes that affect resident businesses in one way or another. Since businesses in SL are numerous and run the gamut from Retail to Entertainment to Infrastructure, not all changes affect all businesses equally.

The first major change that affected me directly was the elimination of support for social events on the event calendar. When the change was first announced, many of us were extremely disheartened, and felt as if Linden was pulling the rug out from underneath us. Many were running successful and profitable businesses, providing a service that Linden didn't have the resources to provide themselves, and they took that away (or so we felt at the time).

The changes didn't end there, however. Cut for event funding was followed by major changes to the functionality of the Event Calendar, seriously limiting who could post what and where. Telehubs, admittedly a bane to most and a benefit to a few, were eliminated causing many to rethink how they did business. Ratings were depreciated and stipends were cut, reducing the amount of $Lindens residents had to play with without crossing the line into RL and purchasing them. Developer incentives are being removed. The list goes on and on.

If there's one thing I've learned about Second Life since I've been here, it’s that change is inevitable, and our world is constantly in a state of flux. I know you know that as well as I do - I just think that this may be the first major change that affects you personally so deeply.

You really have two options, Weedy. You can allow this change to swallow your business, and leave Second Life with scorn and regret, or you can accept this change and alter your business to suit the new landscape. Many folks at one time or another in Second Life have been faced with this sort of decision - the ones that selected the latter option are the ones that are still around interacting with us today.

You're an intelligent entrepreneur and an asset to SL, Weedy. I sincerely hope you choose the latter option, as much as it may be painful, and as much as it may feel like an injustice. However, I wouldn't blame you one bit if you selected the former.

Weedy,

Thank you for sharing your story. I certainly gained a lot of insight into your situation, and learned new things about your talents.

There have been so many changes made by LL that have made me wonder what prompted their decision, and this is one. Recently there was a post by one Linden, can't remember which one, relating to land sales. He explained that LL tried experimental programs relating to land sales, such as the recent zoned sim fiasco, in order to test the outcome. When I read his post I thought about those members who relied upon Linden features and offers, placing real life hard earned cash on the table in order to participate in the offering.

Then, POOF, the deal is gone, wiped out in one questionable decision by someone in LL who has grown tired of the experiment. Trouble is that LL had not bothered to explain prior to people buying with real cash that the zoned sim, or whatever the deal, was merely a temporary experiment.

Eliminating public land is another example. We have seen the public land issue go back and forth so many times over the past couple of years. I seem to remember when auctions were introduced in 2004 that the plan was to eliminate public land release, and who knows maybe it was eliminated for a while.

The trouble is no decision seems to be final, and therefore its so difficult to reply upon a feature at any point in time with a level of certainty that would allow me to use SL as a significant investment medium.

I guess we all wonder whats in the works at LL that prompted the decision to eliminate public land release, but we can also know that whatever it is dont count on longevity.

On a brighter note, you make the BEST totem poles I have seen in SL!

I say #2 is an oxymoron statment that most online games are making. And I feel it will eventually be usless.
They claim to own currency and that it has no value. Then use it as just that. A way for them making money. And allow us to cash it out.
People who use the currency are what make it worth anything in the first place.

Of course that statment also keeps it tax free for now.
As soon as the goverment stops scratching their heads about what it all means, and decide they want a piece of that pie, then it will all change with in-world tax probably. yay We never win.

I sympathize with your plight, but you have to learn, clearly the hard way, that marketing is BS. Whatever a company tells you, they do it solely to get in your wallet. SL is a silly little social non-game... not the place to come and make serious money that you rely on for your livelihood. Even the best content creators can rise and fall unpredictably. I know people who were on the top 10 and now are practically unknown - heck, I was once on the top 10 for income and land holdings.
On top of that, you were providing a service that was easily automatable, and has since been automated. It was pretty much inevitable and you should have seen it coming. That's progress for you - it creates unemployment by removing unnecessary people from tasks better suited to machines. It's a good thing. Life moves on and so must we, constantly learning and adapting to maintain our value and relevance in an evolving, fast-paced society.
People complained rather loudly when we got rid of looms, but in those days clothes were an expensive luxury, poorer families often went barefoot and dressed in rags. These days when your clothes rip, or heck, if they simply get out of style, you toss them in the trash and buy new ones.
Like I said, I'm sorry to hear what you're going through, but LL has no obligation to provide you with income, and if you ever believed that you could easily make money, you were deluded by their silly marketing schemes. Marketing is often just a nicer word for lying

Great way of putting it Eggy. I think they're learning from EA. The biggest software recycler in the world.

Marketing is pure BS, and yes, only way of getting into your wallet is the only objective. providing customer service? Whats that?

I mean sincerely, why doesn't Linden Labs, make their Damn Product better for our users because it is US who make it for them, they just have to wave a wand, and say, poof, you're done! While we try and make this place something nice for all of us to enjoy.

I have a feeling they've abandoned that ideal, 'for the Community' sense.. and turned it into their own.

It's not Our World, Our Imagination, anymore.

Can't agree more with you. Another problem is that there are so many people in SL now, everyone has a different view, and wants different things, and it's hard (or near impossible) to please everyone.

Respectfully,

Am I the only one thinking, "Wah. Now everyone gets a fair shot at the land, finally." ?

No, I guess I'm the first to speak up.

I'm sorry Weedy, if you relied on this as a business, you should have known:
(a) That this was an extremely debated issue for a long time and not exactly "secure".
(b) That lots of people, myself included, feel that land scanners and the "scan and swoop" businesses are exploitive, for one simple reason: If more people were to do it, it would slow the main grid down to a halt.

It's a joke that you considered your business a land "salvage" operation. You took advantage of a glaring loophole in the system for a long time, be glad you got to do it while you could.

I doubt that there will ever be an in-world tax in any game... err platform!.

If we could eat prim food (or in my case, prim babies) then that's when the taxman would start to worry. But right now, the tax man knows that he can take his slice of our pie when we trade our L$ for US$.

And now, to point out all the fallacies in your letter.

Problem 1: You provide no context - this issue has been discussed openly in the community for a long, long time. You know very well the reasons, being an active forums user. You're not fooling me or any Linden Lab staff member by playing ignorant on this issue.


How is that defamatory to your business? That sounds absolutely like a criticism on your micro-industry, not of your business specifically.


Incorrect assumption: Just because something is within the rules doesn't mean it's not a problem. It just took a while to fix.


What's the big deal with Linden Lab suggesting you do something? What's so reprehensible? How is this Linden Lab's "work"? This is sheer spin-doctoring, Weedy.


Again, this has been discussed so many times that I really find it laughable that you claim ignorance on this. As for "actionable plan", you know very well Linden Lab keeps implementation very tightly hidden.


This is a pure appeal to pity fallacy. It doesn't matter if you are the Pope.

What you are in fact saying is that you deserve special treatment from Linden Lab over non-disabled residents in keeping up a business. Linden Lab is not a charity, nor is it an employment office, nor is it an government unemployment center. You know very well that this argument based on pity is irrelevant.


How exactly does making radios affect a land issue.

Red herring fallacy.


Again, appeal to pity, implied.


"stigmatized", or "correctly labeled"?


Less lines of code doesn't mean less lag.

The code that crashed SL last year with physics balls took all of what? 5 lines of code?


so 4% of the time, this means you owned 4% of the sim to compensate, right? That would be more than 200m per sim. Right? Or did you just slap a 16m square down?


What, do you want a cookie for operating a business legitimately? You're supposed to do things legitimately. That doesn't warrant special treatment.


So, you took a big risk on a risky investment?


Yes, but you didn't finish the story.

... I was one of the ones who led a firestorm in these very forums against this person. The result: Linden Lab initiated an RSS feed for released land, and began to start seriously considering changing the land release policies. --- Ironically, that event that you mentioned debunks your own statements that you were somehow ignorant of reasoning why this change happened.

So, while it wasn't strictly against TOS, Linden Lab did see that it was a problem.


So, you put in a lot of work into a risky business?


This is a red herring. Just because you helped other people doesn't mean that Linden Lab is going to base its business decisions on you.


And this is still true now. This is irrelevant.


And more reason why the reasoning behind this change should have been expected, and why you can't claim ignorance, which you do in the very next statement:



And here's a thought: There's an arseload of land for sale out there, and people have been complaining there's (a) not much public space (b) too much land and it's driving the economy down. Perhaps these were also factors in consideration of the change of policy?


Okay, you do realize it's still Linden Lab that is the only company that provides SL, and the servers, and the software, right? Calling "selling land" a "monopoly" is sort of missing the grande scope of things.


And? If you sign up for an ISP on the Internet, and you stop using the ISP, should the ISP have to pay money to regain the server space it allocated for you? That's madness!


Okay, please explain *why* it's flawed?

...

Weedy, it must be difficult to you, but seriously... take a look at this from another perspective.

Wow, I see Hiro's woken up in a "huggy" mood today.

/hug Moopf.

You hear I'll be at the UK meet-up next month?

I think LL has to be given some leeway about making changes as they see fit, otherwise they probably will not be able to evolve and survive in business.

What I think is utterly inexcusable and I am disapointed this doesn't get more attention from other residents, is that LL does not give appropiate lead time for people to adjust to these changes.

Why can't LL simply put alterations like this in a queue? Say "please note that in 3 months, public land will no longer be available" .. obviously, they'll have to deal with a lot of outcry for that 3 months, but I think that is better than simply ripping the rug out from underneath their customers like this.

No, I hadn't heard. I only heard about a potential meet-up the other day and I'm waiting to see what date it's arranged for, as that will dictate whether or not I can make it.

Hiro the level of your fanboidom and your free time is stunning. Seriously. Stunning.

It really isn't often I agree with Eboni about something.

That was funny.

The sun will never set on AnsheCorp.

Wrong.

It still is.