Dreamland Upheaval

Second Life involves real people tying to make a better place to which to "escape" the problems of Real Life but some SL "problems" can and should be changed for the better.

As a newbie, only weeks ago, I purchased a very picturesque beachfront property in an Anshe Chung owned area called Newport on Dreamland. Nightly, I would enjoy watching serene sunsets over the water from my beachhouse. It actually relaxed me. I was so proud, I even invited my friends and the public to come out this Saturday (11/26) for a beach party to share my happiness. Last night, with little actual warning and no consultation, I logged on to find that my house and all of Newport was moved slightly and that other occupied regions were moved in front of me, blocking my access to the "ocean" and my view of the sunsets. In fact my neighbor had a large mountain thrust up in front of his former view of "the horizon". I was informed by a brief IM that people "affected" by this change could ask to move but it seems that no effort will be made to ensure that we will be given land comparable to what we had: soft light sand on the shores of SL's ocean and an unimpeded western view of the setting sun. My shock and exasperation was not comforted by an Anshe Chung representative's reply that "new land has to go somewhere". That is true. I understand that adding more land means more profit for Anshe Chung and more SL "citizens" to enjoy SL. My objection is that we, the tier paying "owners" of property, were and are marginalized by larger players (e.g. Anshe Chung and Linden Labs). Had Anshe had a town meeting or asked us for opinions, I'd have easily come up with some equitable possible solutions. For example, land can be added in purely residential areas, like Dreamland, from the CENTER, since people who already chose to live inland are still inland and people living on the shores stay on the shores and the additional land area in the center would result in a larger perimeter (more beach!). Everyone could be reasonably accomodated without relocating. For purely commerical (hub-loving) regions, the new land could be added around the shoreline where, for most malls and stores, it wouldn't be noticed.

Please note that I am not whining about Anshe, Linden or anyone else for owning land and making it available to us all, it's just that I wish that we "land owners" would be given some consideration before major changes are made in our "world". I would even be interested in creating or joining a "homeowners club" that would be informed about Anshe's (in my case - or Linden's for others) plans and how we, land owners, could come up with ideas to make the "inevitable" changes easier for us all.

This is something you should definitely pursue.

Welcome, Kyreus, to the forums, on your very first post. I'm really sorry it's an unhappy one. Sorry if your plea seems to be met by silence. It's not that no-one wants to help, but you're maybe fringeing on subjects where a few of us may be suffering "indignation-fatigue".

The truth is, on the edge of any continent, there are no guarantees. New land may appear, and I don't think Anshe has total freedom of choice about where. As for nudging lots of sims around, I believe that each requested move to any sim costs the landowner (here Anshe) US$150, so reorganising to accomodate each new one is not really practical.

I suggest you try to talk to Anshe herself (be patient). You may find she tries hard to move you somewhere genuinely equivalent.

Anshe is a bit controversial. Some love her. Some loathe her. One thing's for sure. She's pretty busy.

Is this party still on ? Oldbies (well maybe teenbies) welcome ?

This action is uncalled for. Sims can be attached to where they would not cause problems. She could had even started a second Continent.

Bloody hell the family jewels have swollen since that proposal went thru

This situation of course all depends on what has been said to residents. I have areas where I know I will not add sims, I tell the residents that - and even if I changed my mind I would stick with the original plan as the residents are expecting it to remain an edge. I have other areas where I know I will add sims to, and I inform any residents wishing to rent on those edges. So unless you was mislead that it would remain an edge, no wrong has been done in my eyes.

Don't understand that at all, Hiro......

howdy neighbor! I am the neighbor who had the mountain appear next to his beach LOL.. About three of us have been offered to be relocated, im okay with that.. however I do not like the way it is being handled... We should have had more notice, I barley get a responce from any of the anshe chung angles, but one.... No one seems to know what is happening and, they keep telling me a few more days and putting it off.... They are acting like they do not have to do it, and i understand that.. But they should do it, and if they do not like it, do not take it out on the person contacting you for help....

I have to admit I was thinking similar thoughts.. But that made me laugh!

In responce to Kyleus, if Anshe had a town hall type meeting every time she added a sim, she'd never get any work done..Its very rare for the edge of the world or a view to stay the same for very long no matter where you buy or rent..

Sad but true.. Nothing can really be done about it but keep moving to the edge of the world.. Or buy your own private sim, and thats not garenteed..

Hiro, at least you're offering rentals and if something has to change, the resident can pull up stakes and move.

As I'm sure you're aware , this isn't the case in dreamland. The resident pays up front for their pseudo-ownership and is kinda screwed if this happens.

IMO, if I "buy" oceanfront property, I expect it to remain waterfront property. And if something happens that is out of the control of the sim owner, then either another equal parcel should be offered or a refund of the full purchase price should be given.

Actually the changes were announced weeks ago. Anshe held a meeting in Central Park to announce what was happening. She showed us a map which shows the changes that are going in. The map is still in Central Park under the pavilion next to the telehub. She's also sent out IM's telling people that they could switch their properties if they weren't happy how the changes affected them. Not that this is going to stop the Anshe-is-Satan crowd, but she's been upfront with us about the changes. All the Dreamland residents belong to the same group and she uses that to IM information. She's also offered to let people swap their current plots with plots in new sims that are being set up.

If I were you Kyleus, I would go into the Dreamland channel and send an IM asking if any "Angels" are on. They can give you the information you need. Anshe will respond if she is in-world, but she doesn't answer messages left when she isn't.

Actually, this is not always the case, sometimes LL gives you two options:
1. Choose another location, or..
2. Move your entire continent, a highly disruptive process.

We recently about 2 months ago, had to choose that second option, as we finally outgrew our vicinity, but we did keep choosing the #1 option to avoid conflicting with our neighbours. Eventually we had no choice but to move to our own area of the map, where we have lots of room to expand.

-Adam

This was in my email inbox today, you should have gotten one also Kyleus.

Anshe never had to have all of her sims joined together in the first place. One of the advantages of estate sims is that they are surrounded by water unless you choose for them to be joined to other land. Why didn't she take advantage of this? People like a water view.

this situation is no different from the mainland grid. living at the edge of a grid means potential unexpected land popping up in the future. it will happen. expect it. unlike LL, which offers you nothing, anshe offers you the oppurtunity to move else where on her grid. that's a sweet deal.

This seems so very American! The people with power take advantage of it and walk all over the powerless. I heard that Americans dont really own land but rent it! It can be taked away from them on a whim of the goverment. An exsample might be a citty officer has a developer friend who wants land for his development but does not want to pay the real value. He simply gets his city officer friend to take away the land from this person and give or sell it to him at a cheap cost! The home owner gets a small amount of money and gets dislocated We in Japan have land rights built into our consitution. The goverment just cant take your land. There are a group of farmers are holding up the expansion of the Narita Airport (Tokyo International) because they will not sell land that has been in the family hundreds of years. That is true land ownership!

What I do not like about the powerful in SL is how smug they are. How they put down people who want fair treatment and tell them they are the rude ones. I am having a dispute with a group of these now. Hopefully it will be solved to my satisfaction and the next step will be avoided.

You actually heard wrong Our US Constitution has a concept we call "eminent domain", which may be what you're confusing it with. With the original intent of eminent domain, the government can seize your property for infrastructure improvements or stuff "for the common good"; however, they must also pay you the going market rate for your land.

Generally it becomes a big mess, as the landowner can fight it all the way through court. Many eminent domain cases make it to the Supreme Court. Americans are an extremely mobile society, but we're as adament about our land-owning rights as anyone else in the world.




That's corruption, and would get all parties involved either arrested or sued out of existence.



If that had happened in the US, we wouldn't have a little thing called the United States Highway System, perhaps one of the most important transportation innovations the country had ever seen.

For the record, the continent owner involved is not American; she's a Chinese immigrant living in Germany, I think.




Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

LF

It cracks me up people not from the U.S. think they know all about what goes on here.

Ranma, you have been misinformed about U.S. law regarding takings of private land for public purpose.

The United States Constitution provides that private property will not be taken for a public purpose without just compensation. This allows the government to "condemn" land through a process sometimes called "eminent domain," but requires the government to pay the fair value of the property. If the land owner disagrees as to what the fair value is, there is a process for the value to be judged by the courts, and for an appeal.

If government officials interfere corruptly with such processes, they can be convicted of crimes and sent to prison. The governor of one state in the U.S. went to federal prison recently for corruption. Most government officials in the U.S. are honest and if not, the judges usually are and keep the process in line.

As far as I've seen, those same constitutional provisions do not exist in the TOS of SL, and what is the "law" of space usage for a renter or purchaser in SL is evolving. An individual's "expectations" by themselves don't amount to a contract binding on the landlord or LL, and may have little moral force unless the landlord or LL did something affirmative to lead people into those expectations.

I live in a RL house on top of a ridge that runs north-south. When it was built, the land to the east and west were farms, and allowed an unobstructed view for 15 miles to the sunrise and 15 miles to the sunset. Since then, the farms were replaced by housing and people planted trees, which now are 50-75 years old and obstruct the view. Should I be compensated? If so, by whom? The builder from 80 years ago? The farmers who sold out to developers 70 years ago? The developers who built 65 years ago? The homeowners who planted trees 60 years ago? The town, for allowing people to plant trees obstructing "my" view? When does my right mature? When the land changes hands? When the first tree is planted? When the first tree is tall enough to come between me and the sunrise? When more than 25% of the horizon is obstructed by trees in the summer?

Similar questions come up when another sim gets built on "your" nice view. Who should compensate you? The owner of your sim? The owner of the new sim? Linden Labs? How much should you get? What about the guy to your left and right and the guy behind you? Do they all get compensated? Again, by who? When do you get compensated? When the new sim is placed? When it is terraformed? When someone builds a high-rise between you and the sunrise/sunset? How much should you get compensated? Who decides how much? Who resolves the dispute if you and the person you want to pay the compensation don't agree?

Usually, the RL law concluded that those other folks have no duty to protect your view, unless their property was burdened with some sort of deed restriction or municipal law that they will not build in a certain place or way. If that is the case, there are procedures for that to be resolved in the courts, but that process may take years and lots of money for lawyers.

Right now, no provision for that exists in LL, apart from restrictions in the Terms of Service. Some self-governing SL municipalities are experimenting with such restrictions, but processes for resolving disputes are missing, and the cost of the process might exceed the value of the space.

Until a lot more evolution in this developing space has occurred, expect change. It may be the only thing that lasts.

Frank

Technically, any land can be siezed by any government at any time for any reason. The only thing stopping them is how closely they hew to their own laws.

Ultimately, all land ownership is vested in your ability to defend your claim, or convince others (the government usually, whether by force of law, or by military defense) to do so for you.

When your government seizes land it pays the "residential" value of the property and not the "commercial" value of the property. I have seen a lot of stories on CNN of this happening for "the greater good". About view, you just can’t do anything in Japan on your property. If you deprive someone of something compensation must be paid. A friend of mine lost TV reception due to a new condo complex. She now receives cable service free of charge paid for by the condo complex. In Japan, utilities are not allowed to put their equipment on your property without your permission. Telephone poles are on the street here, etc. Also it explains why there are so few highways and why they costs so much. The rights of the individual are greater than the many.

Also corruption is hard to prove. What happens when City officials and developers exchange non-monetary favors with each other? Also a big store generates a lot of tax revenue a sort of legal bribe. The whole thing makes me laugh. Eminent domain is a double think that only Americans could come up with.

About the sim land, they bought OCEANFRONT property and not interior property. Thus they are losing something. Why wasn’t a new continent made to allow this person their land? Is this person going to give them new oceanfront property?

Iam sorry Ranma,
but your visa does not permit you to talk while vacationing in our country

you needed to get that other type of visa

but please enjoy your stay as best you can, and if we can help feel free to pass a note and let one of us know.

actually i dont see why anshe is more responsible than linden lab , you havent bought a view, there was bo sim in front of you, if she want to add a sim, she can, if you took a lake view, good, it was inland you where safe.

Basically the absense of sim is void, it just show water to be less empty.

Farmland out in the middle of nowhere has a next to nothing "commercial" value price. No one's going to put a Walmart on a dirt road without running water.




There's a term urban planners/politicians use, called NIMBY -- Not In My Back Yard. Basically, people want stuff, but they don't want to live next to it. As a result, nothing would get built if it weren't for eminent domain.

Millions of Americans use the highway systems every day. It is a vital part of American society. Without it, our commercial, social, and economic infrastructure wouldn't be half of what it is today. If there was no efficient way of the government claiming land for "the greater good", these things would not be built; and if they were, they would have cost 50 times as much. End result: no highway system, everyone loses.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.




That wouldn't fly at all in the US. Our infrastructure network is much older than Japan's, who is a relatively "new" player to the whole "modern country" thing; they were essentially bootstrapped out of the feudal era and into the 20th century in under 50 years. The US, on the other hand, has a fairly old, obsolete, and most importantly, INSANELY spread out infrastructure network.

Furthermore, the fact that you don't have any highways in Japan is more indicitive of the cultural traditions of transportation and the geography of your cities; you folks live more compactly, compared to the US, and thus have more efficient public/mass transit. Bus networks don't work very well in urban sprawl environments (read: most of the US), and subways are only efficient in the most dense urban centers.



Please. Our free press generally catches wind of significant corruption schemes sooner or later; the bigger the conspiracy, the more potential for leaks.

Indeed, one of our governors (from Ohio) recently got the press smackdown after using funds illegally for a golf outing. Couple thousand dollars, tops. But it still raised a hell of a stink.

Eminent domain is a Good Thing. I cannot stress that enough.



In SL, everyone wants an oceanfront property, surrounded with beautiful houses, with no lag, and gorgeous landscaping. In reality, there is a limited supply of such areas. Such is life on a 3d terrain grid.

Not everyone can live on the coast.

LF

Yeah, leave it to those silly bastards to devise a way to fairly compensate a land owner for land that must be used to better their infrastructure.