Land Piracy

Let me guess, you think murders are a good way to keep weapon manufacturers in buisness and therefore the people working there employed.

I use to use that but its not worth it as 9.9/10 people I visit made mistake worse part is you buy it cuz other people get first then your under tier of course they want back sp your not going upgrade your tier or try sell another lot cheap to keep it so you gotta spend a week fighting with linden to give it back.

I'm feeling not worth it anymore but my name and rep on the line so of course I will give it back but still I think unfair for us who buy and sell land.

This is your own fault. Take responsibilty for your actions.
Don't blame somebody else for your mistake.

If you didn't receive fair market price for your land,
sit down and ask yourself why (YOU) didn't research
what fair market value was in the first place. Its your
land, your sale, your profit, your loss, your responsibilty.

Whomever bought your land had every right to laugh
at your ignorance. And in the Real World, there is no
protection from you doing the same thing. You can list
your home/land for sale at any price you want.

If you don't understand how to sell land, call me.
I'll be more than happen to be your Selling Agent.
My fee is 6% commission on the sale price of the
land.


re·spon·si·bil·i·ty

NOUN:
pl. re·spon·si·bil·i·ties

1. The state, quality, or fact of being responsible.







re·spon·si·ble

ADJECTIVE:


Able to make moral or rational decisions on one's own and therefore answerable for one's behavior.

So your saying that the one who takes advantage lives outside your own definition? " Able to make moral or rational decisions on one's own and therefore answerable for one's behavior." Ones behaviour means a lot and I for one do not deal with those people.

but then again for those who live to take advantage of others through a faulty system that has to rely on a person knowing what is right or wrong.............

slime·ball ( P ) Pronunciation Key (slmbôl)
n. Slang A despicable or disgusting person.

I Think i guessed the name of your main account



He don't blame somebody else.



I think he knew the market price, but he mispriced because of the interface.



Does he said it was your fault, your responsability ?
He explain a problem, he don't blame somebody else.



It's not ignorance, it's a common mistake made every day in SL.



Of course there is.
In the real world you don't sell and buy a land with a single mouse click.
You have to sign paper, probably loan some fresh money, read a contract, sign it, write a bank check with the amount (numerical and literal).
Well, you can see the price many times, and the process don't take a single second.



Now try with CREDIBILITY :

credibility : the quality of being believable or trustworthy

When you start doing things like this, you open a huge can of worms. It's difficult to even fathom all the implications.

I think this puts small sellers at a disadvantage as Dark suggested earlier. Plus, there are other more interesting situations that can happen.

One scenario:

A buyer wants to buy 4096m2 and finds four 1K lots together. It's important for the buyer to have a large square lot. The buyer buys 4 lots, but only 3 of them are approved. Now, the buyer is left with only 3072m2 and it isn't even close to square. How can this be a good thing?

I thought the land scanners just sniffed the datastream and injected "click the refresh button" packets into a running client. This is not an unusual way to build stuff like this, people do this all of the time with online games (often to cheat, for example by modifying the returned bullet angles so they always hit).

Just as a side note, has anyone seen that "Buy Land" confirmation lately? LOL

Maybe it's just because I buy land for a group, but sometimes the dialog comes up with a full screen of text now and about 5 or six buttons! I'm a land buying expert and even I can't understand all the choices it's trying to give me.

Better :
A system that make you type the land price TWICE. (like password checking)

Excuse me? You should have stuck with people being responsible for their own mistakes. Deeming others to be ignorant and deserving of derision, is perhaps more revelatory than you intended.

You are correct, I was meaning to say cheap land scanners are a myth, I edited my post accordingly. I have talked to a great deal of land realators, and I know of only one person that uses the land scanners at present date. Released land is not common, and I doubt they are making a fortune off of it. Ecspecially if there are others competing with them.


What you speak of is certainly possible. There is evidence that at least one person is getting land info that is not possible internally through scripts. I have my reasons to doubt people are modifying the client, but I can see people programming an AI to look for cheap land below a certain price without having to be at the computer or alter the client. From what I see of other land realators, I do not think this is happening. They all respond when you come up on them buying. If they were an AI, they wouldn't carry on a conversation with you after buying the land. I don't know of any programmers that skilled in AI, and I doubt if any were that skilled, that they would be trying to get the piddly money Second Life land can give them compared to what they could make for just such an AI.

IMHO, I like the seller confirmation idea. I would tweak it so that the sale is pending for a full 24 hrs. But, the land would be treated essentially as if it was bought. Money is taken from buyer and given to seller, the new owner could build, set properties, etc... It becomes "official" after 24hrs or when the seller confirms (whichever is first). If the seller denies, money is returned to the buyer and ownership reverts to the seller.

Related, it may be helpful to add the inverse of "Sell To". That being a "Don't Sell To" list.

As for your scenario, in the new scheme, if it's absolutely imperative that the buyer obtain a 4096 square plot they would:

a) not buy these four, only look for single parcels
b) contact all sellers prior to sale to make sure they'll confirm
c) if they still get stuck with an unconfirmed plot, resell what was confirmed (perhaps kindly ask the seller to buy back) and try again

This particular situation is made more difficult, but I believe it's more of a benefit overall.

HP

Who will hold the money in escrow for 24/hours until the sale is
complete? Otherwise, the seller will just take the money and
run.

LL, of course.

This makes me wonder if there isn't a simple misunderstanding here.

You're suggesting here that the person failed to do proper research before selling the land. And then wants to reneg on the deal after it was purchased.

I don't believe that's the situation other's are talking about when saying the seller made a mistake. I believe others are referring to something like entering a typo in the price field. Consider this hypothetical situation. I want to sell a parcel for $L16000 which is fair market value. I enter 1600 (a typo) for the price and set to sell. A moment later I realize the mistake and go back to fix it. Before I can however, someone swoops in and buys it out from under me. Laughs at me and refuses to sell it back.

Surely, you don't think that what this buyer did is ethical?

Yes, I should've been more careful entering the price, but I made a simple common mistake, a typo. Taking advantage of someone immediately after they obviously made a mistake (regardless of the situation) is wrong. Yes?

HP

I don't think there's a need for anything as complicated as an escrow. Land and money transfer as normal (basically). The only difference is that the seller has a time period to review the sale. Check the price one last time because this is extremely important to get right and check the buyer to make sure they're not a known griefer/extortionist. Maybe 24hrs is too long, I can be flexible there. If unapproved, revert money and land.

HP

I can agree with that. If the Seller entered a Typo on the Keyboard,
then I agree with you. L$16000 vs. L$1600 is an issue. That solution
comes from LL recoding their Sale-Apps to double and triple check
the entered information is correct.

Where is the Buyer's Protection?

Lets say that this scenerio plays out and I just bought a
L$100,000 plot from you. You then cash out the L$100,000
on LindenX and are never heard from again. 12/hours later
I've changed my mind and want my money back.

Now what? The seller is gone.

Or what if I the buyer took and resold your land for more
money. You then 12/hrs later wanted to undo the deal.
You are willing to give me my L$100,000, but your land is
gone.

Now what?


What I'm saying is that if somebody proposes a time frame
on such a transaction, a 3rd party will need to hold the land
and cash until the time expires.

Personally, I don't see the need. You either decided to go
through with the deal in the beginning or you don't.
All this "Hold Up, I changed my mind" crap only complicates
the issue for no reason.

I applaud your integrity Kane-- willing to take a hit on the nose in the spirit of fair play and honor. It's too bad everyone doesn't have the same viewpoint.

And although I honestly hadn't thought about it before, you make a very valid point about being forced to pay the tier the moment you take on the land.

That's why imho, this whole "tier" thing just sucks swamp water. If there is going to be tier, it should not be charged on a full monthly basis, but only for each day you actually own the land. And it should be only for the sqm of land you own... not for some arbitrary "tier" structure that infers you own more land than you do. You're absolutely right in this point.

Philip Linden himself once said he's not satisfied with the tier structure. He made the point that rather than bringing more land sales to SL, it probably detracts from them because often people decline to buy land they want because it will raise them to the next tier level. I fully agree with that statement. He mentioned a desire to change land tier to a per-meter-owned basis and I believe that would be a good step. Charge only for the meters of land owned, only for the actual days owned. That would be fair.

I recommended they charge a basic per-square-meter charge on land sizes 1024 and under, with discounts per meter the more land you own.

LL has not implemented this or any alternate system. Land tier still causes problems every day. They should fix this. Not only would it be totally fair to their clients, but it might also be very interesting to see what this does to the land market and examine whether land sales actually increase as a result.

When examining a concept like this, often cutting it to the simplest possible element makes it much easier to deal with.

Obviously, a problem exists, or this thread (and others like it) wouldn't exist.

Easiest way I can think of to fix it is this:

Make land sales VERY simple, as easy as buying a pair of pants.

When the owner wants to sell, have a section of the sale box state:
"Who do you want to sell to?"
The owner must do one of two things: type in a user name or type in the word "anyone".

Failure to type in anything halts the sale.

As far as accidentally selling it for too low a price, that really comes down to personal responsibility. Triple-check the listed price before hitting OK. Once you hit ok, the land is on the market and all transactions final. (Although it might be nice to have a failsafe built in that recognizes absurdly low sales and asks, "Are you sure you want to sell it at this price?)

Viola. Problem fixed.

It is true that this seller confirmation is Seller Protection's not Buyer's Protection. Of coarse buyers should do the same kind of market research that sellers do.



Good point. While the sale hasn't been finalized yet, it should not be resalable.




The reason is because land is valuable, especially in large quantities. L$100,000 for a parcel of land isn't unheard of. At this moment, that would be US$356.18. That's a heck of a lot of money to lose out on because you made a simple common mistake like a typo.

Keep in mind that I'm not talking about failure to do proper research. I'm talking about situations like I mentioned in the other post. Making a typo on the price, double-checking yourself (as you should), realizing the mistake, and having a chance to fix it before being taken advantage of.

HP

If we are really talking about typos, then I'd prefer a system that makes it harder to make typos and makes it harder to put something for sale accidentally.

e.g., forcing the seller to retype the price without being able to see the price that was typed in the first time. or forcing the seller to retype their password after they check the sell box to confirm that they want to put the land for sale.

If it were only typos, I agree this is a better idea. In fact I think that duplicate price entry and password confirmation are good ideas regardless of what else is discussed here.

But, a seller confirmation also allows the seller to control who to sell to. The simple mistake may have been forgetting to set the "sell to". You want to give it to a friend or alt. Set it at L$1 and forget the "sell to". Oops! Better fix it quick before someone grabs it.

Or, set everything correctly, and get a confirmation that a known griefer/extortionist wants to buy it. In lieu of a "don't sell to list", you get to say "nope."

Or, maybe you did something completely asinine by standing on the border of your two parcels and picking the wrong one for sale. Hopefully, you'll see the land description and realize the mistake.

I’m not sure I see what the big deal is with giving the seller one last “are you sure” type message. Personally, I get nervous of that checkbox on the land properties dialog and have the price filled in with all 9s for my land. I’d hate to do something stupid by checking that off and accidentally selling my land (although your suggestions would alleviate this particular issue).


HP

I keep it set to all nines, too. If nothing else, changing the default from set to sale for $0 to $999999 might be a simple short term change. At least then if you checked the set for sale box before the others it wouldn't pop up in Find as cheap land.

It is always unfortunate when mistakes happen and someone takes advantage of it.
Lindenlab already added one extra button to click when setting land for sale, so everyone should be aware of that they are placing the land for sale and to which price.

Personally I really do not wish for more buttons to click or more things to type in, the extra "yes" button already slows me down enough.

Many interesting things has come up here.

Landscanners, as far as I know one can only scan for public land; and claiming that is not stealing. I belive it could be possible to hack the client so it would would inform if something cheap has been set for sale, but maybe the hackers can inform about this. Lindenlab would probably refer to this as plug-ins.

The reason why many of us so called land barons buy first and ask then is simple. Because if we try to ask first, someone else comes and grab the underpriced land, and they might not be willing to give it back.

The land editing tools has changed a bit. Abandon land used to be called release land, which was sometimes confused with revert land. I belive even in this thred someone said she " reverted the land and lost it". Revert only makes the terrain shape go back to "default". I do not see how "Abandon land" could be so unclear to someone though, maybe a dictionary would be handy before pressing buttons with text one do not understand?