Land Piracy

Yes, and when transfering to a friend or oneself from a group 0 is a safe number, because it requires a specific buyer. Using the set is not really so hard, so I sometimes find it strange that people are so lazy to use it; after all fooling around with 1 and no name set can cost a lot of RL money.

I was talking about clicking the wrong button when transfering land, the land was never for sale and the "buyer" acknowled that he was very aware of this.

The menues are not that straightforward and a simple "Transfer land to : player/group" button would solve this issue easily, 99% of SL players deal once a year with this type of menu.

I assume, Jamie, that your posting was a parody of a posting by someone with absolutely no sense of ethics.

It was very well done, very amusing.

You couldn't be more incorrect if you were willfully trying to instead of just playing "the opportunistic troll".

There is a long-standing principle of commercial law, dating back to English common law from centuries ago, that says that sales contracts that are obviously drafted in error are not valid. That is, if I agree to sell you a house worth roughly $100,000 and accidentally write it up as $10,000 the contract can be considered void. This is why you will often find bits like "the amount of $100,000.00 (one hundred thousand dollars)" in sales contracts because it is harder to make a single digit error when you write it in two different forms. Even so, if it was written as "$10,000.00 (ten thousand dollars)" when the property was obviously worth ten times that, the contract would also be voided - and probably be forced to be corrected as protection for both the buyer and the seller.

Nice try, though.

this land thievery happened to a friend of mine, but it's very confusing to noobs and near-noobs.

this is why we need a noob forum, so someone can lay out the steps for safe land transactions and other complicated SL activitites.

Easy fix, have a checkbox "automatically approve if I'm not online".

It's true that if both parties had agreed to a price, and the contract mistakenly included the wrong price, there would be a rectification by law.

However, under the land sales system in SL there is no agreement or contract. The buyer looks at the "sticker price" of a land parcel and decides to either buy or not.

When the seller set the price, it was his/her responsibility to verify the price before hitting the "Set" button.

The buyer doesn't come to an agreement with the seller before making the purchase in SL unless the prospective buyer contacts the seller seeking a discount. The seller has no legal standing to seek to reverse the transaction once the buyer has taken ownership of the land.

With that said, in a perfect world people would seek to help one another. It would be ideal to have sellers looking out for buyers and the buyers looking out for the sellers.

Just one more reason why it is good to get land on someones island, the island owner has 100% control over the land deeding process.

In fact my largest renter has had me change groups for them a couple times and other renters have added some prims without the constant BUYING and Selling of land.

Many island owners dont even require you to BUY land, just pay your tier which is the same as you would pay if u were doing the linden thing

Just my 2 cents. Ive had friends who went through just what you related here and Lindens were not much help unfortunatly.

Buyer beware. I know it sounds cliche but so does every land deal that disappoints one party being called theft.

A lot of talk going on here about old English law and such. The FIRST thing everyone needs to remember is that there is no real law when it comes to land sales; simply process. You click a button to initiate, the buyer clicks a button to complete. You are not happy with the price, forgot to type in that last zero, or even made the mistake of listing land for sale when you were not ready to sell it -- t.s.

Glitch? Perhaps but does anyone expect LL to deal with every whiner who comes to them (for whatever reason) and screams that the system caused this to happen. I worked on help desks for nearly a decade and can tell you that 80% of the time when someone immediately strikes out at the system as causing them grief, it comes back to user error. I'm sure someone with a lot of time on their hands could Google this to get a better estimate of human nature and how we like to mostly blame others for our f-up's.

This is rather ironic because the suggestion that you can buy as opposed to lease estate land from an island owner is widely considered to be misleading. An island owner cannot transfer ownership on a part of their island.

Perhaps you are correct.

Might I draw your attention to a really subtle point that you may have missed?and as you are fond of definitions, I'll even - in the tradition of Socrates - help you a little further:

1. real world - a 4 billion year old hunk of silicates and metals
   
2. second life - a 4 year old collection of information in a computer in california

By the way, what is the price of tea in China at present?

It's very large of you to humbly admit your error. I bow to your selflessness.

The 'glich' always turns out to be user error. They have made attempts to make the land sale tools as foolproof as possible but people will always find some way to make mistakes and screw themselves over. Getting involved in these situations would require extra manpower and the people making these mistakes are generally not the ones that would pay for it.

They care, they just cannot reasonably afford to care more.

I really don't see a problem with the current way to sell land. The people who do are telling us that the system is too confusing and people are making mistakes. Their solutions, though, are to make the system more complicated. More complicated will also be more confusing and more mistakes will be made.

What we need is more education. If we can't educate the newbies on how to sell land before they make mistakes, making the process more complicated won't help. Screwing up and losing a bunch of money sucks, but making things more complicated isn't the solution.

I've screwed up before, but I've been lucky and the vendor I bought from refunded the money without even asking. (If you need trees, shop at Fate Gardens!)

I'm not trying to be unsympathetic, and maybe we can start a charity to help newbies who make big financial mistakes, but changing the rules for the tens of thousands who do understand how to sell land, so the few who don't won't make mistakes isn't the solution.

I agree with you that some of the solutions presented would only serve to make the system more confusing.

However, that's not all that's been suggested. I suggested a simplified land sale window be used, something that cannot be confused, and others suggested a price verification entry.

1. How much do you wish to sell this land for?
2. Please confirm selling price. (duplicate window)
3. When do you want it to go on sale? (date/hr)
4. Who do you want to sell it to (or type in "all"

There may be other pieces of necessary data; I can't think of any right now. That should be a very simple concept that pretty much no one could mess up. One has to wonder why it wasn't done that way in the first place considering it's such an important issue.

It is not only newbies getting caught out, you should take a trip to Sammish and read the huge notecard there from Phil Hatfield the guy that USE to own most of Sammish. 28,000 sq mtrs gone is not a newbie losing out.

I stand humbly corrected. Your proposal makes sense. It would prevent all but the densest of us from screwing up. Of course that would mean that I would need somebody to hold my hand when I sell my land. As long as it's not going to be ReserveBank or any other (LOL) capitalistic legend I should be okay.

You should post this in the features voting part of the website. It's a simple solution to the problem.

Yep that quation set is a good one..and in line with their re-affirming identity and passwords.

in other words you and all like you are just common theaves
correct me if im wrong

Not to go moralistic here, but it's been interesting seeing some of the replies to this thread.

On one hand, people are outraged at the lack of ethics some folks on SL exhibit.

On the other hand, some folks state, "What's wrong with it? It's legal and it's business."

In the second case, I can only state that he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. Some folks don't seem to be able to distinguish between right and wrong and consider that "all is fair in love, war and business". Unfortunately, that attitude also fails to provide the ethical "firewall" that serves to keep us from crossing the line of legality.

If you see how close you can get to a cliff edge without falling over, the slightest wind can make the point. The idea is to stay away from the edge. Then if you trip at all, you're so far this side of wrong that the fall is minor.

Even back in the 90s, society became known as the "me" generation, without consideration for the welfare of fellow-man. That's a shame, because caring for others is part of what makes us civilized. When that care vanishes-- so does civilization. Just ask historians.

K, I'm done soapboxing now.

Lack of Care doesn't destory Civilizations.
Excessive Gov't Destroy's Civilizations..


Source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj14n2/cj14n2-7.pdf

How EXCESSIVE GOVERNMENT KILLED
ANCIENT ROME
Bruce Bartlett
Beginning with the third century B.C. Roman economic policy
started to contrast more and more sharply with that in the Hellenistic
world, especially Egypt. In Greece and Egypt economic policy had
gradually become highly regimented, depriving individuals of the
freedom to pursue personal profit in production or trade, crushing
them under a heavyburden of oppressive taxation,and forcingworkers
into vast collectives where they were little better than bees in a great
hive. The later Hellenistic period was also one of almost constant
warfare, which, together with rampant piracy, closed the seas to trade.
The result, predictably, was stagnation.
Stagnation bred weakness in the states ofthe Mediterranean,which
partially explains the ease withwhich Romewas able to steadily expand
its reach beginning in the 3rd century B.C. By the first century B.C.,
Rome was the undisputed master of the Mediterranean. However,
peace did not follow Rome’s victory, for civil wars sapped its strength.
Free-Market Policies under Augustus
Following themurder ofCaesarin 44 B.C., hisadopted son Octavian
finally brought an endto internal strife with his defeatof MarkAntony
in the battle of Actium in 31 B.C. Octavian’s victory was due in no
small part to his championing of Roman economic freedom against
the Oriental despotism of Egypt represented by Antony, who had fled
to Egypt and married Cleopatra in 36 B.C. As Oertel (1934: 386) put
it, “The victory of Augustus and of the West meant... a repulse of
the tendencies towards State capitalism and State socialism which
might have come to fruition ... had Antony and Cleopatra been
victorious.”
.
.
.
.
In conclusion, the fall of Rome was fundamentally due to economic
deterioration resulting from excessive taxation, inflation, and overregulation.
Higher and higher taxes failed to raise additional revenues
because wealthier taxpayers could evade such taxes while the middle
class—and its taxpaying capacity—were exterminated. Although the
final demise of the Roman Empire in the West (its Eastern half
continued on as the Byzantine Empire) was an event of great historical
importance, for most Romans it was a relief.

Now that would make a fascinating thread all of its own. The study of the decline and fall of Rome is many-fasceted and it's difficult to pin the fall on any one cause, for Rome took several centuries to fall and different degrees of government existed during that time.

It is interesting to note however, the in the book Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of main causal factors is listed as Rome putting an emphasis on sensual pleasures and thereby growing weak. That book is one of the main foundationstones that postulated the concept that as goes the family, so goes civilization. When the family unit becomes corrupt, the government becomes corrupt.

I won't totally sidetrack this thread, but you make some interesting points. However, I still hold that anyone that believes it is ok to destroy one's competition may perhaps be placing "legality" above conscience. Or are we to believe that just because something is "legal" that it's right? I think about 15% of the current prison population would totally disagree with that statement.

Personally, I would say the fall of Rome began the day Caesar
took control away from the Senate and started the era of
Dictatorship. Every ruler thereafter wanted to be Caesar.

Rome's biggest problem is, The State lost control over its
Military. If the Senate had controlled the military to a point
where soldiers didn't hold alliegence to the General, but to
the State, Rome might still exist today.

The golden lesson about Rome, is that a civilization should
NEVER allow the military to become more powerful than the
State. And this lesson holds true today. When a soldier joins
the military, they pledge to uphold the Constitution of the
United States. Not the President, General, or anything else.
They are pledging their support to "The System" we created
that makes up America.

But I am always in awl of the Glory that once was Rome.

theres about as many 'reasons rome fell' as there are people who can make up stories to suit their needs.

People making theese errors ARE paying customers, to own land you have to pay tier, so the people making theese error PAY LL, no tiers no land, maybe i should draw you a chart with explanations...