Is Linden Lab selling or renting land?

I've seen 10 million walked away from. What's your point?

It's not the amount and Anshe may not be investing a lot, but she's still one of LL's biggest customers in terms of financial investment. What's important here is the symbol of LL's desire to create stability for people who wish to seriously commit.

Honestly, if we all started talking total amounts here this business would not exist.

Everything is chump change (and I do mean everything) in terms of the #s, but in terms of social impact and potential to do something significant? It is beyond measure.

That's a legitimate concern. Perhaps LL and Anshe should enter into a contract, with LL promising that they will take over and honor her contracts with other players if she does get hit by that bus.

Perhaps if LL does that for one player, they will do it for all players. That is a wormy can I'm confident they will not get into, as this was suggested in the early days of the selling of Island Sims.

One TOS -> Multiple Players = level playing field, with uniform LL rules.

_/_/

Yes, it certainly would open a can of worms. Which was my point. And that is why I will always buy my land directly from LL.

I think there is a germ of an idea there.

How about - if you want to sell land, you're not allowed to transfer the island to someone else until you have bought out at least 80% of everyone on the island.

Or you can just give it back to LL (say, they'll pay $200) who will take the island over.

I think this will solve the problem of the jerky zoner, as well.

If you push people out of your SIM because you don't like them, you may have a hard time finding new people to buy. And since you have gone down the land selling path, you can't transfer your island out until everyone is bought out, then you'll end up having to give the island back for $200.

Of course, what if you make it so unpleasant people don't want to stay there? Or if you increase your zoning prices?

Hmm, lots of interesting problems.

I personally got tired of all the lag mainland sims have. Tired of putting up a house in a nice spot and then some mall opening up next to me. Tired of having to look out my window to see a 3 story building with bright colors or bad texturing, rude neighbors, and spinning signs with nakkid females showing off their newest skins.

On Anshe land I have none of that, zero I am more then willing to trust in her and keep my peace, have no lag home, no fear of some shopping mall popping up next to me. Not to mentioned tailored sims with themes, parks, and events. Community meetings, nice neighbors and great views.

To me it is not whether I want LindenLand or Anshe Land... the choice was "Lag, fear of ugly mall, rude neighbors or no lag, no malls, and community." This might not be the situation for all main land sims, but it was for my personal experience after buying and then selling 3 different plots of land.

I don't mean to assign anything so strong as "guilt".

It is more a case of not fully taking into account the law of unintended consequences.

Buster

Yeah, and I don't think the issue is ever thinking things through.

Even when you (the royal you, not LL in particular) think something through for a million hours, it can still turn out to be a bad idea.

However, not communicating with an early warning system seems to me a distinct lack of respect for your customers who've committed a lot of resources.

I've read these posts, and then read some more. Several things said make me feel even more so that I would only 'buy' land from Linden Labs.

#1 - Anshe Chung is a GREAT customer for LL, but that does not mean that any one player gets to have special rules just for them. Even if I am 100% sure that Anshe would not leave me in a bind and suddenly sell 'my' land out from under me, any rules have to apply to ALL potential land sellers/leasers. I just don't see the rules as they stand now giving me any protection against a dishonest land seller/leaser.

#2 - Any one person can get "run over by a bus" - or get a divorce where assests must be divided, or get whacked in the head and suddenly turn into Mr. Hyde. I feel that Linden Labs gives me better odds compared to an individual.

#3 - Along the same lines as "run over by a bus" - what would happen should the seller/leaser commit a TOS violation and have their account suspended or revoked?

I don't think there is anything wrong with what Anshe and others wish to do with their sims. I just don't think it is the /same/ as buying land from Linden Labs. Making a clear differance between buying and renting is a solution that I think would be best for the majority of players in SL.

Adding a 'Rent' tab lets not only sim renters list their offerings, but opens up a wonderful way to list various other rentals (malls, hotels, etc) on the main grid.

Thank you very much for this clarification and explanation, Robin. It really makes it a lot clearer what happened and how it happened.

Sounds like a possible and rather unpleasant scenario. One, I would like to point out, is not ruled out by just "flagging" the land differently in the land listings! Wouldn't it make sense to look into this issue some more? For example, wouldn't it be possible to install a kind of "land register" and some restrictions on selling land when there are "land renters" on this land; which probably think of themselves as "owners" or at least "tenants" Such registers were implemented in RL exactly to make similar scams harder or impossible (selling land twice, mortgaging it to high, selling land without mentioning tenancies etc.) This sounds promising and like a feasible solution. I for myself would like to see just one listing with flags for the different kinds of onwership. Maybe a filter function would help, that can be activated to just show one kind.

"just" some restrictions on advertising? such restrictions can have very ... eeehm ... interesting effects on your business. just ask the tobacco or liquor companies or the food industry ...

advertising is very, very, very important for nearly all industries targeting large customer groups. and just now, advertising in SL kinda sucks. yes, i know, we all hate advertising (ok, at least most of us). but it is essential to business. if there was any effective way of reaching all or most residents, the consequences of the announced changes in the land listings would be much less. because the land listings are (nearly cost free) advertising.

the sponsored links are no substitute for a working advertising plattform. as are the billboards in SL. they just dont reach the audience with enough breadth and depth. its not, that i want to see large flash banners in the SL client software. but some system like googles adwords (or something much simpler) in the events and places listings would not be a bad idea at all.

*ducking and putting on his hard hat and the protective goggles, trying to avoid all those bricks and rotten eggs flying at him*

All these concerns about people "getting hit by a bus" are misplaced. The law of averages tells you that. And Anshe has relatives and fellow officers and staff if something happens to her, as do other groups, including mine. So let's not get ridiculous here.

What you tekkies fail to realize who are calculating up all kinds of fake hypotheticals that don't even track given your own mathematically-correct law of averages is non-tekkie Jesse Brearly votes with her gut, like most savvy players. She weighs the chances:

1. Chances that a brick will fall on Anshe's head
2. Chances that an ugly build with spinning crap or other type of sim-lagger or viewblocker will spring up next to me over night

And she does the math, even though you weren't willing to do the math. And her math comes up better than your smarty-pants math, and she votes with her feet, and moves to Ansheland, and God bless her.

See, your failure to use *common sense* and to zoom out to something a little bit larger than yourselves are utterly crippling you -- and the game.

People don't need to be goddamn brain surgeons not only to do the math, but give the back of their hand to big ideas like adding more dumb "sliders" to this already cluttery, non-intuitive UI.

Now, I'm surprised that you also failed to see what Robin is saying:



I wish she'd come out and said that 7 days ago, but I'm happy she's doing that now. She raised something that nobody else thought of, including all the braniacs.

She's pointed out the problem isn't the brick on the head, the problem is the greedy opportunist.

We all know the liklihood of greedy opportunists in our SL law of averages is far, far, greater than in RL where there are f2f consequences, and far, far, greater than that proverbial brick on the head.

Whenever there is a scam or an exploit in a game, there will be plenty of people right there to take advantage of it.

So Robin has persuaded me that her concerns were legitimate and not consciously anti-business.

But then...I have to ask why Robin and other Lindens will not entertain seriously the notion of the Better Business Bureau, player-sponsored, run, administered. Those who have suggested this seriously and directly have no answer to their chief concern: that their efforts to investigate businesses accused in the game of fraud will be held up by those players as "harassment" and used to fling ARs which LL will then use to ban those doing the investigation. A clear read-out on that simply hasn't come from LL>

But hopefully it will come soon. Because you cannot solve the problem of greedy opportunists with hardware alone. You need the software of civil society and its institutions, i.e. player-based institutions with respect that help create the necessary climage of respect as well as criticism and dissemination of "good practices" as well as "bad practices".

*yawn*

switched off when you started spitting the usual insults and bile. you should do that at the end instead of the start if you want people to read.

I agree with you Pham that LL has way, way, WAY too many restrictions on advertising in the game brought on by the allergy to commerce inherent in a relatively small but influential group of players.

I totally agree that LL needs to expand the in-game capacity for normal advertising by changing the tabs and filters on the events board.

I think Robin was talking about restricting advertising due to the problem of fraud.

I'm for dealing with fraud in a different way than she has proposed -- she wants to restrict advertising capacity to disable the ability of fraudsters to buy up islands, sell off pieces of them for access, then disappear with the loot. But I'm for creating the freer advertising capacity, allowing the sale and advertising of islands in this manner, and simply making the buyer beware with notecards. Obviously, buying in Ansheland or Nexusland is not going to lead to that situation of fraud that Robin is concerned about due to the public profile of those players.

But what Robin is going as the game company manager having to look at all those screaming customers who complain they were robbed by fraudsters is try to limit liability. Obviously LL can't do anything when one player robs another, but they can try to limit the playing ground for that to happen by crippling the capacities to make it happen.

I'm for tackling this problem in a way that doesn't cripple capacity, which too often happens in this game. I am for creating the civil institutions that mitigate against it, like a Better Businses Bureau.

You're nailing it right on the head Pham: "just" a change in advertising may mean Anshe is not sure to recoup her 15k USD and see a decrease in value of her 100k USD worth of assets.

Introducing that level of change is not something unheard of from a "government" , where policies introduced for the greater good will have business people scramble to plan B (as you rightly mentioned, tobacco, alcohol, energy, telecom, and LAND, even in RL, all come to mind).

What is unheard of is to do it unannounced and, it seems, in a fairly "experimental", "let's see if it works", "spur of the moment", "who cares about that 15k cheque you cashed last week" way.

That kind of nonchalant treatment of customers, is not encouraging for serious in world investors, to say the least.

Welcome to Second Life - where anything can and probably will happen, just not the way you'd like.

SL is a great place with unlimited opportunity. Don't talk bad about it.


Its GREEEEAAATTT!!!!

This is what we suggest with security scripts, and you attack us endlessly for it.

Why are you so special that you can hold this view and it's ok?

We need rental and conditional sales contracts that are BINDING on both seller and buyer, and enforced by game physics. That would protect both the consumer and the landlord by setting the conditions up front before the sale/lease and insuring that those conditions remain consistant through the term of the contract.

That said, rentals and conditional sales still need to be separated from standard sales. This benefits consumers looking for standard land, but it also benefits those looking specifically for rentals. The only people who lose out are those counting on turning a profit by blurring the distinction between the two... and surely nobody is supporting that sort of fundamental dishonesty.

But it's still a mistake to remove rentals from the For Sale listings before an alternative is implemented... unless the abuse issues are so common as to be harming the game as a whole, in which case the mechanism should be modified immediately rather than merely removing the listings.

Technically, they are both renting, since ownership truly never passes to the new "owner". Both can, whether willingly or through unavoidable circumstances, take back all that they have "sold" you, and you have no rights. This despite the fact that real and significant labor is put into customizing the land you "bought", and that effort is completely destroyed when it it taken back.

If people don't believe this will happen, I'm here to tell you that it happened to me. I had all my land taken from me with no recompense, my build destroyed, and none of it because I violated any TOS, or misbehaved in any way. I paid my fees, obeyed the rules, and had to attend other things for a month. When I came back, the Lindens had taken all my land and destroyed my build. They didn't even send me an e-mail as a warning. Even if they had, a paying customer in good graces should be able to have a brief absence without having all his/her work wiped out and his assets seized and sold off to someone else.

No, it is a rental, and it is a precarious one at that. I pay REAL money to the Lindens to own what I own, and they reserve the right to take it back with no reason.

If you think I want TWO such people or groups with that ability, you're nuts.

I'm sorry, but if someone is reselling land, and is in a position to take it back, the they are not truly selling it, since "ownership" mean ultimate control. While I feel bad for a reseller that gets burned by changing policies in SL, what happens to them is no more that what happened to me, it's just a matter of degree, and the fact that they chose to risk good first life money on something that was completely under someone elses control.

I'm sorry for what Anshe is going through, and would do anything to help out, but there is a degree to which this risk was taken with open eyes. If the Linden's choose to mold policy around Anshe's obvious distress, I have to ask...

Where were they when they took MY land, and (to a much lesser degree I admit) took away everything *I* owned in the game?

Ingot

Well I think it's crazy to make any assumptions when you invest in SL or anywhere. Every time you buy a private island sim, you get an email that contains the following...

"The island can only be transferred as a single parcel. It will not be possible to sell subsections of the island at any time. "

Now until LL tell me this is no longer the case, I am going to assume that this statement still holds.

I have been horrified to learn in this thread that land I find in the "land for sale" system may not be for sale at all.

I expect it to be for sale in the normal SL sense. That is I buy it from a seller who relinquishes all control over it permanently to me, and has no further connection with it. I buy every right he had, and he ends up with none. The only constraints on me to be those imposed by the owners of the game, Linden Labs.

I would be very, very angry to travel to examine land to discover that these full rights were not on offer, I could not "click and buy", and that the price displayed was for something less, or at least different, so that the price which perhaps attracted me was not comparable with other land in the list. As a seller in the list I would be equally angry at this distortion of price comparisons.

I am amazed that it is even possible for land in private sims to be entered in. This must surely have been an oversight by the Linden programmers (quite a bad one) and I would think that using it should be CLASSIFIED AS AN EXPLOIT.

Is this any different from someone finding a way to enter land at zero price without having to honour it ? Then erecting a little notice for when the panting buyer arrives, offering some quite different arrangement? Would that be ok ?

I normally have huge respect for Anshe, but I was astonished that she thinks her own financial stability and marital backup have any relevance to this issue whatever. If she can do it, so can any charlatan with an island. Particular personalities and their individual integrity are absolutely irrelevant.

It is LL's job to protect the ordinary player from being misled. This exploit misleads players, and it should be plugged instantly and first.

Once that is done, then of course, as a separate issue, LL should decide the level of priority to be given to providing a new mechanism. A mechanism to help those who wish to sell and buy informal trust-based leases on land. It looks as though this will be a new trend. A mechanism is needed.

Provided this new mechanism (a new "find" category ? or even just a link to a forum for such offers?) is given priority (think of everything else we want done, though) it could surely be ready in 7-10 days. In this case Anshe's financial loss due to the delay will be relatively small. This she would have to accept. She did after all rush to use the "exploit" while I saw at least two more cautious land-barons searching for clarification in the forums before risking a significant stake.

I am not terribly pleased that Anshe has in effect managed to "jump the queue" on feature priorities here, using her financial muscle to force everybody's hand for an early feature just because she launched into reliance on this exploit on such a grand scale.

Other things we all DO want will be delayed for this feature, in which I suggest most of us have no interest at all. How would it have fared, for instance, in the feature vote ?

That is what has REALLY happened here. Anshe has used her muscle (maybe unconsciously) to jump the queue for something that land barons want, but most of us don't.



_______________________________________________________

Edit:

Anshe has asked me to withdraw any implication that she is involved in exploiting. I am happy to do so. I use the word exploit here as in the technical computing sense of using a feature of the software in an unintended way. Just as I myself used the "phantom avatar exploit" to avoid getting trapped in rezzing buildings, for months until it was eliminated. I think Anshes new sims are to be applauded, as is the addition of more choice on methods of holding land. I just want transparency, and for quite different things not to be confused together.

Things have moved on since this post, and there is something else here I should correct. I believed when I posted this that a decision had been taken to urgently modify the Land Sales listing to accomodate the trading of what I suggest we call "leases". Thus hopping over other waiting feature improvements for which we had all voted. I am now not so sure this is going to happen, and Anshe tells me that LL has made a "conscious decision" to continue to allow lease offerings into the undifferentiated Sales Listings, at least for the time being. I am lost. We need Linden clarification.

An up-to-date discussion of these issues is under way at
/130/99/44468/1.html#post471820

I think there are two competing interests, two needs.

Nobody wants to be surprised to learn that the land that they just found has restrictions they don't want.

But on the other hand, some people WANT to buy land with restrictions so that they won't have to deal with big cubes of death that block out the sun, or rotating particle spewing casino signs next door.

Anshe doesn't want to fool unsuspecting people. But she doesn't want her land to be completely invisible either.

Everyone should put away their indignation and give Linden a little room to come up with a solution that meets both needs.

Buster

Well, one of the reasons it is profitable is that it is meeting a demand of the users.

The obvious conclusion is the basic level of service that Linden Research, Inc provide does not meet everyones requirements and that there is a market for add value services such as those Anshe is providing.

Perhaps Linden could look at other ways of adding support for 3rd Party service providers while adding extra protection for the user.
Things such as extra support and policies on land eg where if a 3rd party provider drops out the island reverts back to Linden and normal tier for example.
Giving the 3rd party supplier options to set caveats and deeds on land restricting their ability to resell entire islands without a suitable period of notice.
And looking at ways to handling land ownership disputes and fraud.

I feel there is more thought required here.....