De-Listing Land on Private Sims does not protect Residents from Fraud

there were at least two large disscussions going on (they are still going on), about the proposed changes to the land listings - not listing land for "sale" in private sims. see /130/57/44117/1.html and /130/99/44468/1.html. current consensus in this discussions seems to be, that it is ok to list parcels on private sims - but to flag it clearly as being a different kind of deal than buying from the lindens.

i still worry about the original reason cited by Robin about their intend behind the decision to de-list the land on private sims, though:Robin is perfectly right. this is a very valid reason to have a concerned look at sales on private sims. but ...

just de-listing those parcels does not protect us from that kind of fraud! it may be a little harder for the fraudster to find someone who is buying/renting from him. but the scheme is possible still.

much more effective scam-protection then the curent plan for de-listing would be a way to protect buyers of land on private sim - and buyers of private sims with land owners on it, too. i am not sure if this would work or if its to big an effort to implement, but, wouldn't a land register be a good idea, where every ownership (or "leasehold" if you like that better), is listed?

this might go together with an addition of the TOS, stating clearly that when you buy an island you buy all the contracts of owners/leaseholder with that island. which is like buying property with leases on it in RL ...

yes. and we all have to have a face to face with each other irl with our lawyers present to sign the deeds.

Look, face it. As long as there are (a) people and (b) money in Second Life, fraud is possible.

Please lets not tie up the whole place in heaps of red tape and crippled functionality in case one of the few bad apples might try defrauding someone. I'd rather that individual cases were dealt with on the merits of the case than punish everyone in advance to try and kerb it. People don't become assholes *because* there is potential to defraud. They were obviously assholes anyway!

Kris, you are ABOLUTELY right. maybe the idea is to buraucratic. but land and land ownership is getting very important to some residents. otherwise the discussions about it would not be so heated.

and it just occured to me, that the medicine the lindens would like to prescribe does not cure the cause - and maybe not even the symptoms in this case. at least the first prescription

I don't see why this needed a separate thread, especially when it is something that didn't happen yet -- there are no allegations of any actual fraud having occurred.

All that's occurring is Anshe's business is being crippled by the anti-business and hate-landbaron climate in SL which spawns numerous attack dogs to gnaw and harry her and others wishing to provide alternatives to grief-prone land on the mainland.

I quite understand the principles at stake for the Lindens -- they can't accept a situation where people grab and resell islands out from under people. But maybe they should have made private islands parcelable then? And in fact, isn't that what this latest patch was supposed to do, make it possible to deed parts of islands to people rather than being stuck with the whole island?

There can't be leases as in RL because you are selling real estate, you're selling virtual estate. The entire thing becomes a chimera when the server is down or if LL goes out of business.

As for listing of real estate transactions, I'm all for that concerning Linden auctions. The auction only goes back 5 days -- customers should be able to access its entire history and search on names of bidders.

As for every single in-world transaction, I think that could be overwhelming. I once tried to keep track of transactions just in one sim -- it's very difficult. Not only do land parcels change hands numerous times, when a land dealer is parceling land and moving it in and out of groups, numerous $0 transactions have to take place -- in fact these are all poor workarounds to what I hope will be a more robust set of land developer tools in the game that have things like maps of the sims, the ability to do a first cut and see how it looks with view corridors, etc. before pressing for a final cut throughout the sim, etc. etc.

In RL, we have deeds we can access at city hall, but the administration and staffing of such a system is significant time and labour resources, and this game hasn't evolved to that point yet.

First, there has to be a clear-cut, unambiguous attitude toward land ownership. Currently there is too much ambivalence about it and lack of protection of land ownership rights in general.

prok, maybe you are right and i did not need to start a seperate thread. actually i don't want to make this mouse bigger than it is.

i just found it kinda funny that the "solution" proposed for this (at least potential) problem is one that does nothing to prevent the fraud that was - plausibly - cited as the reason for the proposed change. the other threads seemed to focus to much on the question "how can you call this 'selling' land?"/"of course this is a sale"; which i find somewhat boring after the 17th repetition

i am not sure, but it should be rather easy to at least extract the "normal" transactions regarding land out of the linden servers. their db-servers know exactly who (person or group) is owning which parcel. a land register with only "current" ownerships is not much more than a SELCT statement. if they store historical data, i don't know.

if the system would support rentals and "sales with restrictions" (or leases, like some like to call it) in the UI, a register, that lists who is renting "leasing" what would be just as easy to extract.

I'm just not sure they want to handle all that data, given that in the normal course of parceling a sim for sale, and then running a rentals business, I find that you set land to sale for $0 and move it around hundreds of times. Like some tenants want to add parcels, subtract parcels. Or you might sell some piece on the corner to a neighbour. Or move it into another land group which has the tier to cover it. All those $0 sales just clog up the system I would think. Maybe you could just run some macro to take the $0 out, of course.

Currently, land groups show every parcel deeded to the group by members or purchased for the group. So there's a handy list right there of the land, the title/name you put on it, and the sim it's in. If they could add coordinates, so much the better. So if the system can do that, it can add a toggle to show that it is rented.

You're right, delisting the island rental parcels did nothing about the potential for fraud, but it did do something very important for the Lindens: It keeps them from being a party to and sponsor of any potential fraud.

For heavens sake guys ?
Adding more features to regulate private island owners "selling" their land ?

DONT YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT PRIVATE ISLANDS ARE ?

They are sold to us CHEAP ($981 instead of about $1600) PRECISELY because they are LESS TROUBLE to the Lindens. Not more.

Only ONE OWNER. Less trouble, far fewer payments to collect, less database. LESS trouble.

They are an extra benefit for those who want privacy.

If they become MORE TROUBLE, why should the bargain price persist?

You want to lose the option to have one of your own, because people are complicating everything by stirring up demands on the Lindens ? You want to pay $1600?

It does a bit more than that, Ananda.
We can put into a special category any land arrangements where you have to trust, and obey, another anonymous player . We can then more easily warn and educate new players about how different this is, and the extra risks involved. Explaining the benefits can be entrusted to the sim owner, I'm sure.

Who is We? Are you Nicholas II?

You can put a paragraph in a notecard for newbies, you can just explain to them the deal as I've done in other threads or as I do in game, without making a federal case of it.

We the community. Through the Lindens. By pressuring and supporting them about building warnings into the system. Through forums like this. And postings like this.

As (perhaps, we'll never know) we pressured and supported them into deciding that "leases" should not be mixed in amongst true land sales. Hopefully they'll find time to increase the category list soon, so that leases can be advertised too, but separately (also ordinary mainland rentals, in their own category).

Ugh. This is why we don't need "direct democracy". If this is "directo democracy," hello history, give me back fascism again.

Ugh. YOU the community? But you are NOT that. You're just one interest group in it. I'm just one interest group in it. Why the hell do you think you represent it? I don't make that claim. That's silly.

YOU get to pressure the Lindens? Why? You and your land group with its alts? What do you represent?

I hope the Lindens were NOT whipsawed by this phony uproar created by alts of older players and older players themselves with a demonstrated historical biase toward landowners. If they did that, I'm disappointed.

I don't think the Lindens will be fixing that land list any time soon. They aren't motivated. They are "hearing the community" which comes in the forum of clamours of one persistent voice on the forums. I see in this thread quite a few people who don't agree with you. I know behind their backs are hundreds more who think this whole thing is ridiculous.

Why don't you show as much zeal about fighting against REAL problems?

The true community is voting with their feet and their Linden$. It is landrush time in "Ansheland". The last time I looked at world map there were more people playing there than on the new continent that Magelan Linden discovered.

This is the true democracy that exist in Second Life: consumer democracy. Feted Beta Crownies' "concerned" phone calls to Linden Lab or the small minority of us forum posters are far less representative than vast majority of residents who want nothing more than choices and the ability to vote with their money.

I appreciate your ideas though. Just do as favor and remember that we are only tiny fraction of the community and none of us speak for the community at large.

Well said.

However, it's a fine balance. Private Island selling should be strongly supported in LL but in a way that doesn't harm the Linden brand or cause too much in the way of support headaches.

Private Island zoning / selling *is* the future. There is no doubt about that in my mind. For LL to not support this would be a huge mistake on their part.

However, I can understand why they do not want to get up in the crossfire.

They also have to do it without screwing up pricing stability (previous investments by their current player base).

Cronies? Or Crownies? LOL. Either one works for me, as I can see them all in their tiaras.
Well, I have a tiara too on my Nubian Princess outfit so there.

Anshe is right. Some other moths and I swarmed around the new continent the other night and we were hard put to find very many green dots. I looked at the map, and so bunches piling up in Ansheland. Just an anecdotal impression.

You know something? If the Lindens need to do a little more CS to prevent p2p abuses and the price goes up to $1600, that doesn't bother me lol. They're a steal now. They compete with the mainland. Let them go up in price if they need more CS. That isn't going to stop anybody like Anshe from getting them and selling them at a profit.

One thing that puzzles me is why Anshe had to price her 4096s, say, at only $19999 even for prime mature waterfront or mountain view. The private islands are going to be so much of a value to people, in theory. Why charge way less than the Purina Dog Chow that they might end up with in the mainland?

That has puzzled me for a long time. And I figured Anshe just had to charge lower precisely becaues people wouldn't get it, wouldn't understand the deal, and only by offering that really attractive price could she get people to overcome the hurdle.

um...blaze? Could we go over again the part where you show there is a crossfire anywhere except on the forums? Do you have a lits of trouble tickets? Are you in this business? Are you talking to Lindens about entering it? Does Anshe have a list of trouble tickets? Has *anybody* found a list of faked-out, deluded customers?

The answer is: no.

Well like many have said, its not the initial cost that consumers look at its the teir. A friend is renting on one of Anshe's new sims and paid the 20k. But they also pay $25 USD I believe monthy. So Anshe could rent out 16 of these per sim at $25 a month and only need to rent out half a sim to break even. Of course that figure doesnt include the intial $80 per 4k plot she gets on for the initial sale (assuming 20k L$ is worth $80 USD) which also amounts to $1280 if all plots are eventually sold and that more than covers the inital $1000 USD sim price. Its very tempting to jump into this market but like others said you'd have to spend alot of time and probably buy multiple sims to give it more of a true community feel to make people want to rent/sublease.

But this service does help the customer in several ways. First off they dont have to pay the $9.95 a month to hold land so they can use basic accounts (the one time fee one right?). So by going thru Anshe they avoid it and save $10 per month and only pay the same teir price for 4096m to Anshe. Plus they have a zoned community and can avoid some of the issues around the mainland. Also they can sell their land (right?) and recoup some of the initial 19,999 L$ they spent.