Buyer Beware!!!!

There are ways of holding land from the owner of a private sim, and they are valid and of value. The only question is what these methods of landholding should be called.

LL have a long-standing definition of "land-ownership", described in the official documentation, registered on LL servers, and supported with automatic capability in the software and interface.

Are the private island landholding methods different from this ? Yes, on each point.

Are these differences big enough to necessitate a different name, to prevent confusion over the different procedures, methods, powers, obligations ? I say YES.

I really cannot see any reason why anyone rational should disagree, unless to gain advantage. Look how very different the two things are. How differently they start and end. The different things an "owner" needs to do. The very different person he must obey.

It does not matter what either is called, so long as they are named differently to avoid confusion. But LL preempted (and built in) the "sale" and "purchase" language (its only a metaphor after all, not the real thing) when they built the platform.

The simowners should therefore adopt different language, out of respect for LL, and to avoid misleading the uninformed. "Selling a lease" would seem suitable, if you want an RL metaphor, but that's all it is, and its an arbitrary choice. Just needs to be something different.

Why just a couple of land barons adamantly refuse to avoid this misleading language you must decide for yourselves. I saw big money being made from this confusion, particularly with the infamous "first 11 sims". If I see someone defiantly insisting on spreading confusion. If I see them making money because of it. Then I draw the natural conclusion.

It's not rocket science. I do something. I make money because of it. That's normally why I did it. Particularly if I ignore multiple arguments and appeals to stop, and even a clear ruling from the management that this is properly called "renting".

And here, now, when Alliez finds someone new starting the same game, there is a clear duty to speak out.

Island land cannot be divided and sold, if we use the only definition of "sold" recognised by LL and by the software in their servers, and in our clients. This cannot be reiterated too often.

Must your interpretations be so literal. You can't even fathom where I'm going with that?


I in no way suggested that this practice is wrong, but you surely can see that the terminology is confusing to people?

That's perfect, if you are experienced. I'm sure all the new accounts are happy to hear this.

if LL creates a contract that defines and treats their leasing of server resources as a land sale and you agree to it,

it is just as valid as if

you create a contract that defines and treats your subleasing of that land to me as a land sale and i agree to it.

I don't see anyone saying that these ways of holding land are not legitimate. People can reach any agreement they like.

The question is only, are they sufficiently "not EXACTLY THE SAME" to need different names in SL terminogy. My answer is a huge, resounding YES.

Would you like me to list the differences, Jauani ? Any Newbie would regard them as EXTREMELY significant, not a little detail at all.

The confusion is introduced gratuitously. Money is apparently being made from it, even now. Certainly was in the past, big time. Motives are therefore very, very suspect.

isn't this why LL made sure that the two lands don't appear in teh same place?

isn't it more an issue of a seller relating to their customer that there is a difference,...

... that buying a vcr, a house, and a condo are different from each other, then to say that only buying a vcr is a real purchase?

from my understanding, the differences are clearly outlined in notecards and websites of the businesses reselling island sim land.

how is it that from the dozen sims that azure owns and the 4 dozen that dreamland owns, only a handful of players have appeared on the forum to have a problem, and on inspection, it's clear these players are just using the forum for coercion. how is it that the real problem is not from consumers, but from competitors and uninvolved observers.

how is it that azure and dreamland have filled a combined 60+ sims with residents and over teh last half year they are still holding down tenants if it's a scam? do you mean to tell me that they are surviving on a fast turnover?

Jauani. NONE OF THEM is a real purchase. The words are just metaphors, to make things easier to handle with our RL knowhow. Other words could easily be chosen. Different things need different words.

None of these deals is a real purchase. We just need to choose easy names for them. And different things ( ie sufficiently different in practical handling) need different names to be chosen, or people can get confused.

Maybe other people are saying holding land in Dreamland is inferior or wrong, but I don't listen. I am not saying that. Most here are objecting to how these deals are being described, not objecting to what they are. Don't lets get muddled.

Misleading descriptions, not wicked landholding methods.

Nobody uses the forums.
The problem only becomes evident to people who "bought in" without complete knowledge if they need to sell.
Why do you insist a plea to change terminology is calling this a scam?
Must a potential issue reach the point of a completely flooded city before we think about a minor change in practices?

ok so if the issue is about misleading names, then perhaps LL should let 3rd party businesses manage grids of their own with similar flexibility.

players can be made aware that they are buying land from a different company. LL can concentrate on doing what they do best - developing the platform.

clearly there is a demand for zoning and community building. clearly LL cannot manage that demand.

clearly the push should be in making it easier for community builders to manage their ventures with less confusion so it can focus on content and service than to be limited to the current situation where it is a cutthroat business competition of tier arbitrage between grinders.

Isn't that what Stage Coach Island did?

Yes, now, after months of people screaming and demanding it.You discredit yourself with remarks like this, Jauani. That's not clear to me at all. Has it ocurred to you that once someone "owns"land in dreamland, it is hugely against their personal interest to "badmouth" the landholding model, or question whether it can be honestly called a "sale". They won't get far advertising to sell their own as a "lease", will they? Once you join in - its immediately in your interests to be complicit in the misleading language, even if subconsciously.Of course living in dreamland is not a scam. It has lots of advantages, and disadvantages, compared with the mainland, and is very popular, with many happy "owner/tenants".

Mind you, the only advantage over renting in another private sim (eg from Hiro) is that you have the possibility of capital gain on resale. Though on Anshe's own admission in forum, it hasn't happened yet to her knowledge. That is the only value of paying this unnecessary upfront deposit. I'm not sure many people realise this is just an optional gamble on a rise in lease resale prices, with a 35% loss on resale being apparently the norm.

However, we are not objecting to the existence or value-for-money of this form of landholding, but to dodgy sales practice. More in the past than now. Though we still live with the legacy, as each new generation needs to learn that sometimes "buying" can mean two entirely different things, only one of which matches the LL documentation.

Why, why, why is all this complicated explanation necessary, when clear use of language could so easily have avoided it? Huge commercial advantage to the landlord in the early stages, thats why. Not so significant now it all has to be explained properly.

This is precisely it. LL is unable and unwilling to manage the community. So they leave it up to people like Anshe to do it, and then they handicap her with silly prouncements about who is selling and who isn't.

And yeah, I know, Hiro / Alliez / etc are renting but seriously, how much money are they making? Are they real, ongoing concerns that pay the mortgage and bills or just "second life" type businesses?

can we expect stagecoach schwanson anytime soon?

blaze is an alt. His point has no validity. Very suspicous though.

Now here I agree, Jauani. They will get round to this, be patient. Then Anshe can pay them to write her own modifications to the GUI, and there will be no danger of confusion - you will subscribe through Anshe, she will be your LL. In her grid you will buy only from her, as far as her servers are concerned. Though I wonder how she will respond if I set up as a private landbaron, and claim I am "selling land" exactly as she is, even though her "sales" will be supported by her GUI, and her server database, and her documentation, and mine will not ? It'll be interesting to see how she handles it, wont it ?

It will come, but it's not yet. In the interim we need to avoid gratuitous confusion.

1. While yes, it would be in my best interest not to "badmouth" this landholding model, that is not why I say the things I do in threads like this. I say them because I believe them to be true.

2. "Leasing" won't cut it as a term either, Elle. Because it is far less like leasing than it is like buying. When you lease a car, that car isn't yours to sell when you get tired of it. When you buy land from Azure Islands, it IS yours to sell when you get tired of it. Thus "leasing" is an even more misleading term than "selling." VERY much less accurate.

3. I would venture to guess that the vast majority of the people buying land from private Sim owners do understand what they are getting into. There are notecards to explain it, and there are the land-sellers themselves to explain it. We already have a non-random, selected population here, as you have to be fairly smart just to play SL in the first place. Secondly, most people aren't non-savvy consumers. They know to read the notecards and to ask questions. Plenty of questions, if they don't understand something.

Overall, though there are people who still don't understand how it works, despite the best efforts of the land-sellers, I would guess that most people have a very good idea what they are buying when they buy from them.

Similarly, some people don't understand what is going on with buying land from Lindens, either, and think they can just turn THAT land back in for money. But the vast majority of people do understand it.

I know it is more difficult to understand these land-buying arrangements than it is to understand the more user-friendly process of buying land from the Lindens. But I don't find that to be the fault of the land-sellers. I think they do an overall pretty good job of making sure their purchasers know what they are getting into, despite the fact that the system itself makes this innovative arrangement more tricky to understand.

coco

Thankyou, Coco - calm and rational disagreement

I don't really want to get sucked into RL parallels, and the degree of fit for the metaphors we may use. I think thats where most of the trouble and disgreement comes from. These things are virtual, and have no genuinely close real world counterparts. Their names are just arbitrary symbols to help us manipulate them. None of it is really owned, or rented. Nothing is teleported, our entire inventories are just symbols indexing methods for generating graphical symbolic representations.

But if I join in the "similarity game" just for a moment, the "lease" metaphor is certainly a fairly good candidate for what we need. The "sell" word has already been assigned to something significantly different, just as I cannot register to join as "Cocoanut Koala".

In RL, leases for houses and particularly for commercial property are indeed bought and sold as objects of value, with the relationship with the rent-receiving still-land-owning landlord being transferred with them. He can repossess if the lease terms are violated, and write in his own rules of conduct. Values can rise or fall dependent on the market, and the tenant can sell his lease for any price he can get. As you see. A pretty close fit.

Interestingly, in the UK, if you examine property title deeds you will be amazed to discover that legally every square foot still belongs to Her Majesty the Queen, and that you only hold it on various forms of permanent sub-ownership. Usually in "fee simple". Bit like LL. Yet, in the same way, because its the Monarch, and it's everybody in the same boat, it is spoken of as true "ownership". Again, just as with LL, our "monarch". Anyone who tried to set up in competition, holding onto registered legal ownership while claiming to "sell" it to others would quickly find themselves on trial for fraud. Claiming "I'm only doing exactly what the Queen is doing" would not cut much ice.

Isn't it a fascinating parallel ? Ain't the world wonderful ?

And every square inch here belongs to the king - King Philip!

But if you want a better terminology, the best choice is to say "buy from private seller" or "sold by private seller" rather than lease.

That would leave the term "sell" free, as it always was, to mean sell.

To be most accurate, "buy from private seller" would be the most accurate, or, if you wanted to be really careful, "buy from private seller and not from Linden Labs."

The problem here isn't really in something being the wrong term. It's more something being the right term, made "wrong" only in this context, where there are actually two kinds of selling that actually don't exist in the real world. Until they make infrastructure to support both these kinds of selling, it will stay a problem..

coco

(My bolding)
Now this is where we disagree. I think it is exactly and precisely their fault, or rather the fault of the one who first defiantly insisted on using the words "land sale" in the face of multiple objections and at the very least a Linden terminology ruling. If another suitable word had been used threequarters of the "more tricky to understand" would never have arisen in the first place, and wouldn't be still bugging newcomers now.

One word, for two things which are very different in practical matters of creation and transfer, and obligations and realtionships etc. Its an invitation for confusion. It should have been nipped in the bud right from the start.

lease (lēs) pronunciation
n.

1.
1. A contract granting use or occupation of property during a specified period in exchange for a specified rent.
2. The term or duration of such a contract.
2. Property used or occupied under the terms of such a contract.

v.tr., leased, leas·ing, leas·es.

1. To grant use or occupation of under the terms of a contract.
2. To get or hold by such a contract.

--

When you lease something it can, in turn, be sublet

--

sub·let (sŭb'lĕt') pronunciation
tr.v., -let, -let·ting, -lets.

1. To rent (property one holds by lease) to another.
2. To subcontract (work).

n. (sŭb'lĕt')

Property, especially an apartment, rented by a tenant to another party.

--

At best, the resident is _leasing_ land from a private island or estate owner. At worst, they are _sub-leasing_. But either way, even if it's transferable, as ownership isn't involved, it's a lease.

Ownership IS involved. That is why it isn't a lease. When you sell the land, you get to keep the money. You sell the land. Not the person who "sold" it to you.

The only difference is the degree of honor involved. The contracts - absent any kind of binding contract for one individual to give another player full rights over a piece of land, in return for a price - between two players depend to a great deal on the honor of those involved.

Honor that the person who sold you the land isn't going to turn around and take it back for no reason, or abscond with it.

Those "sellers" of private land are successful precisely because they are honorable in this way.

Absent the game structure to promote this isn't sufficient reason to start calling it a "lease," which would imply that you don't own the land; i.e., you cannot sell it when you wish, at whatever price you wish, and pocket the proceeds.

I'll tell ya the truth, having lived in such an arrangement myself for some months now, and having plenty of faith in the honor of the guys who sold it to me - I in no way see this as in any possible, comprehensible fashion akin to renting or leasing.

It's mine, and I own it. I pay tier to Nexus Nash rather than the Lindens. Same thing - I'd be paying tier either way. When I want to sell it, I will. I have rented before. I could not sell that place I rented when I moved out.

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Ellie, think of it this way: If nothing else, all this discussion about the terminology helps land-sellers think even more carefully about how they present this arrangement to potential buyers, and that is always good.

coco

Alliez, I know this guy personally. He told me you said you were gonig to start a thread about it so I looked. And well here it is. It is not illegal to sell your land on that sim. He had to pay full price for that land. The only reason you are mad is he istaknig away your customers. And maybe if you hadn't of sat there whinning he wouldn't have ejected you.

Alliez, The land is bought you can pay the tier with lindens or pay pal. Unlike renting ou CAN resell the land to any1 else willing to pay the tier in LINDENS or PAYPAL. Just have to go and make a big deal about it.

Well and to think I didnt say who you were! You did it yourself.

According to LL private estate owners can not sell any part of the estate UncleBob. Not a big deal at all. This is what LL says not me. Maybe the rules will be changed, I dont know but for those of us who follow the letter we receive when we purchase an estate, to say I can sell land is not true. I am talking of estates not the mainland.