I don't think this issue has been thought out well enough or discussed enough in the LL offices. Here, for example, are the counterpoints to Andrew's concerns:
1. "It would be difficult to enforce: some individuals play in SL like they are a corporation, and some corporations would be using SL in the same way that many individuals do. How someone uses their region might change over time from 'individual' behavior to 'corporate' behavior. Where to draw the line?"
Drawing the line is simple:
. If someone is using their land to advertise real-world businesses and services, for use in the real world and sold to people not even in SL, they would get the corporate rate.
. If someone is using their land only to promote virtual goods and services, not even existing outside of SL, only to other SL avatars, they would get the resident rate.
It's easy to enforce. Does the product/service exist in the real world, or not?
If the land use should change, the rate would change also.
2. "Since the line will not be clear the policy would probably open up a new channel of petitions and complaint that we would have to deal with, where somone complains that someone else is doing corporate things but is recieving an individual's rate, and the other way around."
The set of problems you have to deal with might be worse if you don't.
Residents might complain they are being charged the same to sell pixel products to other avatars for peanuts as multimillion-dollar, multi-national corporations such as Nissan and Nike are charged to use SL to advertise their real-world cars and clothes and make a big splash in the press.
The fact that these corporations actually give away their pixel cars or clothes is another clear indication that their land use is far different from ours.
3. "It would generate a lot of "Linden Answers" posts asking us why do we have a tax/penalty on corporations, which would all be harder to answer than this question."
I don't think so.
By the same token, people might ask why individual residents have a "tax/penalty" that educational and charitible institutions do not. Harvard, with all its resources, gets a discount on land that we don't.
So far, no one has asked that, but that's because a tier system of land purchase and tier payments makes sense in the first place. Now it needs to be expanded.
Then, too, these real-world companies are not here to create ill will among residents, or generate bad press. If they start getting that, they may rethink their SL presence.
Could you take these comments into consideration and revisit these issues within the LL offices, and get back to us?
Thank you,
coco
Edit: Thank you, Kelly, for your response. Here are my answers to the situations you bring up:
- Many SL services that only sell stuff in SL have presences outside of SL - many have their own websites! Does having a website violate the "not even existing outside of SL" clause and bump you to commercial rates?
- What if you make money from the site with advertising of real world goods or services?
- What if you make money from the site with advertising of real world goods or services?
- If you made money on your website by advertising the real-world goods and services of others on that website only, your SL land use would still be at resident rate. Regardless of how you subsidize your sale of SL products and services, if the land in question involves only virtual-world products/services, it would be charged at resident rate. Land use is what's key.
- What if you use cafepress or similar to print and sell shirts, mugs etc based on your SL leetness? Does that bump you to commercial rates?
- Yes. The land use rate would change to commercial rate when you go into the real world with your product/service.
- slboutique has an entire category of real life goods, does that mean they, and anyone using their service, must pay commercial rates for their land?
- Yes, they would pay commercial rates (and commercial is a MUCH better name for what I have been calling corporate rates, thank you!) for any land used as headquarters for slboutique, if slboutique helps sell the real-world products of real-world businesses.
- If, however, slboutique had different SL lands for the different divisions - one for the sales of real-world goods and one for the sale of SL-only goods and services - then the two lands would be charged at the different rates. In general, if they are selling Northern Toilet Tissue on the slboutique site, then slboutique gets classified as a commercial entity. When mixed, the commercial rate always trumps.
- An example: Anthony Avatar has two "stores" in SL. One of them sells only pixel products to SL avatars - skates, scripts, and the like. The other is a showcase for his real-world developing company, which may be contracted with by real-world businesses such as Nissan, Nike, etc., to build their SL lands. His first store would pay tier (and buy islands) at residential rate; his second, at commercial rate.
- If I sign up for an amazon affiliate account (or whatever they are called these days) and decide to supplement my island fees with a small book store in the corner of my island that links to my account - while 95% of my land is a free theme park - would that bump me to the commercial bracket?
- If a person wishes to include something real-world commercial to fund their SL-only enterprise, then they should purchase different land for their SL-only enterprise, or be bumped to the commercial rate for that land. The person would have no"right" to put the little corner of commercial activity onto their resident land, anymore than a real-world car company would have the right to call their land residential merely because they happen to offer some free land or other diversions to residents on it.
- What if an island owner rents to someone who has a real world business related to their SL business? Does that bump the island owner into the commercial bracket? What if it is an alt of the island owner?
- Obviously, Nissan could get a friend to "rent" to them their entire island, couldn't they? A real-world business - however small - would be required to operate their commercial activity out of separate, commercial land. If, however, the owner of Nissan wants to rent land for either his own home, OR to sell his sideline of non-Nissan products for use only in SL ("Sam's Sultry Swimwear"
then he would do that at resident rate. - The operating principle is the same as it is right now for educational institutions like Harvard. Harvard cannot, and would not, rent land from a resident to use to promote Harvard and expect to get a discount. The key is the land use.
- It would be impossible to track everything that every island owner is doing with their land and on the internet or elsewhere in the real world. This is just plain not feasible. It is also impossible for us to always be able to reliably tie the two realities together.
- It's really not difficult to do at all. It's no more difficult to do than to determine if someone really is an educational institution - less difficult by far, in fact. It is quite easy to verify whether a business's product exists in the real-world or not.
I do hope LL will consider such a tier differentiation, which I think is only fair, and easily differentiated in the vast majority of cases.
coco
To be clear, as I said in the other post, I could easily go along with Szentasha's answers. Not everone's.