Stop Thief!

Or you have no system in place for cashing the L$ back out, or for dealing with the tax implications of same.

It would be a nightmare to wind up having to pay higher National Insurance and fill in a tax return every year because once way back I had income from a "Virtual Land Business" that made one sale.

Or maybe the effort of taking a couple of dollars worth of Lindens out of a game isn't worth it. Most people play SL with play money they don't care about 100 or 300 lindens this way or that they'll spend more than that on prim shoes. I care about L$100, I care about it dozens of times a day. It's a bit like that guy from Superman III.

Designing consumer protections around people being able to dump 16 SQM meter plots for 1L is ....

Stupid.


The "abandon land" button is already there.

The smallest parcel any consumer protections should take into account is 512 sqm.

Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor)... it's called "salami slicing"... it's what inspires the scheme in Office Space. Taking the fractions of a cent from transactions and depositing them in an account. It's a kind of "skim."

As you're not taking a fraction from someone else's transaction you're actually concerned about "strong incrementals"... small quantities of Linden dollars which accumulate steadily over time. "Weak incrementals" accumulate, but can't manage to accumulate quickly enough to beat the rate of inflation (fail to make it up in volume).

That was so off the original topic, it boggles the mind. But if it keeps Landb-ron
M-rlin's name high on the forum list and in front of people, so they can boycott him or put pressure on LL to ban him, I am happy.

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. You say people intentionally set their land for sale to anyone. It's only logical that everyone can and will buy it if you set it for sale to anyone, isn't it? An additional warning message with two simple Yes / No buttons should be more than enough to let them rethink their choice.
Anything further will needlessly annoy the people who sell land on a regular basis. If that's not enough for SL interface-challenged newbies, they can't be helped (I've been there too and had no problem to figure out the pretty obvious interface options).



This must be the first proposal to make an SL feature more inconvenient and annoying to handle. Software should make things easier, not harder. SL is a communication and market platform, not a WoW-like MMORPG for masochists who will happily click 20 extra buttons because it makes a brainless game more "demanding" or "challenging".



I personally would give it back, but you can't expect people in an economy like SL to return a ware because the seller claims that it wasn't really for sale. If that becomes common practice, people can't buy anything in SL without fearing that the merchant demands a return of his ware because he got the price or permissions wrong. In RL we have laws against such business practices: if someone advertises a ware and forgets a zero in the price, the customer can demand the ware for the advertised price, mistake or not.



Honestly, what did you expect? Your proposal sounds like "Newbies intentionally sell prim objects with full permissions, without being aware that everyone can copy it, so let's make it very hard and annoying to create freebies".

It's really easy: first, be aware that you deal with real monetary values in SL. Everyone should realize this after their credit card has been charged for purchasing L$. Second, read tutorials and guides or ask someone if you aren't exactly sure how things work. Third, when attempting to sell or buy something for larger amounts of money, be sure to double-check all settings and permissions. That's all it takes. If someone can't do that, they're in for a "Doh!" experience.

It's nice to see that the average intelligence in the forums is increasing. Makes me glad I check back now and then. Let me just say that I'm not too interested in the definition of the TOS, since LL are not too interested in getting involved in these situations anyway. What I am interested in is what is right and fair, and what should be done by any responsible management.









I've seen people write numerous times that something is plain wrong even though its not illegal. I argue against those things when it is a thinly disguised excuse to limit civil liberties, and when there is no victim, and when the "wrongdoer" has no intention of hurting anyone.

This is not one of those cases. This is a case where certain people write code designed to take advantage of people moving in a hurry, with the intention of basically stealing their homes. There is a villain. And there is a victim.
How many people have read opinions that blame women who have been attacked, on what they were wearing, how drunk they were, whether they chose their route home badly? How many people agree with that? The law is supposed to protect people from being victims of things that were obviously mistakes.

SL is open source. People can write their own interfaces for it. That's a good thing. Its supposed to let someone write a better UI, because the default one sucks. Its supposed to help people explore new ways to provide services to each other - SLExchange etc are good examples of that, there are obviously bots who let you transfer balances and buy stuff.
However, writing a bot that can scan land faster than any human could, and which lurks and looks for obvious mistakes and exploits them - thats the same guy who stands in the shadows outside the nightclub, looking for drunk girls in miniskirts staggering home alone late at night - this is not a nice person.





We're talking about land, places where people build their homes in SL, where they have most of their L$ invested in many cases. Yes, IRL it is possible to sell your house, go to Vegas, and gamble it all away. Or join the scientologists etc. Even take a loan out on the house and gamble that away, THEN lose the house. But you'll find that in any civilised country, there are processes that prevent obvious mistakes. Lawyers. Cooldowns. Basically in most cases, if either party decides within a set time that the sale should not have taken place, it can be rolled back. Thats what should happen in SL.

Of course, not all of you agree, thats why I had to make this post:





You shocked me. Its actually less important in WoW if you cheat. L$ is real money, not the result of you killing and looting some computer creeps. You buy land using real L$, and if you lose it, you might not be able to afford to replace it.
Yes, I think IRL people should have more of a sense of responsibility, and not blame others for their own mistakes, but in this case it is people who are using technology that is not available to most people, that most people dont even know exists, to make people lose money. And they have a real money motive for doing it, which to me makes the benefit of the doubt weigh against them.

The fact that we've heard stories of people standing next to their friend, saying, "I'll sell you this plot so you can live here" and setting it for sale for $L0, then before their friend can click it, someone who isn't even online, who has a bot that isn't even in the same sim, buys it... how can anyone defend that??? Would you be as quick to give me your address so I could sit outside and wait to see if you ever went out without locking the doors? No, didn't think so.

By the way, you can scan Ebay for cheap items, sure. But try to make money by manipulating the stock market and see how it goes down. Exploiting people in a business environment is generally made pretty illegal if it can harm others, which are why those laws exist.

Conclusions:



If LL do not start rolling back obviously bad deals, they are setting themselves up for the "next" SL clone to draw many of us in by having decent consumer protection built in.



Initiate a way to see recent land deals and to petition for a rollback (for either party) if they are not happy. Even just 24 hours maybe. Don't allow any more sales till cooldown expires. That would stop both the landbarons, and the example where someone had a square of land missing from the middle of their new plot, on sale for L$$$.



Track complaints about land deals. When someone gets a lot of complaints, which I'm sure this landbaron would, then they get banned from SL. Its that simple.

Take Care,
Lorna.

p.s. sorry for lack of humor, and apologies in advance if this kills off this thread, I think I've probably said most of what there is to say

Yes, that is logical. Another logical thing for those who do not know about land bots, or the speed with which they can buy land, is that it is safe to set the land to anyone if there is no one else on the plot, or even the entire sim with you and the specific person you mean to sell it to.

Logically, I don't expect a mugger to come out of nowhere and snatch a dollar out of my hand that I am handing to someone else if there is no one else in my awareness. When this happens in SL, I will certainly have one of those "Doh" experiences as many people do each day.

That is why I say make it harder to sell to anyone. To protect folks from themselves. I only suggest this because despite all the complaints, LL allows LM to continue to snatch land. If he was not doing this, or being allowed to go his happy way, I would be fine with letting people learn the hard way. Because at least when another bot or broker grabs the bargain, the upset seller has a chance to get it back because every other bot runner and broker I know will return a mistake if IMed about it.

This is all good advice and I hope more and more people get educated. I wonder what percentage of the land selling population reads these forums or tutorials...I'm guessing the percentage is less than 5%, maybe less for those for whom english is a second language. So that leaves 95% of the folks as sitting ducks for the evil magician.

Lorna,

Thanks for taking the time to do such a thorough summary.

If we had 24 hours to undo a land deal, it would save countless headaches. The idea of a mini-escrow has been suggested before. I think it's one of the better solutions out there, as well as your idea to ban those with multiple complaints against them.

I too would put consumer protection (and consumer service of any kind) high on the list of what I will seek out in my next virtual world. Someone at some point will learn from LL's pathetic lack of response to its customers and make a world I will be more likely to invest real money in.

Merlin is actually stealing from LL, because the fact that he is allowed to continue is the only reason I won't go premium and have gone to zero land tier in my account that is. There are countless other examples of lack of confidence leading to people cashing in their Lindens and/or closing their businesses.

Agree. A really intellig\ent, well-reasoned summary. And a good solution. But it doesn't sound like the cooling-off period would really need to be 24 hours to deal with a landbot. One would do, provided the option for rollback was placed prominently enough so an aggrieved party could easily see it and use it without having to go get educated somewhere first.

You can hardly compare people who buy something that is set for sale by someone who obviously wants to sell it with muggers. At worst it's a shady but legal business practice to profit from people's inexperience; in a way most RL salespersons do exactly the same.

When you don't see anyone in close proximity it doesn't mean that no one is around. A person could hover far above the sim and check for land parcels that might be for sale; no bot needed. Land also turns up in the search menu as soon as you set it for sale. Even without a bot, someone could monitor the land sales, teleport in and buy it.

The only land I ever sold was a complete mainland sim, when I moved to an island. It sold within a few minutes, in pre-bot times, and I was damn happy that it sold so fast (spared me from paying double tier). I could also see a landbaron at work back then, or rather see her finished work when I returned later out of curiosity. It must have taken her hours to flatten the land (to fill up the 1/2 sim large hole that I had carved out for a lake). She had split the land into 512 sqm parcels and placed trees and a house on each plot.
A whole sim, that's 128 single parcels that need to be set for sale to everyone. I'm not sure people who do that every day would appreciate your proposal to make it more annoying and time-intensive, in order to spare 50 newbies per year from making a silly mistake and losing a few dollars in the process. I'm also not sure how she might have reacted if I IMed her after a day of work to prepare the sim for sale, with the request to sell it back to me.

I did it once when I bought a piece of land just outside my main-sim. Didn't understand really how that all worked with prims and alike yet. Someone explained it to me and I even abandoned the 512 plot.

Morwen.

The landbot is "snatching" nothing... it's purchasing land that, for whatever reason (human error on Bob's part), was priced below the threshold of what the landbot seeks out. To protect folks from themselves is certainly a worthy task. If Bob fails to avail himself of the various resources (help files, etc) before making his error with pricing his land he learns (hopefully). Even if Bob does avail himself of the resources he can still be careless (and still learn [hopefully]). Your personal experiences with whatever small pool of landbots and real estate brokers, that you're aware of, is anecdotal.



Okay... "evil magician"... see... your entire thread is based on singling out one individual, whom you feel has done a bad bad thing, which, upon closer examination of the Terms of Service, doesn't appear to be a bad bad thing: Bob had a chance to double-check before placing the parcel for sale. The landbot is breaking no rules. After the acquisition the purchaser is under no obligation to return the land. As the land is being absorbed into someone else's tier the loss of revenue derived from Bob's stellar land management skills is moot. If it's a "morality" question then before we can crucify the landbot for a supposed sin of "Greed" (purchasing an underpriced parcel) we have to finish crucifying Bob for "Sloth" (lazyness while pricing his parcel for sale).

And that's the crux (heh) of the problem: How much time to spend educating potential Bobs to not make the same parcel pricing error when Bob's "sin" is lazyness?

The equation changes quite a bit when Bob's "sin" is ignorance , though.

ignorance is an excuse now? Just checking.

As for the mugger analogy, it doesn't hold up.
In your analogy, you are handing a specific person money, which would be setting the land to a person's name. If you want to use a "giving someone money" analogy, it would be more "I left money on the table for Jack to pick up and someone took it after I was gone."

Yeah, that's a fantastic question (it really is) as it has to do with the difference between culpable ignorance ("my fault" and inculpable ignorance ("not my fault". "Ignorance" is not a sin, however.

Bob can't really make much of an "ignorance" argument as he rcv's a warning dialogue window along the lines of "Do you really want to do this?" before proceeding with placing his land for sale at L$1.

The post I was quoting from gave the motivation as laziness .. However I think its more likely ignorance.

Since the analogy was comparing greed to sloth .. I pointed this out.

A quick look at the sins so far in this thread: Wrath (OP); Greed (possibly the landbot), Sloth (Bob). Ignorance isn't one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

You are mistaking what people are ignorant of.

What they are ignorant of , is the fact that Land Bots Exist, and they are Ignorant of what they can do.

Nearly everyone who loses land in a landbot swoop declares they had no idea what landbots are and that they existed. Is this just some noobie conspiracy? All these people are lying to us?


----------------------------------------
The most common swooping scenario is two people attempting to transfer land. The look around - no one is there, they figure everyone in the game has to buy land the same way they do...

Its like leaving your car unlocked and running while you and the passenger swaps places so she can drive for a while.

You look around, dont see any carjackers nearbye and you swtich seats.

You dont figure on robojacker 5000 who can somehow drive your car away without you even seeing him.

Linden Labs tells people to be careful when selling land - to my knowledge they dont say why. Probably becuase "Be careful when selling your land, Second Life is ful of greedy oppurtunists who might take advantage of you" would be bad PR.

This is a situation where its one of those "Didnt your mamma tell you not to .." , In this case "Mamma" LL doesnt want people to know how scummy some of your fellow residents are and so she DOESNT tell you.

I still think the easiest way is to just not list 1$L land sales on the search at all. Then the bots wont know they are there.

That way even if the people are ignorant .. they arent taken advantage of.

He can, because that notice doesn't inform him of why it's dangerous.

What's happening is a little bit like this: you want to give some money to your friend. You take the money out of your bag or wallet and hold it out to them, and a split-second later a robot dashes past at the speed of light and yanks it out of your hand. And then the robot's owner complains that you meant for the money to be taken out of your hand, and you didn't use any technical methods to make sure it was only your friend who did it, so it must be OK. Furthermore, you were actually warned before taking the money out of your wallet - but the warning didn't tell you expressly that robots that can move at the speed of light exist, so of course you didn't allow for them.

It's been long established on SL that the technical settings on things do not necessarily represent the entire reality. It has to be that way, because the technical language of SL is limited but the real language of humans is not. Just ask anyone who sells textures - they have to set their textures with transfer permission, even though they do not want them to be transferred. By the same logic, just because land is set to anyone does not mean that anyone can buy it.

Honestly, the easiest way to defeat landbots would be for LL to allow limit buy orders for land, the same way they did on LindeX. If you want land at a particular price, you just enter a limit buy order for it, then when someone sells land and the orders match, the land is transferred immediately without ever entering Land Sales Search (this makes sure that people placing limit buys have priority over bots). This also means that people who just want to sell land up quickly could do so. The only reason why I think they probably won't do this is that it would hurt many land resellers, who do business by buying land from people who need to sell it quickly.

Your analogy breaks down as Bob is placing an asset for sale at a reduced price, someone else is waving the dollar, and Bob has an opportunity to mark the asset for sale only to the someone waving the dollar. Bob''s error creates the opportunity for anyone waving a dollar to acquire the asset.

It isn't "Bob's error" because it is only coming about because Bob is missing a key bit of information.

Someone is waving the dollar, Bob looks around and sees no-one else there and figures there is no need to protect it, and so goes ahead and offers the sale for anyone. Then suddenly, The Invisible Superfast Man buys the item instead. That's not an error by Bob, that's him just not knowing that there are Invisible Superfast Men around in Second Life.

Okay... Bob is careless with an asset. He's careless with it in a few ways. First, he's pricing it below it's fair market value. Second, if his motivation is to transfer the parcel to another resident he has an opportunity to set the parcel for sale to that individual. Third, after marking a low price and after failing to set the parcel for sale to the other resident Bob then ignores the warning dialogue of "You have set your land for sale at L$1 to Anyone. Are you sure you want to do this?" Bob's failure to be aware of the existence of the Superfast Invisible Men isn't inculpable ignorance, but culpable ignorance as Bob has plenty of opportunities to be careful with the asset before he suddenly learns of the existence of the Invisible Superfast Men.

Note that there's an opportunity (based on your analogy) for the intended recipient of the parcel (as they're standing right there) to mention to Bob, "Hey, Bob, as there is a possibility that you're a dipshit allow me this brief moment to explain to you why you should mark the land in my name before setting it to sale."

People who don't get this by now are people who don't want to get it. Rather than waste time trying to persuade those who will not be persuaded (presumably because they have some personal agenda), let's work on what to do about it.

Let's:

!. Push LL to add any (or many?) of the sensible protections for land sellers that have been proposed in this and other threads. A short "cooling-off" period in which either party can undo the transaction seems to me the best suggestion. There are others. Who has expertise to write and post a proper JIRA proposal so we can all go vote for it?

2. Devise ways to get the word out: There are landbots, and some are run by real scumbags. So never set land for sale to anyone - unless you REALLY mean ANYONE. Viral marketing ideas, anyone?

3. See what can be done about filing RL civil suits and/or getting RL prosecution of land swipes using the "lag" exploit where the money is big enough to trigger RL felony charges. Not being a lawyer, can't say whether the jurisdiction would be San Francisco, or Austin TX, where the main server farm is.

4. Third-party trading forums like SLExchange offer land sales and auctions on their (separate) websites. Maybe they could help people freeze out landbots altogether?

Other suggestions welcome.

That's fine, but that isn't an attitude most people are going to have. I think a poster above had an even better example. Suppose that in real life you want to swap over driving your car with your friend, so you stop somewhere quiet where there is no-one around, get out of the car while leaving it running, and you swap seats. But your logic you should make sure that stop the car, take the key out, and hand it over carefully even if there is nobody there - because there might be an invisible carjacker waiting there, and even though you have never heard of there being people who could turn invisible before, it's possible that the technology was perfected just an hour ago. People who have that kind of belief in real life are called paranoids or obsessive compulsives and so expecting people to develop that kind of belief in Second Life instantly isn't reasonable. Notwithstandard that the point of the law and morality is supposed to be that people don't have to live their lives constantly looking over their shoulders.

And as I mentioned, the warning box is fairly useless. If you are heading out of your house one day, and as you reach for your front door handle I say, "You are about to open your front door! Are you sure you want to do that?" You would probably just scratch your head, say "Of course!", and open up the door.. only for the hungry lion waiting just outside to pounce. Would you considered me to have warned you about the lion, based on what I said? To want someone about danger, you have to *tell them about the danger*.