How to remove voice Charge from groups?

Now that voice is here, I was checking through the information about it, it is not something that I am interested in, but as I have land and groups, at least I should know how it works (how to turn it off for me, and on land, if needed, I will wait and see).

Then I came across this little bit about charges: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Voice_FAQ#Does_it_cost_anything_to_use_voice.3F


Both local sound spam, and group text spam is bad enough, but now we have to *pay* to get our groups voice spammed?!?
Has anyone found the option to turn *off* voice chat in groups? I had a look, and I could not find it.

Being charged a regular fee for each and every group (public or not, for talking or not), esp. after stating that voice is *optional*, is most definitely a below the belt punch.

After all, how many groups are out there for other reasons, like land, permissions, notices, etc, that have never been intended for chat. How many do *you* have for things other than chat?

Also, does anyone have any more information about how often this charge is going to be? It is not clear in the above quote, it says yearly, but then says it is waived for the first 60 days (that implies that it will probably be charged more often, weekly/monthly).

As a slight aside, anyone have a clue how many groups there are? Just last month (July) there were 23 190 *new* groups.

I wonder what happened to voice being *optional*?

"Formal group" is worded strangely.

What would make some sense to me is if that means a group that's listed in search and/or has open enrollment.

Until they clarify what they mean with "formal" it's anyone's guess though .

\What i want to know is why does this occur, i turn off voice on my land. I logoff and it appears again why? I don`t want voice on my land. But it keeps turning back on?

That was curiously ommitted from the Blog entry...

Broccoli

Turning off Voice is a right LL gave us except that the Preference choice for my parcel of land is ignored everytime I log on and the parcel is marked as Voice on. Do not know yet what visitors see.
The only way to get the Voice off again is to re-enter Prferences switch it on and off again.

/me is very disappointed in LL for this whole deal. Not only does this part suck, but we also have to deal with this big bulky communications window that mixes our vertical friends list into a horizontal world... It's @$$ Ugly!!!

None of my groups are for chatting.

As for land settings: The voice on/off feature should be a property of the LAND, not of your avatar, so it is very strange it would "pop back on" when you log in. Imagine you own 100 parcels, would they all "pop back on" when you log in?

It looks more like a bit of status information that is not correctly uploaded to the client. So maybe the land remains "voice off", but your client shows something else. (The testers have most likely not noticed that because they were preoccupied with "voice on" testing.)

I'd really like an option to opt-out of that stealth charge for my groups. A simple checkbox in the Group controls (checked by default) that indicates Voice Chat may NOT be used with that Group should suffice to also exempt that group from this tax.

If anyone uses any Group that I created for spamming people with Voice Chat, I'll ban them from the group, immediately. In most of my groups, like the one I use to control access to my land, I am set up as the only person with "Pay Liabilities" checked in roles. So presumably the full burden of that fee will be billed to me? For groups that will NEVER be used for Voice?

Way to go, LL. Tax all the groups for a service that has nothing to do with weather the group uses the service or not!

I am mostly opposed on principle here. The tax itself is negligable, though it adds up if you belong to lots of groups. But it's like being charged a service fee on your landline phone bill for cell phone service, when you don't even OWN a cell phone!

Torley guessed it would mean "published in search", but she was going to look into it and change the wording to make it more clear when she had more information .

Err.... isn't a L$10 annual group fee less than 1/10th of a US cent per year? Is that really worth getting wound up about?

DG

A quick question, how many groups do you belong to where you pay some of the charges?
What about groups that you have started? It will add up *very* quickly, esp. if it is weekly/monthly (highly likely given the wording).

If it was *only* L$10 per year, per person (as yet, it is not even clear that it is per year, the wording is very vague, as normal), it would be just plain annoying that they are trying to slip it in un-noticed, but what happens with many groups, and many avatars?

Considering how vague the wording is, how can we be sure that it is not US$10 per group per avatar?? A simple, oh dear, slip of the keyboard, all the more possible considering the way that they tried to slip it in with nobody noticing (based on LL's recent past performance with broadly worded statements).

I think there are a *lot* of people just watching these things, for many reasons.

The quote was quite specific about how often the charge would occur actually.

Annual = Yearly......... there is nothing vague about that at all.

The only comment even close to being vague I can see is the term 'Formal Groups', but as someone has mentioned I'd imagine that means those that appear in search.

~B

Guess I'm going to have to leave all my groups then for something I can't use. Thanks LL.

Leave all your groups due to a YEARLY fee of 10L to the GROUP?. IF groups passed the charges on it would be pittance for most, as the majority of those that have the members paying liabilities have a large number of members.

I'm amazed at how often the posters on these forums change something said by LL to suit what they wish it to say. Just to give them something else to bitch about.......

Sheesh people

~B

How did you turn voice off on your land, Usagi? I looked all over About Land and couldn't even find that option.

Hugs

What did I change? I didn't change anything. I don't want to pay one red cent for something that I can't use, even if I end up only getting charged . . .say 25 lindens - 1 linden for each group - 1 linden passed down to me.

Again, what did I change? I just said that I can't use it, don't want to pay for it, and so will have to leave all my groups.

Edited to add: Oops, I guess I didn't include that part about "not wanting to pay for it" in my message. Again, what did I change?

I turned voice off on my land. It's in the MEDIA tab when you use ABOUT LAND. At the bottom is a box with 3 options, the bottom option is "disable spacial audio on this parcel". When I select this option the blue "voice available" icon disappears on the top of my screen.

However, if I log off and back on the blue "voice available" icon is back. Checked about land and yes "disable" is still selected.

Had friends show up and they also see the blue "voice available". Sadly I have not found someone actually using voice who can test if it's just an icon bug or if they can actually use voice on my land with the "disable" option chosen for my land.

Anyone know if voice IS off on my land and the voice status icon is just messed up or is the whole voice on land thing auto-on no matter what you set?

You may be misunderstanding how it works, Sonia:

Groups get 'charged' all sorts of things already, such as the 'Parcel directory fee' for group-owned land.

When any group is created, it is up to the group administrators how to handle these fees. They can either be divided up & paid for by the group membership, or those fees can be taken care of by a specific member(s), such as the group officer(s).

I wouldn't be so hasty as to leave all your groups. You might want to see which groups are indeed passing on the voice charge to you - and leave *those* groups. Your political statement will have a lot more meaning that way.

Good luck!

Let's say your city decided to levy a "Horse owner's tax" on every resident, which they would pay based on the number of ID cards and credit cards in their wallet. This linkage between what is in your wallet or not has absolutely no bearing on how many horses you own or ride each year. In fact, you don't even own a horse. Furthermore, you hate horses with a passion and will never willingly get within arms reach of a horse.

Will you just happily pay the tax anyway? Or will you complain?

People who will never use Voice do not want to be charged fees to support a feature they will never use. Is that unreasonable? Does it matter that the amount is small, when they are billing you for something you do not use?

Every premium account/sim owner is already paying for voice, whether they use it or not. Like everything else in SL, it will be used primarily by those who aren't paying LL any kind of fee.

It's not unreasonable to object to being charged for voice when you don't use it, but objecting to a pennie for the group charge while full dollars are being syphoned off elsewhere isn't really making a difference.

Do you have a firewall? My experience is that the voice enabled icon is unreliable if something is blocking outgoing traffic on UDP 5060 and 5062 (possible 347

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1908

Matthew

Thanks Matthew that is probably what is causing the icon to appear.

I will keep an eye on that jira and just assume that voice is off on my land even with the icon showing.