Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong 16 sq.m.'s Empire

I was once again playing around with the idea of buying some land and looking in the map for sale offers, and once again got mad about this Hong Kong dude and his micro parcels advertisement empire. Mad because it makes it harder to find land on the map without having to look on his for sale labels, that he actually uses to scam some traffic, and mad because in my opinion, this system of splitting land and use it to spam ads this way, and he got clones that do the same, just hurts more the value of mainland parcels.

One of the biggest reasons why they do this, is to use the traffic of people looking for land to advertise something. A parcel sold for 10'000 Lindens or lesser, will just make people look at it, cause a lot people dont see the 16 sqm thing before teleporting.

Thats imho should be looked as a scam and being against community rules. We would do a lot better is parcels for sale smaller then say for example 256 sqm would not show up in the map and in the land sales search.

The question of this thread to the residents is:
Do we like this micro parcels empires and if not, what can we do against it?

Watch out for rat things.

rat things? oO

You could report whoever runs them for breach of copyright.

Actually, that might work.

The reference is from Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel Snow Crash.
Worth reading since the metaverse Stephenson describes has similarities with SL.

Oh ic and "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong" is something from this novel as well.
Anyway thats not the point of the thread.

it is now.

Answer is that there isn't currently anything you can specifically do against it, unless the fellow is griefing someone.

I've seen a few, and the impression I got was that it was more of a 'fun gag' or parody than a real attempt at extortion.

I could be wrong though; I have no way to gauge intent.

Well i just find that parcels annoying since they affect surrounding parcels as well as the land sales search. This advertisement effect is intended to go outside that 16 sqm parcel, inside neighbours parcels, and even attract people with the silly selling price ( 16 sqm for 9000+ Lindens ) that isnt intended to be a real selling offer.

Remember to be kind to wounded rat things. It can pay off in the end. Keep them super cool.

No, I'm pretty sure it's the usual run-of-the-mill land griefing, just with an ever so slight sense of humour. The behaviour is exactly the same as any other of the spam merchants, just with the "Mr Lee" thing added in.

Since many of the signs I've seen are a word-for-word copy from the Snow Crash novel, it might indeed. In-world reproduction of copyrighted material is against TOS if I remember correctly.

Thats for the Hong Kong dude, but there are more of them that dont use novel names and words.

The point is, anybody does have the freedom to do or leave whatever they want on the own land, even if it is 16 sqm. But like it should be for all freedom rights, it should be valid so long it does not affect in a negative manner other people's freedom.

If that guys, the Hong Kong man and others, do exploit the sell land funtion to make adventisement, by putting on sell very small parcels with extreme prices to not get sold but just to attract people and traffic, affecting in a negative manner the whole land search functionality, with search window and on the main map, then, I would define that as annoyance for all residents.

We need some sort of emminent domain clause...

Dear Annoying Advert Owner-

My parcel borders your billboard's 4x4m parcel on two sides,
here's the "Hostile Take-Over Fee" flat-rate of L$20psqm.

(Return All Objects)

--Ciao.

(require being bordered on 3 sides for hostile take over of parcels up to 128sqm, and require being completely surrounded and adjacent on all edges for parcels up to 512sqm)

That guys are paying tier for that micro parcels, if there would be no use for that endless small squares of land they would not make them at all. Like said above, dont letting that land sale scam/abusing advertisements being shown on map and land sales search would fix that.

One might want to search the forum archives for the words Impeach George Bush for every conceivable variation of opinion on the topic of what if anything to do about ugly builds made to drive up land prices, drive down land prices, etc., as well as what can be done about it.

What was weird was when we bought our land, that 16sqm plot was not a sale plot, I'm pretty sure it was part of the govener linden land in front of us, but before we knew it, we had those 3 ugly ads in our face!

A couple of walls and a tree soon took care of the veiw.

Having talked to the 16m owners not just MR lee they have all admitted they do it because the surrounding land owners will finally get sick of seeing it and buy the land... thier not doing it for any other purpose then to extort the land owners with thier crappy billboards

I predict a rise in the fashionability of tall towers and trees with root prims on their owners' land build to encompass and hide these visual abominations. Don't just cry foul.... fight back!

Jopsy, I hate those micro plots, but that idea is a bad one.

People with money could drive off people who are happy on that small 512m plot and some can only find teh 128m plots in the area the love. (lots in beachfront and roadside).

I would prefer that tier is judged sim by sim instead of as a whole. Your first tier level (equal to 5 USD if you have allready used your one-time tier-free 512m allowance) ranges from 1m to 512m. That way, each and every 16m plot out there costs that person 5 USD to hold. Current land owners would be unaffected.

One exception would be to landbarons. However, this could be offset by special licencing purchased through LL for Reality work. Sorta like is done in the real world.

I'm sure there are a lot more details that would need addressed, but it would end micro plots within a month, imo.

~Jessy

I wasn't entirely serious with my suggestion... I know it would never fly for multiple reasons. Mostly cultural reasons... and in a small way pricing (LL makes more per sqm from small land owners, why set something up where land would gravitate more to large land owners?)

Still cities can claim land through emminent domain, it's awkward and difficult but they can do it. It would be nice to have a more official process for it in SL.

There's a parcel adjacent to mine that has ban lines and junk-yard like garbage on it... utterly unchanged since I started in early 2004. (curiously enough, it allows terraforming and someone came along and raised the land up enough to hide the mess!).

Don't hold your breath, it might not be for long. I did that with a plot the Hongkong guy has in the middle of our land in Benten. He was fast to call a Linden to have the trees removed, because the branches were a tad over a Linden road (which cuts through our land) and right at the edge of his 16 sqm plot. Trying to buy the plot from him failed. Well, now we could, it's set for sale for 9,795 Lindens!

This is a hilarious idea. Buy all the land surrounding the little plot, and then build an enclosure around it.

Its not so funny when you have to live around this pillar.

16sqm plots shouldnt be allowed period, there needs to be a cap on the selling price or tiny plots to give neighbours the ability to buy the griefer out without having to pay through the nose.

As land is bought for around L$4.5/sq m, it seems an upper cap of L$20/sq m is more than generous.

In the real world there may not be caps, but there are rules and guidelines, and the market sets what it will. In SL, there are no restrictions against someone being a complete and utter asshole to extort money by putting crap on a tiny plot of land with absolutely no intention of using it properly.

It would benefit so many people, and only affect a few idiots. Even land barons don't set prices that high for premium high quality land, so why Linden Lab think it's acceptable for people to do so for crap 16sqm plots I don't understand.

A sideline benefit would also be that it would stop people putting their land for sale for L$99999999 to get free advertising in the land sales too.

Lewis