Can this particular Land Extortion be stopped?

Yesterday a landowner of some 16m plots across the way decided that his gigantic "LAND FOR SALE" signs just weren't extorting money from the residents of Livigno fast enough so he stepped it up a notch.

He changed his signs to gigantic ads for sex clubs. One sign has a RL photo of 2 women with large amounts of semen dribbling out of their mouths, the other is a RL close up of a woman's face as she is apparently in the throes of orgasm.

I can deal with the ForSale signs, but this is a bit much. I put up a big wall to block it all out (solid on my side, see through on his and phantom), but having a 20m+ high wall on the edge of my house is kind of depressing and spoils my view of the sky.

I know the Lindens will do nothing about the normal signs, but is this new tactic taking things far enough that they would get involved (unfortunately I live on M land)?

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

Soul

In general I think the answer is no, there isn't anything that can be done. This kind of thing happens from time to time in SL and LL has consistantly not taken action. If it is really offensive, you might get some action, but good luck.

You can make your wall more attractive, but that's about it.

This kind of thing is why I'm mainly in Dreamland. ACS certainly isn't perfect, but junk like that always gets terminated within a few days.

There are lots of other private continents too that offer real zoning. Personally, I don't understand why people think mainland is so great.

I feel for your situation as i can imagin thats not nice to have to put up with .

However ..i actualy think you can do somthing here ... The land owner is making a bid to aggressivly sell his land to people on the sim in a bid to get rid of the signs

You buy it from him ..and the signs will be gone type of thing .

But i think this falls in to the catagory of harrasment ..and as such you can take your case to Linden Labs to be investigated

Your next step should be to contact Live help and get a linden over to your sim .

Good luck and let us know how you get on

Soul,

I sympathize with you. I had this happen to me also. The person in question (whose initials are JD) denied the porn to my face (i had already taken screen shots for My AR, several of which i opened the object to show her name as creator and owner). It did start out on her batch of 16m parcels.

I too built a wall. Ms Porn griefer in a fit because i muted her after she became hostile, extended her rotating porn to a column 769m tall of rotating porn on her personal land (not the 16m land), and pushed it so that it rotated onto my land but remained on hers. Not only did My partner and I AR her, but a dozen guests of ours did too, as well as 3 of her neighbors.

Linden took no action but one of her neighbors bought her land to get rid of the porn (the land was for sale at twice the market rate... obvious attempt at land extortion, hoping i would buy her out to get rid of the porn).

Ms. porn griefer came back and re-rezzed her column of porn after a few weeks of peace, because the new owner had not turned on the auto-return. Another batch of AR's. This time a Linden actually replied to me by email. After a long conversation explaining the situation, the Linden came out and removed her harassment and turned on the auto-return to prevent her return. He has my gratitude. This incident never appeared in the police blotter, btw.

Don't think that the Linden's do not read the AR's... they do. You just need to be very specific about what is happening and why it requires Linden intervention.

I have to agree with Ralph. My partner and I lived in Dreamland once too. We only moved when the opportunity to buy our current land from Ansche (as in we own it now, not Ansche) arose. Dreamland was pleasant and the staff were helpful and tolerated no violations of Ansche's TOS. Griefing like what you and I experienced would likely have resulted in the griefer being expelled from Dreamland.

I thought explicit material had to be indoors, by the TOS or CS. Can a knowledgeable person weigh in on that?

Looking at the CS, all it says is that it must be on Mature land.

This is another argument for the Mature / XXX distinction

SL is always changing and the signs will eventually disappear. Just move into the sky...riase your house about 500-600m and enjoy some lag and sign free space. If your land is big enough, you might be able to use one of the huge prims for the ground so you won't have to eat up a lot of prims for that.

Cubey Terra makes a great, free teleporter that you can use to get to your place from the ground - or just set your home location to your house in the sky to avoid unwanted/curious visitors.

After a month..or two...maybe less - the signs will be gone and you might decide to stay up there.

-2fast

They cannot display porn in the open, even in a mature sim. This happened with a neighbor of mine once, and he was forced to remove the publicly displayed porn.

I bet the porn griefer was using pictures to which she did not have license, in violation of copyright laws.

Sounds like an ass! If I was dealing with that, I CERTAINLY would not have made my wall see thru on the jerx side! Maybe you should cover it in poop - with fly pooofers!

Of all my beefs with SL, extortion via spam and cutting up plots to 16m is at the top of my list. See what the Lindens will do for you. You may have some leverage considering the photos cross the line.

There is a group called the Arbor Project that reclaims 16m plots and plants trees where porn used to be. Try contacting Mister Arrow from the group and see if he has any ideas.

Good luck!

This is not a normal sign, and yes, it seems the Lindens WILL deal with it accordingly:

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2005/12/impeachable_off.html

Content is something that Linden Lab is not concerned with unless it crosses the line into 'broadly offensive'. The only time we'd remove a sign for content would be under that circumstance." (As spelled out in Linden Lab's Community Standards, that rubric includes publicly viewable profanity and nudity, for instance.) "There's no free speech issue as far as I'm concerned," he says.

This kind of tactics are exactly the reason peole are moving to private islands in masse now, if you really want to have a cleaner life, i would suggest you pull up roots and go somewhere that this kind of thing isn't tolorated, and something can be done about problems that arise.. private sims

I love my mainland freedom - but it literally takes two weeks to get a Linden response to a land abuse report. At least for the ones I've filed. By the time they get to investigating, half the time the problem has gone away. Problem solved!

There was one report I made that only took three days, but I think that was a fluke. It only involved setting autoreturn on Linden-owned land.

You could try using invisible prims to hide stuff. Those are awesome. Don't know how well it will work for things at a distance though. Good luck! I've been seeing these signs you're talking about popping up here and there. Nasty, nasty stuff.

I've had past success in having pornographic land griefing/extortion objects removed by the Lindens. it took a few days amd more than one report.

Your mileage may vary..but it's worth a shot.

I wonder what drives people to put up sexually explicit signs just for selling land!? Does it really even work?

I don't think their sole purpose is to grief/extort. Some of the porn signs appear to be advertising porn websites so they are probably getting some form of payment for just having them up there. I'm not clicking on any of them to find out though. Ew.

On a positive note, I got a response to a land abuse report I filed last week that said LL has been a little behind on investigating issues and to respond if the issue I reported was still a problem. They're slow, but they're getting around to it, and that's a good thing.

Even on a Mature Sim the Photos you describe and the method of display are a Clear Violation of TOS. AR Immediately, and if you have Guests on your land, Have them AR as well (And include Screen shots), Bunches attract a Little more attention. It's Obvious this person IS just griefing thier neighbors, the Lindens Will shut them down.

Angel.

Angel's suggestion is good. Multiple abuse reports on the same issue (with screenshots) should get you a response much more quickly. You could have a porn AR party - invite your friends and alts to all come file abuse reports. May as well make it enjoyable.

There was a discussion in another thread about security forces that most people were strongly against because they didn't want self-proclaimed do-gooders playing police on their land. Perhaps, though, when invited by a fed-up landowner, reps from these groups could be used as back-up witnesses to file abuse reports in these kinds of situations.

I would suggest speaking with your neighbor first before taking action with an abuse report. Maybe invite the person over to your land or request a friendly meeting in an instant message. Then, you could politely ask them to angle the signs so they are not clearly pointed in the way of your view. Another request could be to ask them if they could just tone down the signs a little. Why not just put the logo of the club on the sign along with maybe an attractive woman looking classier than the hussies on his current signs. If he refuses to be civil and reasonable; then abuse report him, and wait for a Linden response on the matter. (Screen shots are definitely a good idea.)

why can`t Llabs stop those 16 plot from being so abused. I say stop the small of plot size period!.........There is one landbaron that is buying small 16 sizes and putting up his tacky....on them. nothing is worse then having a pretty area and then one of these tacky signs.

What is even worse is when you get some of those 16sqm plots, join them together, and then sell them for a loss only to have someone come ad break them all into 16sqm plots again.

Been there.

I really wish there was some way you could blacklist specific people from buying your land.

Because their job is not to censor content. Unless the land use is in clear violation of the TOS -- such as the flagrant display of hard-core porn signs -- residents are free to do what they want with it.

Unfortunately, what many residents seem to want is UGLY. But that kind of "abuse" is purely subjective.

Well some tart with yoghurt flicked on her face may not constitute much of anything but an eyesore.

It would be nice to see some kind of policy change on small parcel useage. It goes way beyond "they paid for the land they do what they like". I've seen some sims that are absolute bombsites of junk 16m2 parcels. And it's a one-way destructive process. You can guarantee when some meathead chops up their land into a bunch of 16m2s they'll leave at least one not for sale so they can grief everyone with it even if they try to buy up the rest to tidy up.

I guess the best advice when it happens is to sell up, tier down, and cancel your premium and go rent from the island owners.