Illegitimate Business Practices

Without knowing more, I would generally agree with your assessment.

You missed quarterly/yearly and those at L$400 and L$500 stipends. It would cost me $2.88/month to keep a 1024-1120m² ($6/premium + $5/tier - $8.11/stipend). Or $4.5/month for the L$400 and $6.1/month for the L$300 stipend at yearly.

I'm not really sure why that comparison matters anyway, what matters is how much that plot is costing the sim owner and how much they're pocketing for the service they provide.

If you go into how much it costs versus markup price, we're all in trouble.

How much does it cost me to write a script? How much does it cost my friends to create clothes or build houses? As with all things in SL, you are paying for the time invested.

Tell me, why do you think your landlord has an obligation to tell you how he spends the rent money you pay to him?

You pay one or the other right? You get to use the land as you wish as long as you pay right? So what is the big deal if they are making money off it? So is everyone else who has ever sold anything. Kinda thought that was the point of renting/selling w/e in the first place. If your not making anything off it why not just keep it all or rent for another for yourself? And as far the covenant thing. I would pay more for land without one. What is the point of owning/renting land that you cant do anything with? No terraforming.no building past w/e point,no this,no that. I even seen one that said you can only have 3 av's on your land at a time. Really,what are you paying for? To have a small peice of pre-terraformed land that you can set your pre approved house on and hope it sits right. Then fill it with unscripted things that you and 2 friends can quietly look at. You cant build there,you cant drive there and you cant block your land from other avs, so anyone can wander right on in. Some of the covenants are 10 pages of rules. I know we have to have them but geesh..lil overkill a lil I think.

Well the first reply to a well formed question was total hogwash, something to the extent you cant own Sim land... *puke**cough*

Let me put it like this, if you cant own sim land you cant own mainland, theres not some MAGIC RULE that changes.. every rule still Applies... so all you uninformed selfrighteous residents out there preaching your swill about not being able to own land. Kindly go BACK into your little Piss & vineagar closet that you came out of. AND DONT comment on something unless you actually know what your talking about

And to the moderator: I realize that this post may sound like an attack, but its not its a counter to an attack that was posted. This is a resident answer forum, if ther is a incorrect answer it up to us residents to corrected it, in this case someone spoke something out of total ignorance and passed it like it was fact

If you buy on the Mainland you pay tier directly to LL.

If you rent on the Mainland you pay rent to a landlord who pays tier to LL.
If you buy on an island you pay tier to a landlord who pays tier to LL.
If you rent on an island you pay rent to a landlord who pays tier to LL.

In the latter three cases you need to be able to trust that third person as they hold the cards.

Many landlords are very nice.

Have you tried the decaf?

just tired of people dispensing incorrect answers knowingly, becuase they feel they have somekind of expertise in the matter

I never said they have any obligation to tell anyone what they do with the profit.

I did say that what matters is how much a parcel actually costs them and what they charge for it, rather than how much they charge and how much it would cost on the mainland.

I rent one plot of 5664m² at a 10% mark-up, and a 9792m² at a 40% mark-up. The first is quite cheap considering the location (waterfront) and how nice the sim looks (no covenant at all, but over 9-10 months, it has only improved in look). The second is close to the limit of what I - personally - find acceptable, but the owner is nice and I live right next to a very good friend which makes the higher price worthwhile even though I could get the same size cheaper elsewhere.

I don't see how you would determine good value/bad value without knowing how much it's actually costing the sim owner and then deciding whether the mark-up is worth it or not.

I would measure good value/bad value relative to what you can get a comparable lot/unit for. Prim allowance, space/footprint, view, and amenities. It makes no difference how much the owner makes if you can't get a better deal elsewhere for comparable land.

Personally, I judge whether it is good or bad value to me based on how much it costs me. Whiel I would be dissapointed to learn that my landlord is charging me full rent fees while cutting a special deal such that he himself is paying no tier, such a deal has absolutely no relevance to my finances, since it isn't something that I personally can benefit from.

To understand the 'value(s)' being paid for 'land' you first have to understand the very nature of how SL works from an infrastructure point of view and the LL business model.

LL supply servers, all linked to form the 'grid'. Each server is a sim with its own OS, ram, HD space etc. A set of central servers hold account details, inventory held, uploaded textures etc.

When you 'buy' a sim, you are buying a server, if you buy part of a sim (parcel) you are buying 'virtual server space' within that server. Teir, is not more than 'managed fees for maintaining the system and the peice of server, or server, you have marked as your land.

What ever terminology you use, 'rent', 'teir' etc, it all comes back to the same basic cost attributed to that infrastructure. LL are just a little more than a server farm supplier, that have a business model of selling this on with an installed set of programmes, rather than web hosting deals. Land resellers are only really classed as host resellers in basic terms.

Please QUOTE the reply to which you take exception.

The land-owning system is what it is. LL owns all the land. I get to occupy 4096 sq. meters of it, for a monthly charge. Sounds like RENT to me. I will never "pay off" my land, I only have the option of passing it along to someone else.

My friend occupies a plot of land, for which he pays another resident a sum of L$ every week. Sounds like RENT to me. That resident has to pay LL every month, to maintain that SIM. Sounds like RENT to me.

So no, you do not own Sim land, you pay for the privilige of using it, a privilge that could be yanked by a Private Isalnd owner or LL <as the case may be> at any time.

Don't know what your problem is with this system... I'm just seeing it for what it really is.

Max

Renting implies that the original thing is returnable after you finish renting it. Man hours spent in support, or bandwidth used are not returnable items and are therefore not rented. SL land bears no resemblence to real life land in any way (it lacks a certain tangibility for starters).
Your monthly fees are to cover the cost of services.

But hey, if you know other companies who can stay afloat and not charge for their services, feel free to let me know.

This is another myth that needs to be put to rest.

Buying a Sim does not mean you get a server. There was a time when one server ran one sim... even the old Class 4 Servers run two sims on a dual-processor server.

The new Class 5 Servers run 4 sims; one on each core of a dual-core, dual processor server. So you do not get "a server"... there is no way you can walk into San Fancisco or Dallas and point to a box and say "that's my sim".

When your server crashes or is restarted, there is no way for you to know which particular piece of hardware it will come back up on, or which other sims will be running on that same server, except that a Class 5 Sim will come up on a Class 5 machine, etc. LL says that one Sim does not affect the performance of another Sim running on the same box. I have no way of testing that assertion, I'm assuming that LL has.

Max

Blah Blah... sim/server/virtual server... my point was simple and not to be taken out of contex. I was offering a perspective.... not a full blown set of specifications

Tier is more like property taxes, to me.

I feel like residents rent the land out, but LL sells then collects property taxes. As in RL if you don't pay your property taxes you lose your land.

The FAQs use the word lease when talking about owning land in SL.

5. Can I have my own land in Second Life?

Yes. Leasing rates start from $9.95/month for a 512 square meter parcel of land. See Land for more information.

So when I rent a piece of land (preferably with a house on it, but each to their own) in RL, what is the returnable object? The land I'm guessing, in which case your analogy breaks down, because the land you rent in SL is returned just as muchly as the land in rl.

But does the land you rent in RL use up none returnable resources just to have you or anyone else walking around in it?

Perhaps a better analogy would be the electricity you use in your RL bought land. That is something that is definately not rentable and cannot be returned after you finish renting.
You could chose to not use electricity in RL, but in SL you don't have that choice. If the juice runs out, your land is gone.
In both cases, you are paying for supply of services rather than usage of land.

So, all those people who complain that they are paying "rent" on land that they "bought"... am I therefore right in thinking that all these issues would go away if I call that a service charge instead?

Well, the "property tax" or "service charge" analogy might work ... but only if it were relatively small, which it isn't. The fact is that what you pay as "service charge" to LL is just as high, if not higher, than the "rent" you pay to a private estate owner.

So if two similar plots cost the same per month whether "owned" or "rented", the distinction is superfluous.

I am well aware that the distinction is superfluous. I am just pandering to that segment of the market that doesn't like the idea that they are paying something called "rent" for smething that they "bought". Since when i eventually do buy land to rent out I will need to charge them something, I would like to know what word to use to help keep them happy (read: less unhappy) about paying it.

Virtual land on SL is nothing more than server space. When sim owner purchase a sim from LL, they are actually paying for a shared CPU on a server, plus the "SL simulator" software, plus monthly maintenance fees.

When you purchase land on a private sim, you are paying your share of the purchase price of the sim, plus your share of the monthly maintenance fees. That is not "rent", it is "maintenance".

This is usually specified somewhere in the covenant at the moment you buy the land. If you disagree with that, then dont click "I accept" and don't buy the land.