Cut to the chase

When you're working in your land store you don't really need a noob coming upto you and offering you a pixel quickie for L$50. I mean come on, greeting me with "Oiii" isn't exactly a great intro, nor is wandering into my HQ soliciting. We're not all after the quick thrill, well not all the time anyway.

The long awaited blog about land cutting has arrived and I think it's clear from the friendly nature of this blog that it's going to be problematic finding a sensible policy here.

Personally I have a slight problem with Linden Lab dictating sale prices of anything, that includes land. I'm also concerned that they can't deal with land cutting via their current TOS. Surely there must be a way of deeming it a TOS offence if it's causing so much grief?

I do have these highly priced parcels near my land, I do see the ridiculously high prices. I hear the complaints about doughnut holes but if there's nothing currently in place, then it takes a bit of coercion to deal with the issue.

I'd like to see Linden Lab offer a sort of amnesty period. During this period current parcels can be sold for the average price in that sim, to Linden Lab or neighbours. The neighbours can't resell the parcels, they must join it to their existing parcel.

Then at the end of the amnesty period, ban the sale of small parcels completely. If someone then wants to get rid of a small parcel, they abandon it and it gets offered by Linden Lab to the neighbours.

I'm aghast at some of the anti capitalist comments that the land market in Second Life brings. People complaining that land should be capped, it's not fair. There's loads of land available, it's not super expensive, tier can be but that's a different issue. If people want land it's avaialble, the market is still pretty flat on mainland.

Now I do recognise that some people are so fed up with land cutting that it leads them to want to leave Second Life and this of course could impact on Linden Lab's bottom line. Therefore we're in the situation whereby Linden Lab want a new rule, but don't introduce some over complicated rule that will be circumvented at the first hurdle.

Love them or loathe them, land cutters have also spent money and until now their practice has been allowed, give them the opportunity to bow out gracefully. They are having their last hurrah with their tactics, there's no need to twist the knife forcefully, give them a deadline, offer them a deal and then if they don't comply you've got them by the short and curlies with a new policy, but at least let them bow with some dignity.

There will need to be a cleanup, but all land cutting is not bad, people need them for media streams for example.

The long term aim has to be to end the sale of small parcels to deal with what some see as extortion, but let's do it in a sensible manner rather than a "neener neener" they got you manner.

I'd much rather have seen the TOS enforced on this issue, but obviously they're not breaching the TOS and that's an important point. The ad farm policy was introduced twice before it dealt properly with the issue. We don't need to go through all the drama we had over that policy again.

Linden Lab, keep it simple.