Sera

Amazing post! Just what I was looking for :D

Can't edit T_T

I said "can prove that they had the item out in public". I should have said that "they can prove that the item was out in the public".

Also remember you need a patent to beable to start an infringement case, but in this case Ant isn't starting a case, it's defending itself. Totally different things.

Actually no, if they don't have a patent, but can prove that they had that item out in the public, it becomes prior art, and the guitar hero controller patent becomes non enforcable.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiii o/

I see what's going on now. Me and you are both on the same page, and both realize that they have always, and will always, not allow for private island owners to mislead their "tenants" into believing that they own the land.

My problem, is that the blog post, does not explain this at all, she leads the reader to believe that LL policy is changing, and that LL is giving special treatment to people who are going against LL's wishes. Which is simply not the case.

Her example of Anche is pretty poor, since Anche's site pretty clearly explains the differences between "buying" land from her and buying mainland land.

My problem with this post was that Caliandris is attempting to make it seem like LL is giving certain people special treatement, and giving certain landowners extra power and favors. Something which is simply not true. (How quickly people forget that the Anche account was banned a few months ago for missing a payment)

There are atleast a few posts on the forums from both late 2004 and early 2005 that show clearly that land rentals on private sims were in full force, and that they were supported. Infact one post from April 2005 shows Phillip stating that Zoning should be created by renting out private sims.

What I believe happened in your case, is that they were making sure that the "renters" weren't being led to believe that they were "buying" the land. Which makes perfect sence as far as the AR request goes. LL has never had a problem with the renting out of private island land, which is what the new system they are adding in 1.12 allows. What they have a problem with is people misleading newbies to believe that they are getting all the same rights to their "purchased" land as they would if they bought mainland from LL.

"I was told by LL that they do not support the positioning of rentals as 'sales' in estates, that I should AR any instance I see of this going on, and that they appreciated me not following suit. "
They don't have a problem with landbarons renting out land, which is what 1.12 allows, they have a problem with landbarons misrepresenting what they are selling. Caliandris' entire post was based around "Uneven dealing" where she feels that LL is catering to people who are going against LL's wishes, she specifically targets Anche. Anche makes it very clear to people that she still owns the sim, and can evict you.
"It is not really the argument over whether buying land from a landowner on a private island sim is "owning" land or not that is important, it is the injustice implicit in stating that buying that land is not allowed, not no-how, and then rewarding people who go against the company's advice and do it anyway."
This statement in itself is completly false, and is the basis for the blog post. LL has always encouraged landbaroning of private islands, they never said that people who buy private islands aren't allowed to break up the land into chunks and "sell" to other users. They aren't rewarding people who broke their rules, and the never flipflopped on the issue.

(Sorry that I took forever to respond, i've been in bed sick)

"You're entitled to your opinion, and I am entitled to mine. And so are the people who thought that they bought land and found that they didn't. " I agree completly, everyone is entitled to their opinion. If you wanted to make an Anche bashing post about the Forest incident that would be fine with me. Go ahead and slander anyone you want, that's fine.

My problem with this blog post wasn't that you were bashing anche, it's that you were misrepresenting the situation with private island rentals so badly that it basically ended up turning into lies.

The entire point of your article, was that you were claiming that LL is unfairly favoring certain large land owners, and letting them break the rules by "selling" private island land.

You attempted in your article to make the reader believe that LL is on one side telling people to not rent out their private islands, and then going to Anche and commending her, and now they are adding extra features to the client to help landbarons like anche. That's simply a flat out lie.

The facts are, nothing has changed, you still cannot buy private island land off of the island owner. Also on Anshe's website it clearly states that she is still the land manager and that there are differences between "buying" mainland land and anshe-land, including "As long as the sim exists it will be administered by ANSHECHUNG.COM." and "It is permanent as long as you don't violate the sim's zoning rules and terms of service. You have to pay tier fees."

Sure we are all entitled to our own opinions, but when someone tries to push their opinion as fact, while ignoring or misrepresenting the truth, that is no longer an opinion, it's a lie.

Wow, it's great to see how some people act when given a big soapbox.

What you fail to understand or fail to mention in the article is that there is no special treatment being given to anyone. The fact is that private islands must be completly owned by one person. That is true for everyone in the game, even Anche. The people "buying" land from Anche are simply renting the land, they are not buying the land, they do not own the land, Anche is not selling the land, she is renting it out, and she makes it clear to people "buying" the land that she still has control over them. Any landowner can do this, it's not some special Anche only thing.

"When private islands were first introduced, people were told that there was no way to split the islands up: they always had to be owned by one person, the landowner." That's still the case, they can still only be owned by one person, nothing is different, nobody is getting any special treatment.

All that's changing is that there is now a formal method for leasing land on private islands that you own. And it works for all island owners not just Anche. It's just making the previous unwritten agreements formal.

And why did you bring the Forest situation into this post? It's completly unrelated from what your original topic was, and shows that this whole post was simply intended to be a public bashing of Anche. Nice advert for your "friend Hiro Queso" who apparently has "He had fair rental rules, applied to all, and is widely respected as a great landlord."

Just once again to make it clear since you don't apparently understand what's going on. You said: "It is not really the argument over whether buying land from a landowner on a private island sim is "owning" land or not that is important, it is the injustice implicit in stating that buying that land is not allowed, not no-how, and then rewarding people who go against the company's advice and do it anyway. "
The fact that you can't sell private island land isn't "company's advice" it's simply not possible to do. You cannot sell parcels on a private island that you control, if you pay for the island you own the island and all the land on it. Your confusing rentals/leases with actually purchasing the land, and then trying to start an Anche bashing dramarama around it.

Next time try to get some facts straight before you decide to randomly bash someone. Leave the conspiracy theories and personal vendettas at home. And try to keep from going off on unrelated tangents like you did bringing the "forest" incident into this post, it just shows your bias.

Might as well explain what happened so you guys get the whole picture.

SL Is a Grid based world. The overworld is a huge grid, with each square of the grid called a "sim" or "simulator". Since SL is expanding rapidly, they are adding new sims constantly to the grid, and since there are land barons who make money by buying new sims, and selling it to the other residents, these new sims are auctioned off for RL money.

Before the sim is auctioned, it is activated on the grid and becomes accessable, this is while they are testing the sim's stability. (It's usually about 5 sims to 1 rl server) Once the time comes, they will start the auction for the sim with a $1000 minimum bid, and it will appear on the auction page for people to bid on.

What Marc did was he went to one of these not yet auctioned sims, and grabbed the sim id number off of the sim's information page. He then went to an existing auction page, and changed the variable in the url to point the page to the not yet auctioned sim. He then was able to activate the auction with a bid for 1 dollar, on an auction that nobody else would ever see, that would eventually be started with a 1000 dollar minimum bid.

Since nobody else could see that the auction was active, he ended up winning the sims that he was bidding on for 1 dollar each. 999 less then the normal minimum bid, and much much much less then the normal final bid. Realizing that the auctions all of asudden were posted as "completed auctions" and people started seeing sims selling for 1 dollar, he quickly tried to dump the land off on other residents by chopping it up into little bits and selling it for WAY under market value.

So what ended up happening, is people ended up buying up this cheap land off of Marc, so now LL had a Customer Service nightmare on their hands, since these people were living legally on a sim that the previous owner got illegally.

They did the only thing they could do, and banned Marc.

Note: the minimum bid on the auctions is to cover the actual cost of the server hardware that the sim is on. So buying 5 sims for 1 dollar each, is a multi-thousand dollar loss for LL