Linden Lab taking action against land-cutters
by Tateru Nino 
Feb 13th 2009 at 9:00PM
Filed under: Economy, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
As a part of their ongoing effort to renew and improve the overall experience on the Second Life mainland (Linden estate), Linden Lab have announced that they're going after a number of so-called 'land-cutters'. Land-cutters were formerly almost synonymous with ad-farmers.
Practitioners would buy a larger plot of land, and then subdivide it into the smallest possible squares (16 sqm). Sometimes the squares were packed with advertising towers (some ads were genuine, and others merely fabricated), some were left bare, and some packed with junk. High prices were set on these parcels and many paid them to be rid of the eyesores. There were few places on the mainland where you could stand and not see at least one group of them.
Many land parcels throughout the Second Life mainland are odd-shaped or have bites taken out of them as a result of a number of years of such cutting. While Linden Lab policies on ad-farms have slowed the process, it hasn't stopped it entirely. More than half of those many thousands of tiny parcels are in the hands of just ten users.
Linden Lab has not indicated what action will be taken. Only that such practices are no longer permitted, and that they will be contacting the offending users directly. Of course, this is all to achieve the result that two different ad-farm policies were supposed to have achieved over the last two years. Both only proved to be partially effective, and the core problem remained. Perhaps this more hands-on and proactive approach will be more successful.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Uccello Poultry said on 10:22PM 2-13-2009
I've got a land cutter next to some land I own and I'm watching to see what happens. The land was split into odd, 16m2 plots after the the cutter announcement. Has anyone seen a way to report land cutters?
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Opensource Obscure said on 10:13AM 2-14-2009
Jack Linden recently said during his lst Office Hour that Abuse Reports by residents aren't necessary, since Linden Lab has 'automated' tools that let them easily notice land cutting.
Eebahgum said on 6:08AM 2-14-2009
I didn't think it was as bad as it was really. I may be just sticking to the nicer sims though.
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Tateru Nino said on 6:33AM 2-14-2009
Some sims have always been relatively untouched.
Ciaran Laval said on 10:44AM 2-14-2009
We'll see what happens here, I'll be interested to see what happens to the parcels near land I own, one has dropped from L$999 to L$320 but that's still too expensive for me to bite.
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Tateru Nino said on 10:58AM 2-14-2009
For 16sqm, I very much doubt I'd pay more than L$100.
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