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[The Grid Representation Foundation]

 The Grid Representation Foundation » Discussion » General Discussion (Moderator: admin)
 Goals

[Hermit Barber]

1 Does the group wish to limit itself to discussing just the open space sim issue, or should we be looking at other problematic areas?

2 What does the group wish to accomplish? Areas which might fall into the discussion include:

• 2.1 Liaison:
• How the Lindens communicate with the residents
• 2.2 Governance:
•   2.2.1 What rules do there need to be?
•   2.2.2 Who should enforce rules?
•   2.2.3 How should rules be enforced?
• 2.3 Ombudsman:
•   2.3.1 Should we seek the appointment of an ombudsman?
•   2.3.2 Who would pay the ombudsman?
•   2.3.3 How would an ombudsman be managed and rated?
•   2.2.2 Who should enforce rules?
•   2.2.3 How should rules be enforced?
• 2.4 Cost:
•   2.4.1 How costs are established for services and facilities
•   2.4.2 What mechanisms should be in place to establish costs and billing agreements
• 2.5 Competition:
•   2.5.1 Should LL compete with its residents
• 2.6 Availability
•   2.6.1 What functionality is available to classes of uses (and at what price).
• 2.7 Service Level Agreements
•   2.7.1 What metrics are to be used to determine whether LL is delivering the service billed to users.
•   2.7.2 What penalties apply when LL fails to deliver billed services.
• 2.7 Service Use
•   2.7.1 What metrics are to be used to determine whether users are exceeding fair use?
•   2.7.2 What penalties apply when LL fails to deliver billed services?

[river ely]

As a user from England, I dont see any solution. American legal representation is meaningless to otehrs outside the USA. Legal fights will take months or longer. Any increase in price means europeans pay more than american users as we have to add VAT 17.5% in England and 25% in Denmark. In australia the value of the AU $ is falling fast against the  US$.

I like your rhetoric, but I doubt you will gain any ground. But do try, we always root for the underdog.

River.

[Dexter Tones]

Hermit, I think we need to focus on the core issue right now, which is the change in LL's Openspace policy. Most of the other things you suggested can come later or other groups can be formed to deal with them. With that said, I'm not against branching out into other areas, I just feel that we should mainly concern ourselves with trying to overturn/reform the new policy at this point in time.

River, LL's headquarters is in the U.S. While they do have branch offices in other countries, their "base" is in the state of California. It is true that going the legal route may take time, but I believe we should consider using all options at our disposal. I disagree that legal representation is meaningless. At the very least, it will apply more pressure onto LL.

[Mikyo]

Maybe LL could arrange for rentals on a yearly basis.  To guarantee a price for a known amount of time.  I don't expect them to never raise the rates.  Doing it in this way, at this time, seems very arbitrary and confusing. 

[Shiina Petrov]

I would also prefer some sort of agreement that prevents land rates from fluctuating wildly every few months. 

The startup fees are very high and it is not fair that Linden seems to change their minds about pricing very frequently.  I wonder if lawyers might come to the same conclusion.

[Shiina Petrov]

This was originally written in response to Celeste's post about the kinds of parties involved.

http://www.saveouropenspaces.org/forums/index.php/topic,27.0.html

I understand that land owners may lose very much from the Linden plan, but I don't think they are the only ones.  I know some people have claimed in SL Forums that this is only a problem for landowners or for people making profits.  I do not agree with that.  This is about what kind of relationships we all have as buyers/renters of services from Linden.  We should stay focused on that. 

We should not have to promise to use less capacity than they are advertising and make some bizarre compromise just to keep a fraction of products we have been paying for.  It is not good faith or fair that we are being asked to pay much more, or else give all the machines back to Linden soon after open spaces were sold.  If we simply can't pay, then Linden would keep the intial fees plus tier and they go on using the machines for whatever they want.

Basically, Linden is saying they miscalculated how the technology works and/or how it would be used.  That is setting an unreasonable precedent.  If they can change the price by 2/3 whenever they do not like how the market is going, then it does not matter what kind of land you own or what you are using it for.  They are saying they can force you to pay anything they want whenever they feel like it.  It does not matter what is actually happening on the servers or whether you are sailing, building a couple houses and gardens, or making a megamall with 40 avatars present and 5,000 laggy scripts. 

I understand that Linden did something similar by changing rates for the full-prim islands earlier.  If we do nothing except leave open spaces for full-prim islands, maybe in a few months, they will try to increase the prices for full-prim once again.  Maybe they will sell mainland cheap now and in 6 months say, "Oh, too many people bought it and used all those prims we sold them.  The price has to go up, now."

I rent an OS from a land owner for use as my home.  Originally, there was a partner but unfortunately, she has been away from SL for some time.  When we bought into the sim, we paid the owner her purchase price.  We made a contract with her to rent the space for more than $75/month.  The owner wants some profits, okay, and she is European so there is also VAT for her.  I don't know how the law deals with subcontracts, subleases etc. for virtual services.  Regardless, that is a real monetary investment. 

Of course, it is not as much as the landowner's investment when you have multiple islands (plus the island was terraformed by the owner, etc.).  Still, I feel that Linden must have some reasonable obligation as a provider to maintain prices at reasonable rates for longer than just a few months.  A 66% jump in the monthly rate, which I end up paying, is horrible.  It has been rough for me covering the sim by myself recently, but the increase would force my decision.

I think we also need to focus attention on the fact that people's time and work goes into developing the islands.  For home and business users especially, it is not something we can easily recreate.  We selected a location that had textures we wanted, but which we do not own.  We found a place that was terraformed to our liking (many people spent time to terraform their own).  We collected objects etc. to suit the specific environment and to fill an island of that size and scale.  Unless you are highly skilled at linking thousands of objects or everything was done through temp-rez on your sim, I don't think it is very easy to recreate all your work.  We cannot simply relocate the scenery to smaller parcels, or we will lose most of the experience we have spent months creating.  Inventory we bought, and where Linden profits by controlling all the money exchanges, has lower value to us now because we cannot use it as we intended under the terms of our agreements.  All of these agreements made sense because everyone assumed that Linden would act with a reasonable amount of consistency. 

We may have two months' warning.  However, I do not think it would be considered reasonable in court for most utilities or apartment complexes to raise rates by 66% with only two months' notice.  I wonder what the California Attorney General will say, as far as online services.

Is Linden officially an ISP?  I read somewhere that ISPs have stricter rules than this.