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Mercia
Escort, try to think before posting: Those who pay more per month in private tier than someone using a premium account but less than 513m2 are those who choose to pay more. They are contributing a lot to the LL economy, because they subsidise the USD + VAT paid to LL by private estate owners like me. VAT is not evaded, EU tax law only requires VAT where there is a direct electronic product purchase between the user and the provider, and if you read the LL VAT FAQ, you will discover that this does not apply to resident to resident transactions.
I did think before posting. It simply doesn't help discussion if you choose to suggest anyone who has a different opinion to yourself is "weak minded".
I assume you are refering to business in a box style resellers. but I am unclear on exactly how this would prevent "direct copy merchants", or even hinder their operations? I am premium, and I have operated as a merchant in SL for close to a year and a half, and I do not have a group for my business. Groups do very little for businesses beyond the occasional update, or new product announcement, both of which can be done by IM with a mailing list almost as easily. I also suspect very few BIB sellers care about updating, new product announcements, or even talking to their customers after they have their money.
In a very limited way I could see group creation being premium only, but not membership. A lot of groups have nothing to do with business and this would prevent groups of friends from having a group just to chat in. Also, in what way will this remove the technical limitations and allow more than 25 groups? To clarify - by "direct copy merchants" i am not referring to BiB. I am referring to those individuals who take products and copy them prim for prim, or "rip" textures and reupload them, and then resell as these products as their own creations. These individuals are falling foul of copyright law (specifically, DMCA "Fair Use"). These merchants are aware that they are operating illegally and thus frequently use an anonymous "alt" to cover their tracks.
With regard to groups not being used by merchants - most malls require you to become a member of their group to drop your vendors at your store in their mall. With regard to group limits - the would allow more than 25 groups as there'd be less of them to manage as central assets and also reduce the number of accesses for group information display e.g. in every profile, etc etc . The amount of data being stored on the servers must be HUGE. If allowing only premium members to join groups would take away the 25 group limitation I am 1000% for this. It is extremely difficult (esp. for a merchant) to manage their rentals if they rent at many places due to the fact that the majority of notifications are sent via group. If some basic account holders pay more PER MONTH than a premium account costs PER YEAR maybe they should upgrade to a premium account - I dunno sounds logical to me.
I disagree. The number of reasons this is not a good idea are innumerable, but here are a few: It should not cost more for people to be in SecondLife. Restricting more "privileges" to paying people is not only unfair but fascist. Only the elite who have money are allowed the "privilege" of joining/creating a group? How many members of groups for Clubs, stores, shops, support groups, land rentals, are no payment info on file? I daresay in the many hundreds of thousands. So you're saying that its a good idea to wipe out the entire group base in SecondLife for the benefit of a few? Who buys from you? Who frequents your clubs? I daresay if you were to inspect the profile of each person, the vast majority are not going to be premium members.
Why do we need to have unlimited groups to belong to? That is not going to help with the server load, that simply means that fewer people join more groups: 6 of one, half dozen of the other. I recognize that it would be helpful for sellers/designers to have more groups available, but those people are in the minority in SecondLife. The last I checked, SL was a community of more than 12 MILLION people. The percentage of those people who would actually benefit from having more group space available are in the very small minority. If you need more than 25 groups, then THOSE are the people who should have the option of paying more to have additional space; just like having more space on a hotmail account as opposed to a free account: the people who get more space pay for it. It is not fair to assume that because something would benefit you specifically, that it is good for the community as a whole. It is not fair to newbs, from any country, to have to pay to belong to a camping group, for instance. It defeats the purpose. If you have a premium account, why do you need to camp? The result of that: no camping, no traffic. No traffic, no competition for sims/malls. Its enough that dwell is gone (I believe that's what it was called), but now traffic doesn't matter? its self defeating. Another example: I have a good friend who is a successful business owner and designer. She has been in game since 2005. She just recently downgraded her account from premium because she doesn't own land and it doesn't make sense to pay a monthly fee. Should she have to give up her business and hard work? Should she have to re-upgrade to premium to continue running a business she's had for 3 years? I say: NO! In addition, I just recently downgraded my account because I don't own land on the mainland; I own an island. I have to pay MORE (monthly premium fee) to have my island so I can add vendors to my land group? This proposal does not make sense on so many levels its bewildering. Look at the amount of linden that changes hands on a daily basis. Look at the tiers landowners pay. There is enough significant commerce in SecondLife that it does not have to become like Real Life: you have to have money to make money; and the rich are elite and able to enjoy simple "privileges" like belonging to or creating a group. I believe that this proposal would benefit only the people who already have money; not the community as a whole. It would not prevent, to a significant or even noticeable degree, what it is intended. Where there is a will, there is a way. Analogy: you can have an alarm system on your house, a security person posted out front, guard dogs and even a moat; but if someone wants to break into you home and rob you blind, they are going to find a way. Restricting the entire community to stave off a few unscrupulous people? >shakes head< why don't we also declare martial law. As Spock so perfectly put it: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; or the one. Anyone is free to inspect my profile: I am an island owner, and only recently downgraded from premium. Take that into consideration before bashing me for disagreeing with this proposal. Limiting the groups to premium will not necessarily free up any resources. You are making assumptions as to how groups are handled that may not apply. These limits were in place long ago, when there were only a fraction of the number of accounts that there are now. I suspect that it would require a pretty hefty amount of recoding on the sim and client side to allow this expansion.
The creation of groups does not seem to be a problem, just the groups that an individual avatar is connected to. I have been reading that there is some work going on to reduce the load that these groups cause in the near future. That work may be able to open a way to increase the limits, although I have not seen any specific references to that yet. The problem seems to be, all of the groups you are a member of have to be activated and connected to every time you log in, including opening communcations channels. The problem is at the individual avatar level so doubling the number of groups will double the impact you have when you log in, but reducing the number of groups in SL by 90% will not eliminate that problem. What you are asking for, is to have the group limit raised to some value beyond 25. How you are doing it is by misstating the effect that basic accounts have on the system. As a second goal you want something done about copyright violaters. This is a separate issue that I completely support, but blocking groups to premium only would not achieve that either, and again is confusing the issue. I suspect that malls would just drop the group requirement, along with rental properties. Since premium accounts make up only a small percentage of accounts in SL, you would almost kill off the entire rental and mall industries. Imagine that you were a mall owner and you were faced with losing 95% of your business. A side effect of this is non-premium estate owners could not create groups to set their land to. They would be forced to leave land 'open build' making it essentially impossible to prevent griefing. In reference to Alyssa's comment, I suspect what Mercia meant when refering to basic account holders 'paying' more than premium is not in subscription fees, but in purchases of products paid for by lindens. They may make that money via a business, or by purchasing lindens from the lindex. I know of a couple of basic account holders that do that. No, no, a thousand times no. This would break so much in world for so many people, the ramifications would be insane!
Also, this is not part of MISC-763. That issue is about improvements for premium accounts. This issue is about limiting the ability of basic accounts.
Innes - I do not believe that I have "mis-stated" the effect of basic accounts on group access load/data storage at all.
McCabe - I cannot think of a single use case that would "break" and I am highly familiar with complex in-world scripted systems.. Visigoth - I cannot see how to respond to a post that declares an idea "fascist". From my view, I'm simply saying that value should be paid for if you wish for any guarantees on your access to it. Okay, let's run down a list:
Changing this would SERIOUSLY impact the social experience of SL, and not for the better. People rely on groups for permissions, notifications, social gatherings, and ownership. Fucking with that quite clearly breaks a lot for Residents (the majority of whom are NOT premium anyway). Because, dear Escort; the idea IS fascist. Only because I'm privy to the situation that occurred just yesterday with your wife regarding the Frenchman stealing her designs do I now understand why you would propose something as outlandish as this. That is what the DCMA is for; there are already mechanisms in place for every contingency; you are not only reinventing the wheel but you are trying to prevent, for lack of a better analogy, a pet from running away by cutting off its legs. We may as well, as I stated previously, go out and declare martial law, because someone MIGHT do something wrong. What does that do to the honest citizens? How dare you impose restrictions on me because of the evils of another.
I DO pay to have guarantees; its called a TIER as well as the initial cost of my island. That is much more than the cost of a premium account, and much more than plenty; I should not be further penalized, nor should people without premium accounts, to protect the needs/wants of only a few. If you had to have a premium account to join a group, how would you add your alt to a group? Its right for someone to have to pay more each month for the "privilege" of having an alt because it benefits YOU directly? I think not. If YOU want to have additional space to add groups, then make it your own issue and don't try to pose your socioeconomic fascism on the rest of the community in SL. Here, look it up: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fascism In addition, you should, in my opinion, step back from the situation and realize that your "proposal" is in direct response to something that happened to your loved one, and is not objective, fair, well-thought, or any other synonym I can think of. Imposing your ideals on the world after you take up your crusade on her behalf is no better than a tyrannical medieval king trying to avenge his dishonored queen. Get down off the white horse; stop protecting the nobles and consider the kingdom as a whole; we are the backs upon whom the designers, sellers, creators, landowners, DJ's, club/mall owners stand. Kill us, and you starve. And lastly; every time you attack someone on a personal level, as you did myself, Innes, McCabe, and Mercia only further discredits you. No one likes a whiner, nor someone who fights with their fists instead of their mind. Premium accounts are not the only way to make a "contribution to the platform". I do a fair amount of business in SL, but I'm a basic account. That's because I'm part of a group that owns an island, and I pay quite a lot every month to LL as my share of the island fee. Remember: basic accounts can own islands. Requiring me to get a premium account on top of that is ludicrous; I'd be paying the monthly fee for some pointless little 512 plot that I wouldn't use.
McCabe - none of these listed items constitutes a "break" in the platform. They seem to be a list of services/functionality that basic members have been able to get for free up to this point. (Likely paid for by VC, Lindex, and Premium contributions).
— Visigoth - You are totally misreading my motivations. My reason for posting this was triggered by comment #11 by meta linden on the blog post Also, your definition of "fascist" and "elitist" appears to cover the concierge service in entirety - do you believe that concierge is a fascist organization? — Lex - I too own an island. Unlike you I don't believe that the associated fees are for "Second Life" per se. I understand that what I am paying for is the maintenance of the island hardware, deployed simulator software, network services, and the associated, (sic. elitist/fascist?) support offered by LL as the concierge service. I can stop paying that at any time and still have the platform service available to me (currently, for free). Consider this: If LL are unable to provide a compelling reason to pay for Premium membership, then I too may stop paying it at some point. I wonder what the business case and the future of LL would look like if SL became basic only. Where exactly would LL be able to resource capital for innovation/bugfixing of their software platform? Perhaps they may have to achieve this by putting up island fees so that landowners then become the patrons of all the free rides instead of the premium members? "every time you attack someone on a personal level, as you did myself, Innes, McCabe, and Mercia"
If I have given personal offense to anyone, please accept my apologies - however I have read an reread my answers above, and for the life of me, I can't see any personal attack in my responses? I guess we wil have to agree to disagree on whether you are misstating the effect basic accounts have on the chat system, but that does not change the basic problems.
A 'break in the platform'... It might not be that literally, but it will harm many products out there. My own main product has a mode where it allows access based on group membership, and many people us that. You may not consider that a break if they suddenly can't use that feature because 93% of their friends are not able to be in groups, but I am sure it will still feel that way to them. You have 3 different proposals in one issue., #1 Make group creation/access a premium only feature to improve the incentives to go premium. #2 Hinder or prevent theft and resale of copyrighted objects. #3 Allow an increase of groups per avatar beyond the 25 limit currently imposed. ----------- #1 can not, and should not be done for the simple reason that removing a basic function such as chatting from 93% of the people on the grid woudl be ludicrous. Again, you may not consider it 'broken, but I would, when my basic friends can't even chat with me in my non business group. This would not be an incentive for people to go premium, but it would be an incentive for them to leave and go elsewhere. #2 Would not happen. Again, rental properties and malls would not stop renting. They would not be able to afford to lose 93% of their revenue, so they would just remove the group requirements for renting. In the end it would have no effect whatsoever on these types of resellers. Some of them are already premium anyway, and own land. Item #1 would not affect these at all, and would just hurt all of the basic accounts in SL. Other means need to be pursued to address this issue. Punishing the vast majority, for the actions of a small number or people would not be productive. #3 can be done when theLindens decide to do it. Like anything, it will take some time and thought to work around the existing technical problems. Time would be better spent supporting a proposal that would increase the group limit, rather than cutting out basic features to the majority of SL residents. I would recommend looking at MISC-763 and proceeding from there. The bottom line here is that this should NOT be done for ANY reason. It would server to alienate a huge percentage of the SL population, while it whould have no real or lasting effect on the theft of IP, and no guarantee that it would have any effect whatsoever on the number of groups allowed. Alyssa mentioned that she would be '1000% for it' to get more than 25 groups, but how useful would those groups be if 93% of their members were gone, and half of the businesses no longer had groups because they operate entirely on private islands, and do not need to own land or be premium? McCabe made a very good list of the impact that such a proposal would have. Removal of the groups would have significant impact on the functinality of SL. It may not technically 'break' something. The sims may not crash because of it, but it would be a serious decrease in functionality for the majority of the population. I read Meta Lindens post in that blog, and nowhere did he mention the group limits. I do believe that we need more premium incentives. New features need to be created as incentives, but not by taking existing features away from the general population and given to premiums only. This effect is not an incentive at all. @ Alyssa: you wrote "If some basic account holders pay more PER MONTH than a premium account costs PER YEAR maybe they should upgrade to a premium account - I dunno sounds logical to me."
Like Escort you are not thinking this through. The basic account holders are tier renters on private estates, or estate owners. A premium account costs 72USD per annum (+ VAT), but that is all LL gets if the account stays within its free 512m2 land allowance. On the other hand, as Lex has pointed out, a basic account can be an island owner, which means paying 295USD + VAT per month. There is no reason for such a person to have a premium account, if they do not want to own land or contribute tier on Mainland, as the other main reason for having a premium account is support. An island owner is automatically in the highest membership level, which is not premium but Concierge. So there is no logic to your point, Alyssa. Just as there is no logic to this feature request. I am 100% in support of the first half of this proposal (Group creation should become the privilege of premium members only), and adamantly opposed to the second (Group membership should become the privilege of premium members only).
Restricting group MEMBERSHIP in any way would be ridiculously harmful to the economy and social structure of Second Life. Don't even think about doing such a thing! But limiting the ability to create groups would have only a negligible effect, and this seems like a reasonable perk to associate with premium membership. I don't doubt the 0.8% figure cited in a JIRA post with regard to the percentage of SL accounts that are premium. Could this be because most people (like myself) see NO value to premium membership? i have been reading this commentaries, and since i am premium i have been faithful to linden lab, i do prefer to pay to them, who at the end are the ones that give me the SL, i dont like people that makes a "parallel" SL just for their profit as the real estate holders do, and one readon why i say this is because inside all this basic account land holders hides many "thiefs", i invite all of you to read all the complaint about this problem, you cannot create anything because you become in risk to be stealed.
I positively prefer to have with authentic SL avatars paying to LL, rather to a merchant of land, promoting that a lot of people can make money anonymously, or between the island holder and him.... Premium account holders should be more respected from LL and from basic account holders, we do need more privileges, otherwise each month there will be less premium as it is happening right now, falling down and keeps falling...... And yes, i love SL and i do have fun inworld....but i play with LL Nemesis, LL's business model is based on the sale and maintenance fees of private regions, it is not a parallel SL, you teleport from one to the other. I own both private regions and a lot of mainland. LL make a lot more money from a private region because the whole region is paid for every single month, on Mainalnd, LL gets nothing for those plots within a premium accounts 512 allowance except the paltry 6USD per month premium fee, they get nothing for protected land or for land that has been abandoned. Get rid of private regions and you cannot play with LL anymore, because LL goes bust.
Mercia, i have 2048 in mainland, i pay 15 dollars plus VAT because i am in europe, plus the premium, i am not against having island, i like them too, WHAT I DONT LIKE ,is that BASIC ACCOUNTS can have land WITHOUT been premium, that is my point!!!!
I'm afraid the chances of this happening are low, LL tends to move forward with features and does not remove old ones (not to mention that a good 80% of SL is basic accounts). I can see this maybe just maybe for unverified accounts, but thats also unlikely again because of the above reasoning. However, perhaps a suggestion that premium members can more then the normal 25 might be acceptable as it gives people more of a reason to goto premium, however, many people who are on SL like the openess and the 'everyone has equal rights' feeling of it, as premium members do have perks, but not so many as to cause people who don't have it anxiety over not having the premium features, which is a nice feeling.
Basically, it is my opinion that LL shouldn't force premium to actually have fun playing SL or overly inconvience them for not having it. (like so many MMOs) I do not believe that limiting groups to only premium members is a good idea, there are many people that rent land and start RP SIMs but do not have the premium account money. I do like the idea of having more perks for premium members though, being one myself for over a year now I would like a little bit more than just a stripend and the free land. More than 25 groups would be a good addition, perhaps 10 or 15 more for premium would be a good idea. See, there are many reasons why a non-premium should be able to have groups, in fact SL is mostly based on groups and the members of those groups.
I feel I must comment on this from a point of view which has only been lightly mentioned. I would give you as an example of why the full implementation of this idea would be devastating, the Independent State of Caledon. Guvnah Desmond Shang pays five figures monthly to Linden Lab for the 30+ sims which comprise his land; I would say most of the residents, who pay him the rents comprising that tier, are Basic Account holders. The Caledon chat, although not to the taste of all, is lively, thought-provoking, absurd, technical, highly intellectual, philosophical and simply friendly in turns. Requiring each and every Caledonian to become a Premium member simply to retain their citizenship (group membership) would empty the chat of participants.
I know several people in Caledon and Steelhead whose typists have employment issues. Their rents are being paid for by friends contributing, and those friends have found the need and organised the response by means of group chat. If these unfortunates can't afford their rent, how are they to afford their membership? What good would it do them once obtained? M. DeFarge, your proposal is excessively harsh and exclusionary to the financially unfortunate. Yrs., Klaus Wulfenbach, Baron Escort, I see 3 aspects in your proposal (other ones than Innes):
1. Limit group access to premium. 2. Increase the max numbers of groups (now 25). 3. Make the premium membership more attractive. I fully agree with McCabe reasons why your proposal would really damage the resident culture. @Visigoth: by mentioning 'fascist' Godwin's Law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_Law There are plenty of basic members who contribute as much, if not more to SL than premium members both in content creation and the use of Linden dollars to buy products in world or rent land on private estates. So there is no merit in punishing them by forcing them to upgrade to a premium account to join a group.
It is true there are loads and loads of groups out there which are "junk" groups filled with newbies who join every group they find and forget about it, mainly free sex places and related, and many of those people only stay in SL for a few days or a couple weeks and never come back again which clogs up the group system. I think it would be more reasonable to cut the group limit for basic accounts to maybe 10, and keep it at 25 or raise it for those of us with premium memberships. That way basic account holders will still be able join land groups for places where they rent land to live on, or rent out mall spots to sell their content. While on the other hand, limiting the amount of junk groups newbies would clog their profiles with which might help reduce "load" a bit. In terms of curbing content theft. Restricting groups to premium members will not stop it at all. People will still find a way to do it and profit from it. Its just something us content creators have to deal with. I think this is a really stupid Idea. Because there are some people out there who don't want to own land. They just want to have fun, and Hang out. If you pay for a premium account, you get to own land . free accounts don't. (Unless in Private Regions.) And not all noobs are free accounts. That's kind of discriminating against who pays and who doesnt.
I guess we've seen a lot of feedback from people who don't pay premium.
It's worth considering whether - if everyone who does pay premium stops because there is zero benefit (and as a sim owner i don't need to be premium) - then probably we'd see that reflected in all other prices going up. But hey, nothing in life is free even if it looks like it is I would comment on how much of a bad idea this issue is, but I think the reason no Linden has commented yet is because they know better. Full non-support.
This is, quite possibly, the worst idea ever. Seriously. Limiting group creation is bad enough, but limiting group membership to premium members would drive just about every club out of business, make parcel management a nightmare for anyone wanting to be open to free residents, and that doesn't even touch on the issue of what to do with non-premium members who already have group membership.
I'm going to go make a request for adding a "vote against" feature to JIRA, just so I can come back to this suggestion and vote against it. It's THAT bad. Escort, I am sorry, but do you forget SL is a SOCIAL medium first? Simply because someone does not upgrade their accont, they should not be ostracized. I do not run a business here, I do not own or rent land, I am not a premium member... but I spend a lot on items for my SOCIAL experience. Limiting groups to premium members only would simply damage businesses. Period. Regardless of how KNOWLEDGEABLE you are in scripting, I am sure you depend on your lowly customers to purchase the items you sell. I'd like to see how profitable you would be without them. Try limiting groups and see what happens to those businesses!
I think eighteen months of this is enough.
I am happy enough to accept there is no acceptable solution and so I am making plans to release my remaining land and to give up on premium membership myself also. |
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New Feature
Resolved
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Limit Groups to Premium Members Only
Some basic account holders pay more PER MONTH than a premium account costs PER YEAR, and if you live in the EU you avoid paying VAT to your government if you pay private owners rather than LL.