Boycott the American Indian Movement -- and All Sign Extortionists in SL

Let's hope Electric Sheep's ad network don't end up on signs like these.

Here we go, hoo-boy, extremist groups in the U.S. now using the land-extortionist tactic to raise funds for their causes through Second Life. They saw it worked for rapacious microbarons who extort you to buy back the view, why not put Whitey McMansion on the run with these $2000 16 m2 spaces that also extort your emotions by telling you that the proceeds go to help Native Americans through the American Indian Movement? This latest version of Shakedown Street is quite likely to succeed -- unless you master your easily-guilt-tripped emotions and pocketbook and put an end to this nonsense now by not buying from people with this unethical business practice. Send the very strong message that they need to channel their entrepreneurial and cause energies, as worthy as they might be, into ways that don't devalue and harm Second Life for other people.

If you lived in the 1960s and 1970s, you would know that AIM was an extreme left group espousing aggressive and even violent tactics, seizure of buildings and such to make their cause known. In the 1980s, like other leftoids, they mellowed somewhat, even picking up the cause of the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua who at that time were being persecuted and forcibly transported by the Sandinistas (hey, could they not pick up that one!). Today, some AIM activities seem innocuous and even laudable, although they remain extreme in their ideology, as those old Marxist concepts die very, very hard in the 60s-generated movements. They don't have a real mass social movement of Native Americans behind their back, but they can make up for that by amplification on the Internet -- and now Second Life.

Last week, I went to Jubata to look over the sign-griefing situation there near a long-term tenant, to see if it was any better since the casino cashout -- it was. ThaBiGGDoGG Richez, a long-time ugly spinning casino and porn ad extortionist seemed to have folded his tent -- and his BIGG DOGG RICHES casino land had gone on the block. Good! A few others had wilted. although SLustler was still going strong with a huge ugly ad, jutting up above the Great Wall, ruining the view, and unlikely getting many clicks. A few others had pragmatically put their 16 and 32 m to realistic prices, I bought them.

That left Cytherea Eagle's parcels for the BTE Global Financial Group (one of those mysterious and not very transparent capers you see now in SL) -- they were set at princely sums. Still, as it represented a relatively small purchase of $2000 or something to finally clean up that corner of Jubata, I gritted my teeth and bought it, but IM'd her and promised her a blog exposing her extortionist activity. She did one of those snotty faux polite replies pretending not to understand the issue -- which of course involves fattening the coffers of BTE at the expense of blighting other people's land and trying to force them to buy back the view -- a completely unscrupulous business practice. I almost never feed that habit -- very rarely, for the sake of a tenant when I see a vulnerable situation break out, I will but I counsel never buying from these shysters and con-men.

I discussed this unscrupulous business practice at VW07 with the Sheep's Joel Greenberg, as he is the one thoughtfully drawing up a TOS and suggested guidelines for ad-buyers for ESC's new ad system. I warned him that if he worked it that way -- letting others support his ads on their land -- and didn't control the placement and builds, he would find evil-doers like Ancient Shriner and Chrischun Fassbinder, who work for Coldwell Banker, simply dropping his stuff into their existing networked ads and now using the financing and the power of the Sheep to extort the little guy to buy back the land. And I could add now that he could also find himself tacitly supporting a radical US group -- which might not exactly go with the buttoned-down corporate image he might like to project (are the Sheep for taking over U.S. government buildings by force?! I would think not).

So there's "suggested guideline" No. 1, Joel: do not allow ads on any parcel set to sale. Period. I don't care if it is set to sale for $1 -- but it won't be. If you don't allow ads on parcels set to sale, then that's one way at least to deal with the constant flushing of Lindens out of the pockets of naive or frustrated land-owners who pay to get rid of the signs. Of course, it still leaves the problem of the ugly sign itself, often ruining the view for 4 sims. I suggested considering zoning, i.e. only on commercial sims, only on roadside, etc. but of course, the Sheep are not likely to wish to fly around policing this. We need to bring pressure on them to do so, hower, as the Sheep's might, now coupled with the real-life company Coldwell, mean fresh infusion for the 16 -m menace of SL, that the Lindens refuse to mitigate -- no doubt because all along, they just loved the idea of everything from hard-left emotionally-blackmailing extremist groups like AIM and rapacious businesses like Coldwell falsely claiming good-neighbour policies to come and make use of this feature of the mainland. Shame on them.

Be aware, too, that AIM and BTE are tied into the aggressive menace known as BIT:

BIT is a private RE group owned by Robo Marx. We deal primarily in highly visible roadside plots for advertising your business. Please join the group if you would like the latest updates and first choice of prime land purchased by Bluestone. We would also like members to utilize the group to pass along regions or areas where prime land is availble.
Visit our website for a complete list of properties for sale!:
www.bluestoneinvestmentgroup.info

Also visit or SL Auction site:
www.slbayauctions.com

Robo Marx, of course, is one of the most notorious ad farmers with not only highly visible roadside plots but plots on lovely hillsides by rivers -- anywhere he can buy the land.

And SLBAYAUCTIONS.COM is another caper that others have noted are exploiting the new auction concept to hustle their extortionists' empire.

Here's the other BTE businesses to boycott as well, until they can learn to stop devaluing others' homes and businesses by trying to extort them to buy back the view:

BTE Global Financial Group:
-BTE Global Realty
-BTE Global Water Works
-BTE Global Gadgets
-BTE Global Investments
-BTE Global Advertising
-BTE Global CythTech

And that suggests Rule No. 2 for the Sheep's Joel: do not sell your ad network to companies known for this extortionist practice, like BTE Global, and like Mr. Lee's Hong Kong, and like all the groups associated with Ancient Shriner.

Get a list of all the known ad-farmers and extortionists, and do not enable them to be secondary buyers of your services. If you do, you will have to expect that I for one, and others angry about the SL sign menace, will boycott ESC-related businesses like ONREZ. I'm sorry, but big business doesn't get to do this to us with us rolling over.

Many people may think it's time to throw in the towel on this issue now that big business like Coldwell is backing these evil microbarons, or that a group like AIM ostensibly seizing the political-correctness highway will make many feel uncomfortable confronting them. Not at all! In fact, now that companies with at least some scruples, like the Sheep, who are at least trying to devise a fair TOS and complaints procedure, are coming into the scene, we can try to persuade them to do the right thing and stop those who devalue our land with ugly signs. They could use the power of their corporate purse to HELP this scourge from further blighting and devaluing the mainland in Second Life rather than MAKING IT WORSE.

We need advertising and signs in Second Life, we don't have enough *good* options for these things. We don't need spinning ugly crap that isn't even near any obvious traffic patterns that is set to extortionist prices to force us to buy back the view. That many in fact do click and buy is shown by the growth of something like BTE and even an ardent sign-hater like me knuckling to the extortion a few times a year in the name of dealing with a possible *worse* case of extortion (BTE's $2000 versus Mr. Lee's $9350).

There are many ways to help Native Americans. Damaging someone else's purchase in Second Life is not one of them. Oh, unless you are one of those radicals who thinks you have to eat the middle class and kill the rich to succeed at your extreme anarcho-socialist cause. Ok, understood. Then expect some push back from me.

Coldwell Banker uses the extortionist network of Chrischun Fassbinder, who works for them in Second Life, and who sets extortionist ads like this one beside a pretty cobblestone road in Juanita to the price of L$9345 for a mere 16 m2 parcel.

Comments

[Prokofy Neva]

Some fun follow-up dialogue, with the usual mediocrity and stupidity on display lol:

[17:42] Prokofy Neva: I'll be sure to boycott the American Indian
Movement now over the unethical business practices you use, what an ass.

[17:52] Prokofy Neva: You'll recall I spoke to you about your
extortionist tactics in Jubata, and reprimanded you for them -- welcome to my
blog : )

C EAGLE:

With a mouth like yours, you have no business speaking of ethical practices. Also, check your facts before you make a further ass of yourself. Your little spec blog on the web is of no importance to me. Seems you do not have many fans. Is it fun to play police detective or SL cop. I will pray for that empty spot you have to be filled with more than empty dreams and unattainable dreams. For the record... I have never cut land, I do not have one single ad sign in all of SL accept my realty signs. I have never extorted anyone and YOU are the first avatar since mine was born to speak to me with such disregard. YOU my friend have no business speaking of ethical business when your mouth speaks like your bottom. Be well advised I do not take kindly to slander. If I see my rights have been violated, I will take all action legally possible to remedy such issues. Your tactics seems to be of the 4 lettered variety. I forgive you...you may go now in peace. Creator bless and good journeys little boy.

***

FACTS:

1. FACT: Each of the 16 m2 parcels illustrated in the picture above are set to $2000.
2. FACT: They tell people that the $2000 is for the cause of AIM.
3. FACT: not only these BTE group realty signs are out there, but the SLbayauction ads are there, giving the lie to Eagle's claims that she never uses ads. As for never cutting, um....yuh. That parcel was for sale as a single piece but at a very high price -- it probably got liquidated to a land baron. Possible somebody else cut it, but if they did, and Eagle bought it, the point is, she is perpetuating the cut.

Push back, push back, roll back the insanity.

[Clubside Granville]

Hey Prok,

With the proposed removal of mega prims showing up on the *cough* blog *cough* is it time to plead to the Lindens to set a new minimum size parcel (say 256m2) and repatriate the rest?

[Prokofy Neva]

Hi, Clubside,

That exercise on the blog is a hopeless cause. That's all about Lindens who love megaprims and their fanboyz going through an utterly fake exercise of getting the vox populi, then claiming "the community" wants them -- read: the geeks who are one of many communities.

One geek gets that it's about resources however:

http://playprocyon.blogspot.com/2007/10/destroy-all-megaprims.html

This guy explains how they eat up CPU and that's bad for the Lab and all of us. So all this touting by Aimee Weber of the odious Gene Replacement (he's Plastic Duck's) product as "creative" is the usual piggy stuff we've come to expect from the FIC ("no business but my business").

I don't think we can assume that the willingness to appear as if they are wobbling on the megaprims will transfer over to make 16ms all 256 m2. And frankly, now that big corporations are poised to infuse real cash into the whole networked ad system, we are really in danger of having them sealed in stone.

What we have to do is convince these companies like ESC to follow rules -- don't let people putting their land to sale sell their ad space, and don't let extortionists on prime real estate like beachfront prevail. Zone the ads, and deal with complaints.

I've talked with the ESC manager of this concept, and frankly, he doesn't get it comletely. He kept talking about "16 prim spaces" instead of "16 meter spaces". That lets me know that he doesn't spend much time in world actually sitting on a mainland property, scanning around, and realizing the horror of how his prime beachfront that just cost him $500 US is now utterly worthless, because some jackass just put up an adfarm on the next sim with ugly spinning towers, so that no one will rent or buy his land. When he's had that experience a couple-three times, his mind might be concentrated more wonderfully. Except...$500 US is nothing to him, and that's the problem.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

I would agree that it is important to impress upon a company with (a) the technical ability and clout to be a serious contender and also (b) some ethics regarding the issue, the importance of avoiding the appalling business practices of many existing firms. (Which do not, of course, provide any particular benefit for their _advertisers_ - griefing some poor soul on the mainland is hardly likely to increase sales, and in fact the interests of the advertisers are opposed to the interests of the ad-plot-sellers, given that the practice intrinsically means that adverts are being put up in places where they are not welcome and will not meet with a favourable response. More should be made of this I think.)

It is not immediately simple to check whether the land that an advert is on is for sale or not - it cannot be done by script, and requires a bot to come and check - but really, given that ESC can have bots doing search-engine work, it is not _that_ hard, and would not require an amazingly frequent check either. There would be a limited number of plots to look at. Gaining the reputation of an honest ad broker, as opposed to the crooks out there at the moment, would easily be worth it.

Other things which an intelligent advertising network could check on might include:

- number of ads on a plot, ads could refuse to work when positioned right next to other ads, or there could be some sort of maximum density;
- position on that plot, are they sitting at the favoured point for maximum annoyance, 20-40m? Perhaps that means the parcel becomes flagged for human review;
- dimensions of the advertising prim.

(As a disclaimer: the ESC does pay me money for scripting work, but I am not involved in this project at all and know nothing about it.)

[Clubside Granville]

Man, I hate those 16m2 plots! Hey Ordinal, hope things are going well! Need to log in and see if you have any new cool stuff at your shop!

"And frankly, now that big corporations are poised to infuse real cash into the whole networked ad system, we are really in danger of having them sealed in stone."

I guess this baffles me. Even with articles like this

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=29249

you're just as likely to find one like this

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7343&Itemid=2

Obviously from the numbers Second Life's growth has stalled considerably so why is this money coming in now?

Mega-prims are a disaster and at least a few people on the slog agree, but too many are willing to trade convenience for rendering errors, physics issues andprim griefing.

Oh, did I say 16m2 needs to go away?