I'm supposed to feel sorry for Ina Centaur, because her account is being deleted apparently, and she is losing her sims, unable to raise money for them.
I don't.
"To Pay or Not to Be," she whines -- although the real title should be "To Not Plan and then To Not Be". Classic grasshopper story.
Why don't I have sympathy, in general for this persona and specifically for this plight?
It's not only because Ina Centaur behaved like a TOTAL asshole on the matter of the high whack-a-mole score (remember?) and she even made a victory-dance picture). Not only because of her outrageous open source cultism on the liberationtech list which I exposed. But because it's all just plain *stupid*. Nobody has to lose their IP in SL at all if they just do a few simple things -- and don't let their bills pile up and then reach the 30-day deadline.
No one has to lose an account with all their content on it just because they can't pay tier -- that's just poor management and posturing and assholery.
Everyone knows that there are free accounts in SL; if you can't pay tier, you tier down, you cancel your premium account, and then you make a free account. But if you have an island, it does take some foresight -- you can't wait until your tier is overdue -- you have to put your build into inventory, and then sell or return your island before the overdue period.
So she's just doing a star turn, trying to garner sympathy, trying to get other tech press and blogs to pick up her "plight" in the copyleftist cultic tradition, trying to make it sound that this evil company is stealing all her IP because it is "trapped" on its proprietary platform.
Utter bullshit.
First, as she herself knows perfectly well, she could easily (and even legally) copy and move her content to open sims. It's her own content; she can copy and move it. This is done constantly. That it isn't done as part of the official viewer doesn't mean anything as there are numerous free viewers and devices that will do this still within the TOS, and many have done it. She's not mentioning that merely to posture and caper and cavort with this fake idea that her content is "trapped". It's not trapped.
Secondly, if you are in a position where the tier on your account holding sims is not going to get paid, there is a very easy workaround that many have done:
Move the content to your free alt. After all, it's your content on all perms, you can thereby move it.
(BTW, this story implies another recommendation for the mainland and tier in mainland rather than island form: you group your land, you put the tier on another account. When that account defaults, your main avatar with its content will not be cancelled as an account then. This also enables you to get bunches of people to help you with your tier -- sometimes people who rally have tier and can help for a month -- you can't group-tier an island, however.)
Of course, you have to do that before the 30 day warning expires, but given that you have first 7 days of warning for non-payment, then a 30-day grace period before your land will be seized and you account cancelled, it's a way out (but only if you have gone the mainland rather than island route.)
Naturally, if you didn't think you could pay 4 sims worth of tier, and you wanted to keep your main avatar associated with your identity and IP, it might be prudent to sell your islands BEFORE the tier fell due (I'm not sure you can sell it AFTER it falls due, because you'll find less takers, I would think and it may not be physically possible to transfer it at that point.)
This entire story bespeaks several levels of arrogance that led to poor management:
o the belief that last minute grandstanding and pleading poor will induce people to help
o the belief that if you portray your identity/IP holder as being trapped and destroyed, you will garner more sympathy.
I have ZERO sympathy for this plight, given that the content is easily transferrable to open sim; within the context of SL, it's also easy to cancel or sell your island, pocket your inventory, and keep a free account or failing even that, it is easily transferred to a free alt. To be sure, sitting and transferring thousands of items is no fun, but then, you needed to sort and clean your inventory anyway.
Yet another option: you like liberated content? Put it all out inworld and tell everybody to come fetch it. Hey, sell some of it to pay your tier, too.
Ina Centaur has always been a singularly unpleasant individual. There's something grating about a certain self-loathing implied in an Asian assuming the identity of a white person in SL -- far from being innovative or edgy, it just sounds like the self-loathing that it is (in others who do this without disclosing their Asian identity). I've encountered more Asians hiding their identity behind white avatars than I've ever -- not even once! -- encountered RL blacks with white avatars in SL.
I'll never forgot landing at the Shakespeare sim and finding that the landing was really inconvenient, because you couldn't find the donation pot. I looked and looked and finally found it not near the landing. When I pointed this out, Ina argued and argued and argued with me. I also pointed out that Primtings was really poorly organized, because when you land, you can't find the signs with teleporters to the artworks easily and intuitively. And again Ina argued and argued and argued.
When people are unwilling to take feedback and unwilling to hear basic criticism meant in fact to help their projects become more open and supportable by the public, you can only think: fuck 'em.
So when Ina writes tripe like this:
In short: Ina Centaur’s account is due for deletion because she’s created way too much in an expensive virtual world called Second Life and can’t figure out what to do with her creations, and it’s both emotionally debilitating (she locked herself in a room for an entire year and a half to build everything herself, so it’s like parting with a pound of life-flesh) and technically painful (no easy way to back up entire sims without losing script functionality, missing prims and texture defunc’s).
I can only say -- no, your account is due for deletion because you're an asshole.
You couldn't plan even 30 days in advance before your unpaid bill deadlines hit to sell or cancel your islands so that your account could be moved to a free account with no islands. You couldn't transfer to another free account. You couldn't copy to open sim as many others do.
In short, all you can do is play martyr, poster and caper and holler to try to gain sympathy, but only by trashing the proprietary software with its proprietary platform. If you find such things "cramp" your creativity, why did you build here in the first place?
Lots of people sell sims they can't maintain *with the content*. That way another avatar buys the scripts/textures/prims. But such a capitalist solution of course wouldn't "work" for Ina. Planning also didn't appear to work to end the island contract in time to keep the avatar with its content. So instead -- the posturing and cavorting, and this outrageously tendentious statement:
"In a civilized real life, if you get into money trouble, you can declare bankruptcy or get put in jail. In the jungle and in the mafia, they’d send you sleeping with the fishes. In Second Life, it’s kind of like that — if you can’t pay up on land tier, Linden Lab will kill your avatar."
Oh PULEEEZE. What utter bullshit!
BTW, the Globe Theater is still open, with a group holding the island, and with alts with names like Ina Hotshot.
And Ina Centaur's build of the Globe Theater still exists inworld on that sim. So it's not like it is destroyed. In fact, the modest and retiring Centaur has put a sign with her own name on the build just as large as the name "Shakespeare" lol.
Meanwhile, a pretentious, self-flagellating and disruptive ego has been deleted, and perhaps the world does not miss it.
Since the scenario of businesses folding because the economy has problems is increasing then it is also useful to point out if you are paying tier to LL for mainland and wish to downgrade then you have to keep enough USD funds on file to pay for the month you are in, abandon all your land, drop your group tier donations, and then cancel premium. Since group tier can be messed up you might even have to open support tickets to get rid of group tier donations if they are defectively higher than you can drop. Once you have erased all obligations then LL will take the money for the current month and only then will your premium status no longer be needed.
It is pretty messed up. Only when you see you will have a zero balance the next month will you know you escaped LL's billing department clutches.
A related observation: If LL folds and SL is closed then none of LL's TOS rules apply anymore do they.
Posted by: Ann Otoole InSL | May 29, 2011 at 06:05 PM
Ann, if you find yourself in that position, you have 37 days to handle it. So even if you are in dire straits, you have 7 days before you lose access to your account, then 30 days before your land is seized. So either you a) transfer your stuff or b) get the bill paid in 30 days.
I don't see how you would have to open up tickets to "drop group tier donations". Those other people who are donating the tier can do one of two things: 1) pull out the tier so they won't be billed in the month after the next month 2) tier up to help you temporarily, and you meanwhile pull out your avatar from the group and reduce him to premium.
I don't see what is 'messed up' about that at all.
In fact, people who are going out of business do this all the time. People who are stuck sometimes either get someone to help, or they rent tier from a business renting tier, which enables them to withdraw, tier down, and pull out while they still pay in Linden dollars for tier from sale of land.
Look at her bill. By the time the Lindens shut off the account, there was a $3200 plus tab there. That means that if she had to have had a bill with more than 4 sims, because each sim is $295 a month tier. Is that 10 sims then? Or did she already get the Lindens to let her through one grace period of 30 days and now it's 60 days? It's an odd bill.
If you are facing a tier bill of $3200 -- or the loss of your account and your islands -- you are doing something profoundly irresponsible and stupid, especially if you have other people who have contributed money to your art sim.
To be sure, business can tank very fast and leave people caught. But you'd still have time to pull out of that bill if you cancelled the islands quickly enough when you found you couldn't pay for them, or you could firesale them.
Posted by: Prokofy | May 29, 2011 at 06:28 PM
Because Prok, there is a defect. I show I have donated more tier than I have. I can drop only so much. And then it will still show I donated land. I am the only premium in my groups. I am the only one that can donate. The total donated amount is higher than I can donate or drop. This defect has been around a while. To clear it requires LL going in and fixing it.
And yes one should plan ahead and keep the money on hand for 2 months because it might take you 2 months to sort it out and go into free/basic status. If things are getting increasingly tighter because, obviously, SL is imploding as people leave and the RL economy is in the crapper and there are newer toys to play with, then it is time to reevaluate where your hobby money is going.
We keep hearing more and more reports of people at LL being unhelpful in respect to LL's billing system that refuses to take money even after LL blogged about it and provided non functional phone numbers to call. Is Rod Humble the only actual CSR at LL? Looks that way.
Posted by: Ann Otoole InSL | May 29, 2011 at 08:00 PM
Well I do feel bad for her. She got messed up in the abrupt non-profit change. Non-profits had a different pay schedule arrangement and I believe SL refused to change the schedule for her (from a couple of months in advance to monthly payments).
She probably could have started charging other groups for using her facilities for performances. But, as we all learn, giving away something for free doesn't make it valuable. People tread it like refuse.
I don't know, lately I've been reading a lot of crazy stories about SL. The push by the military to opensource everything has me antsy. For the first time, I've been thinking about pulling up stakes, just taking that Linden Welfare house until my premium ends. Do you want some nice plots cheap? IM me.
Posted by: melponeme_k | May 29, 2011 at 09:51 PM
I'm not sure that she had non-profit status. She's not with a recognized charity, it was just her own amateur/semi-professional project. I don't see that she represents any kind of real-life theater or arts group. Of course, she might have gotten the attention of one, but she was unable to. Where do you see evidence that she used to have this rate?
Also, when it comes to the "different pay schedule," that was reference to universities or nonprofits paying in advance, not getting a credit in advance.
If you have different information please link to such a policy because I've never heard of it, but I've heard universities describe the opposite, where they needed invoices to reflect that they would pay in advance by a year or half year.
Posted by: Prokofy | May 29, 2011 at 11:35 PM
Ina has always pandered for 'dontations' because she never wanted to pay for her sims out of her own pocket.
I don't feel sorry for someone who won't take responsibility for their own actions. If you can't afford to pay for a sim yourself, don't get one. Don't expect other people to foot the bill for you.
It's pretty simple.
I'm not sure why she can't pay for it anyway, I remember 2 or more years ago she had a huge sim-sized store of skins called 'Skin City'. The skins were nice, I thought skins were supposed to be a holy grail of sales in SL?
Posted by: Darien Caldwell | May 29, 2011 at 11:35 PM
She writes about a raise in tier (which only happened to the non-profit/edu regions) and about one region that has payed tier in advance for 6 months - clear signs for the old discounted non-profit/edu regions.
Posted by: Daniel Regenbogen | May 30, 2011 at 02:16 AM
Daniel, the Lindens accepted paid-in-advance tier and didn't demand a raise immediately on the tier.
So if Ina had discounted tier all this time, she should be grateful, and given the issue of accountability to the public involved in managing a non-profit, she should have made a careful and timely exit from the sims so as not to lose her account or the content. That could have been done, and wasn't.
It's grand-standing and posturing.
Posted by: Prokofy | May 30, 2011 at 03:23 AM
Yes, but as I read it LL seems to have raised the tier (after the usual advance payment ran out) *but* still demands another advance payment of the now normal tier. She wrote that her account is some 3500 dollar in red numbers - looks to me like LL tried to charge the full 295 for one region for a whole year in advance. *That* would be something to get upset about in my eyes.
Posted by: Daniel Regenbogen | May 30, 2011 at 09:15 AM
Daniel, that's ridiculous. That's easily dealt with by calling customer service in a timely manner. The Lindens announced the end of the subsidy of nonprofits last year, timed for the fall. So there was plenty of time to undo this arrangement. The normal procedure is to bill only for the tier used in the past month, so it could have been changed simply by calling customer service. And don't tell me that customer service doesn't respond -- we don't know that because Ina hasn't mentioned this as problem -- *you* have contrived it.
And even if customer service didn't respond, then you keep trying, when you have something like this -- a project that has been sustained by a community and is larger than yourself.
Except, that's not how this self-referential geek saw it. She saw it as her vanity project, and it remained that to the end, and she'd rather commit avataricide than solve the problem of how to keep it going or at least back up the copy.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | May 30, 2011 at 12:46 PM
Yes, there are a few people who create lots of drama instead of first trying out all the ways to solve a problem. Still I think that it is poor customer service to take away a bonus but keep the negative side that came with it (the having to pay always a complete year in advance). There should be no need to undo any arrangement.
Posted by: Daniel Regenbogen | May 30, 2011 at 01:07 PM
Prokofy, customer Service was called in a timely manner. From the time the change was announced.
They refused to change the payment schedule for these sims. They insisted on keeping the non-profit payment plan in place even though the sims were no longer non-profit. And considering all the recent horrific customer service stories in regards to sims, I believe they had a part in creating this mess.
Word to LL, Military is coming to destroy you. They are not going to create the hypergrid for you. So don't be putting all those eggs in one basket.
Posted by: melponeme_k | May 30, 2011 at 01:52 PM
Mel, do you know this for a fact? I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying it. It's absurd. Yes, customer service/billing can be awful. But really, forcing somebody to pay regular rates for sims on a year-ahead basis after moving them from nonprofit? I simply do not believe it. I realize you may have some inside dope here and I respect that, and I realize LL can be awful but I want to make two salient points here:
o If true, this fact alone would be enough to garner Ina a lot more sympathy -- and even a smidgeon from me. Yet she never mentions this in her lengthy post about the subject.
o Instead, she plays "my content is trapped on a proprietary platform without open source software WWWAAAAAA" card, when that isn't persuasive (given what I've said about workarounds) and where the "big bad evil billing made a huge outrageous grab" would play much much better.
So I have to wonder if this is true -- i.e. it may have happened as some automatic, mechanical stupid thing, but I wonder if any real effort was made to undo it.
There's also this fact: the sims remain, with a group holding them of her alts and others, and aren't seized yet.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | May 30, 2011 at 03:53 PM