First thing I would like to say is there are 147 total 16m sqs on mainland and estate land owned by BARTHEART.com with BART HEART ESTATES in the name. As far as I can tell, not one has a sign on it. And they are all set to autoreturn for 1 minute. Over 50% of them are set to allow you to edit the land so you can let them blend with the land next to it. So i don’t under stand what the problem is. You need to be talking about the land bots that buy land up cheap and then sell high, main land prices over 10L$ per meter, Sims going for $3000 USD in auction to the same people over and over to keep land prices high. But it is The Second Life Herald “Always Fairy Unbalanced” so I’ll be surprised if this even makes the blog.

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Perhaps it is something that should be brought up to corporate offices. But then, the escort ads next to some of these larger companies may be appropriate in some ways. It’s difficult to judge sometimes.

Alex Potato/Ayam Drake is still doing this, says it is within the Terms of Service, etc. Many other ad spammers say the same. I’ve had some try to abuse report me because I blocked their ads, rendering them ineffective – but they don’t care. Through the Clocktower Network, some advertisers of SL businesses say that they paid for advertising but not like this – and that they really don’t like their companies being used like this.

I don’t know. What I do know is that it has to stop. The large corporations outside of SL didn’t do this. It’s a few twits (19 at last count on the Clocktower Network) who are doing it. For the most part, I think that the corporations are staying on their islands (though everywhere I go, I seem to find a Pickle).

Time will tell.

So now you’re implying that big business is using third parties to put up billboards while denying it publicly? That’s a serious accusation – I hope you have some actual evidence to back it up. If you have, I suggest you present it.

“And Philip *is* engaging in a ruse. Because he tells us, oh, don’t worry, big business will stay on their islands, we will never sell them Linden land to advertise on roadside on the mainland.”

No, this is not what Philip has said. Read your own quotes in the piece above.

“This is a tabloid, and this is how you do it. You make people feel ownership for the issue — ownership, due to their negligence. That’s what muck-raking journalism is about.”

LOL Prokofy. Given that I spent years doing news, I know exactly how it works.

“My headlines says BIG BUSINESS ADS BLIGHT SECOND LIFE. The ads indeed blight second life. It does not say that the companies deliberately posted the ads.”

Which is why I never said anything about your headline, but instead concentrate on your first two paragraphs where you do indeed claim that Philip’s claim about big business never putting up billboards is false. Stop trying to wriggle out of the issue.

“I think you simply mean my history of besting you in arguments on Clickable Culture, where you adopted a completely pig-headed and obdurate concept of me being hypocritical over your effort to someone trap me in some admission…”

Actually, the first time we engaged on CC I simply tried to get you to clarify what you were saying. You took this as an attack and promptly started insulting me – which is your standard approach to anyone who dares ask you even the simplest question.

“…that you could use in some previous fight with Uri. It was really hilarious. You are lame.”

I have no idea what you’re talking about – I’ve never had any kind of fight with Uri. You, on the othere hand, had your posting privs here revoked because you posted something that was potentially libelous, something that you STILL refuse to admit.

Any big business — and there are many, many more to come! can appear not to be putting up billboards and big ads…and let these unscrupulous inworld sign-griefers and extortionists do it for them. While these particular big-name companies had ads used against their will (only in SL! advertising for a big company without their knowledge!), they failed to do anything until a real clamour went up. That’s telling.

And Philip *is* engaging in a ruse. Because he tells us, oh, don’t worry, big business will stay on their islands, we will never sell them Linden land to advertise on roadside on the mainland. But then he turns around and lets inworld small business, tacky little flipping operations, to completely blight and devalue the world. It’s extraordinary!

>Yes, I’m a literalist, if by that you mean I think that when someone clearly says that big business is posting billboards around SL, they actually mean what they say.

My headlines says BIG BUSINESS ADS BLIGHT SECOND LIFE. The ads indeed blight second life. It does not say that the companies deliberately posted the ads. It explains that they may not know. It gives an example and cites one that says they were blindsided by it.

This is a tabloid, and this is how you do it. You make people feel ownership for the issue — ownership, due to their negligence. That’s what muck-raking journalism is about. You know, like in your favourite Guardian or whatever it is you read.

>But then, all I have to do is look at yoru history of lies, half-truths, fake non-stories and general abuse of people in order to know that nothing is as simple from you.

I think you simply mean my history of besting you in arguments on Clickable Culture, where you adopted a completely pig-headed and obdurate concept of me being hypocritical over your effort to someone trap me in some admission that you could use in some previous fight with Uri. It was really hilarious. You are lame.

No Prokofy, it is in fact true. Big business, no matter how you word salad it, has never put up the kind of billboards you’re describing. You can try and twist and turn all you like, Prok, but you simply flat-out lied in the first two paragraphs of your post, and now you’re trying to wriggle out of it.

Yes, I’m a literalist, if by that you mean I think that when someone clearly says that big business is posting billboards around SL, they actually mean what they say. But then, all I have to do is look at yoru history of lies, half-truths, fake non-stories and general abuse of people in order to know that nothing is as simple from you.

Philip used to tell us this; he *still* tells us this. But it’s a very clever ruse. Because he lets *small tacky extortionist business* put up signs, and one of the things they have done is hijack the signs of big business.

There is nothing “false” about the fact that big business signs were — and are — blighting up the landscape. THEY ARE.

Does big business do this deliberately? When it is left to fester for a month after publicity in blogs and the news, when they make little timid queries and not takedown notices, it’s a problem of responsibility for negligence. That’s just as much an issue as intent.

We can’t know their intent; we can’t know it is false. We have the ugly signs, and their failure to act.

Try to see if you can understand these subtleties, Ian, I know it’s a stretch, your literalist tekkie mind working as it does overtime.

There’s absolutely nothing fake in this story. A resident was able to plaster big company logos all over SL, on hundreds of sims, in the view, everywhere. Thousands of avatars are left with the impression that big corporations advertise in this way in Second Life.

Linden Lab and these big corporations failed to act to change this situation. They could have on day one; but they don’t go on the mainland to see it, or, if they do know about it (and Linden Lab knew about it back in February, as we learn from the incident with Nobody Fugazi struggling with Alex Potato) they do nothing, and fail to act, because they fear precedents.

I see this as a case of the Lindens and the big companies getting hoisted by their own petard — and you, too.

“Um, I didn’t print any false story. Every single word in it is true. I was very careful to point out that *apparently* the ads were ordered by these companies”

Lies upon lies, Prok. Your first line is “Remember how Philip Linden used to tell us that big business would never put up billboards in Second Life?” Followed by “think again”. Clearly, you’re implying that big businesses have put up billboards – something that you knew was probably false when you wrote the story, and definitely know now.

Actually, “Mark” if you read the forums carefully, you’ll see that all the FIC regulars strenuously defend the concept of “I can do WTF I want on my own land,” and have a great deal of hate and venom for landlords and land barons, whom they view as uncreative, grasping, and crass. They believe themselves to be the best judge of what should be done with land, and they’ve always constituted a cabal that used to be quite difficult to get around, although today it is eroded considerably (like Lydnar Lehane’s and Cristiano’s hysterical campaign against having island deeds advertised in the land-for-sale list).

Start with the thread in the archives called “I Don’t Get it And They Sure Don’t” by Pahoa Jade in April 2005, where the term “FIC” was first used by me, to see exactly the roster of names — and continue down the line. You couldn’t be more wrong. The FIC has hatred for any use of land that they didn’t cook up with tie own fetid and exclusive communities of the core sims. They loathe what they view as mass culture in something like Dreamland. They constantly scorn the people who buy land and put up prefabs and don’t have customized stone boxes by Lordfly.

None of the leaders of the FIC, like Aimee or Flipper, ever spoke out or took any leadership position on the Bush Guy; if anything, they justified it under the “creativity knows no bounds” concept of “the Platformists”. If they didn’t take this position due to their slavish loyalty and justification for anything the Lab does, they took it out of a belief that anybody can put up anything they want on their land. They could be smug like that because they had no danger of sign griefing on their old core sims where they and their pals owned all the land — as did Governor Linden, unlike the new sims with no Linden land.

If you can find them on the record condemning the Bush Guy, please do, I could be wrong about some little half-hearted comment they made somewhere, but that’s my best recollection.
In fact, I would challenge you to find one bona-fide FIC member who condemned the Bush Guy. Their mouthpiece Hamlet Linden defended him tacitly by completely disparaging the protest movement against it and writing a sneering article about it.

I get a lot of fan letters. And I see that the opinion that defends the concept of freedom of creativity for landowners but NOT at the expense of reducing freedom and land value for others by not encroaching on the public commons is one that never had any traction with the major FIC. They simply don’t buy it as a concept because they refuse to accept any restraint on themselves, first and formost. Meanwhile, there was definitely a majority of land owners who opposed the inaction of LL on the Bush Guy.

As for the Alex Potato Metro sign, from what I can tell — I couldn’t stay to watch every single thing cycle — he has pulled some of the corporate ads but not all. Perhaps the ones he heard from. I still see some of them. And I also see inworld things like Academy of Second Learning. I doubt the Academy gave permission to be advertised either.

This could get interesting for the sign installers.

Prok, the only people that give any credence to your B.S. are people like you, who also think they’re more “moral” and more intelligent than everyone else. You are the boss of exactly yourself, and no one else, but I doubt you’ll ever accept that, because you’re a busybody extraordinaire. You make Mrs. Kravitz look like an archangel. Hot air and vapid conspiracy theories are all you have most of the time, and any actual decent insights, of which there are a few, just get lost in all the noise and the very basest of personal attacks. You claim to “fight fire with fire”. Guess what? That makes you as immoral as those you claim to be immoral, for rolling in the gutter with them, and indeed using the same tactics you scream about them using, up to and including real life gender speculation and “internet psychologist” type diagnoses.

Cry that I didn’t give my SL last name, that’s ok, because you and others will read my comment. So I get what I want. Now spew some more hatred. I wont be reading it, so enjoy ranting to the walls.