Linden Lab takes a position on ad farms
Linden Lab's staff for the last month or so have been mentioning in public office hours that they have been looking into so-called 'ad farms' in Second Life and talking about potential changes of policy. Indeed, Jack Linden of Linden Lab's land team recently made specific mention of that on the Linden blog.
Ad farms appear to exist for a variety of purposes. Linden Lab is targeting one of these, specifically land-extortion.
Land-extortion ad-farms involve the ad-farmer taking a parcel of any size (it's most common on land parcels that are only four metres square, but there doesn't seem to be any limitation on parcel size), and cramming prominent, unsightly, (often spinning) advertisements on the land and setting the land for sale for many times the going market rate per square metre.
The new policy seems a little awkward, since it appears to target the intent of the parcel, rather than using objectively measurable criteria: "Using content, particularly advertising, to deliberately and negatively affect another resident's view so as to sell a parcel for an unreasonable price, will be deemed unacceptable and dealt with as a violation of our community standards."
Intent is notoriously difficult to adjudge. Your view of whether this is occurring or not, and the view of the investigating Linden may differ. We expect there to be some disputes about this. This policy, of course, would only apply to Linden-owned estates (what is called the mainland). Private estate owners have their own land-use and zoning policies.
