Sunday, June 29, 2008

Despots Do Exist in Second Life

The despot that is known to me is a property owner and was my previous landlord, Tmos Newall who owns the “Cove” properties. The mistake I made was buying land from him with resale rights back in October 2007. I did the Resident thing by putting up my house, landscaped my yard, put in ocean life in my beach water, and life was good. The first rude run in Tmos had with me was quite by accident. I put up a security orb, he happened to come by the property, it would not let him in, and I got a message saying that he was thrown off my land. Instead of sending an instant message to me saying that I needed to add his name to my pass list on my security orb, he kept coming back and trying to crash my security system.

Now each time he did this I got a message saying he was ejected from my property. Now I was home, and in my dungeon with my Master. So here, I am being interrupted. I send him an instant message asking, "What are you doing?"

He says it is against the covenant to have a security orb up and my name is not on it. That was a shock as you and I know in Real Life no landlord has a right to come into his tenant’s home without permission. I said you are interrupting my session with my Master I will add you later in the mean time leave. He said you have 24 hours to add my name to the pass list or else you are going to be kicked off the land and I will reclaim it.

That was the first inkling I had of what an absolute despot I was dealing with, it only got worse. Around the New Year, my Master began building the most awesome furniture in Second Life and we needed place for him to put his items for purchase. Now mind you, I was no longer living at Crystal Cove but had moved into my Master’s castle and was living there and I was about abandon the land at Crystal Cove because the tier I was paying was getting tiresome!

I offered the land at Crystal Cove as a place to put his furniture store; after all, I was paying for it and not using it. Therefore, we tore down the beach house and my Master built on the land a beautiful store and mini mall. Before we did all that we read the covenant and I took a copy of it to be sure that I was in compliance of the rules of the sim.

As Master finished the building the mini mall, I get an instant message from Tmos Newall saying that I had to have all walls set back from the property line by four meters. As soon as I logged that night, I reply with a question, why do I have to move my wall off my property line, I will lose a massive amount of land, and will I receive a refund for not using this land? Do you know what I was told? If you are going to give me drama, I will kick you off the property, you loose your money, and anyway it is in the covenant. I immediately open the covenant and then replied no it is not in the covenant. Tmos said, “Oh, thanks for reminding me, I forgot to add it and I will, so you will either do as I have told you or else I will kick you off.”

Master moved the walls off the property line by four meters. We bided our time and recently we moved off Crystal Cove and we abandoned the land and I did not bother reselling the it.

The last thing I did before we abandoned the land was to take another copy of the covenant from January to May 2008 the “rule” of having to have your stuff four meters off the property line was never added. Furthermore, neighbors did not have to have their stuff four meter from their property line, they were allowed to take their stuff and put it inches from my land.

Despots do exist in Second Life, flourish, and threaten those they feel are little people. This Second Life Resident is not impressed.