Squatters

[Makhno13]

Squatting... a big question.
I have been both : squatter and squatted.
I was squatter when I was "young" in SL. But I would say "ethic squatter". Why ? Because I was living on land which really seemed abandonned. Bought in 2007 or 2008, with very old stuff on it, some "stranger" stuff not removed by owner... I never squatted "living" places. Such squatting doesn't really hurts anyone and gives to SL a little freedom taste, even I know SL is only business, not different than RL. Gently playing with rules is exciting when it doesn't hurt anyone.

I was squatted too in the Linden home I aquired later. People came inside the house and rezzed stuff. Sure I was angry. But what ? In RL I don't let my door opened when I'm away. I don't let the keys in the car. It was my fault. SL gives us many means to protect our land. Then I configured the land to make rez impossible and put banlines around.
I hate banlines, especially on coastal waterways, but my Linden home isn't in such a land...

What I wanted to say is that squatting is fun, but it must be done in a "ethical way". Owners can protect their areas, limiting rez to their group. If they don't, they can't complain about squatters.

[Ilithios Liebknecht]

Related to this subject, there is a particular person who goes around putting up a "flipping the bird" hand icon on every bit of land that he can find that allows rezzing. It's an advertisement for a land company I think when you click on it. I see this thing all over the damn place on people's land who left rezzing on with no autoreturn.It's really an eyesore. It's not subtle, this shiny metallic gaudy thing all over the place.

The first time I saw it was on my own land about 9 months ago, but I check my properties daily (most days anyway) and got rid of it quick. But now I see the thing all over the place. This is really the best argument for maintaining land that I can think of. Placing a house and living in it isn't as bad as this. This person is using people's land as his own free advertising space and placing this eyesore all over the grid to do it, and he's really thorough about it too. I see the thing all over the place.

On another note just a month ago I had been away on a trip for a week. When I came back, I found a skybox rezzed far above my city. It was really elaborate what they had up there. They had actually joined my land group for renters so that  they could rez it up there and have it stay. I thought it was pretty funny. Especially when one of them logged on into the house and after a minute of puttering around found themselves plummetting toward the earth when all the stuff was returned :-D