Covenant Update - What Changed?

[Abnor Mole]

The reason for the prohibition against dropboxes is two fold. One is the commercial nature and the other is simulator resources.

We don't want residents running in world businesses getting a Linden Home just for the purpose of hosting their dropboxes (even if they are just backups). That is not what they are for and there are plenty of places on mainland or private estates where they can do that. Considering that in some cases we've seen residents with large stores keeping 20 or more boxes with 200+ items in each box... that is a lot of server resources in Bellisseria regions that are meant to be shared with as many as two dozen or so other residents. Imagine the consequences on region performance if hosting 50 or 100 dropboxes in Bellisseria became a commonplace thing and we hope you can see why we decided to clarify that dropboxes are not allowed. Even if they are only backups that it isn't something we can easily verify. (In case anyone was wondering, Moles do not have any sort of additional access to Caspervend systems. We have recently been made aware that Caspervend documentation recommends using Linden Homes as a backup dropbox location and we are asking to have that information updated.)

What is allowed is you could work on a vendor in the privacy of your Linden Home as long as you don't leave it active and operational where people could use it. Likewise, you also can have a redelivery terminal in your home (not tied to your store). We know many residents like having one so they can easily connect to the website and see all of their past purchases. The only thing that terminal really does is connect you to the website so it is not an overly significant use of resources the same way dropboxes would be. 

I haven't personally looked at the "beYou" systems in depth, but regardless of whether the creators believe their system is compliant with the Linden Homes covenant or not, I suspect they could easily run afoul of provisions against disproportionate amount of system resources, would be subject to breedables/farming guidelines, and if objects are set for sale on the parcel it falls under commercial activity. I have seen other systems for growing more shall we say... "recreational" crops of questionable RL legality depending where you live... and I am guessing they work in a similar fashion. 

Finally, just to address the point that dropboxes can be renamed or placed in/under other objects... if the inference is that people can simply try to hide them from being found I would not advise going down that path. As estate managers we operate under the "assume ignorance before malice" doctrine. AFAIK Governance does as well. That means we always assume the person simply does not know unless proven otherwise and we tailor our actions regarding the situation taking that into consideration. If it is clear a person is actively trying to hide a dropbox from being found then that negates the assumption of ignorance. In that case our actions could likely change accordingly. Meaning instead of discretely notifying the owner and giving them time to find an alternate location, we may instead decide to simply return the boxes without a warning and could refer repeat offenders to Governance. 

And that right there is why you saw the notices in the first place. We know many people simply don't know the Covenant is even there and that is something we want to change.

I hope that helps.

[Teresa Firelight]

@Abnor Mole Thank you for taking the time/effort to explain why drop boxes are problematic. I actually dont have any issue with them being disallowed... I simply did not know they were not ok until the covenant was updated to point that out.

I think my point might have accidentally gotten missed: when the covenant is updated, it would be helpful if the updater could put a sticky post/thread letting us know what the change is.

I used the example of the backup dropboxes... they were not against the covenant (at least not explicitly spelled out) when I put mine out. IDK if I removed them before or after that modification was added, because I am not sure when it was added -- but the point is this... there was a covenant change that made something I did "illegal" and I had no idea the covenant had been changed to disallow that. I would never intentionally violate the covenant...  I have too much invested in SL to take a chance on getting in trouble. But if you change things and dont tell us, we dont know it is changed and we cant correct our behavior.

It would be helpful if you could get the word out when you make a rule change (or clarification) in the covenant. One way to do that would be to have a sticky read-only thread on the linden homes forum that informs us of the changes each time the covenant is updated, and identifies what was changed.