Jack Linden has dropped the next shoe on mainland policy changes in Second Life, while we're expecting plenty more shoes, this one at least seems to have been widely welcomed, increasing the overall crack-down on what are known colloquially as ad-farms.
The short form is 'Network advertising (Ad Farming) will no longer be permitted on the Linden Mainland unless you have a written agreement with Linden Lab (essentially meaning a license to advertise)', writes Jack. There's additional explanations and caveats to that, though. The last policy post on ad-farms was certainly considerably deficient and seemed to cause more problems than it solved.
Users who are are operating advertising networks that are infringing this policy have until 1 October 2008 to obtain a license and comply with the terms of that license, or to remove their content. Jack does not say what will occur otherwise, but content-removal and account-sanctions are the safe bet.
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One of the problems with the last policy is that it generated a lot of false abuse-reports, with people reporting things that the policy did not and was not intended to cover, due to misunderstanding, confusion and ambiguity. This policy has the same inherent problem, but the Lab appears to be intent on addressing consistency of action.
'By Network advertising we are specifically referring to the practice of using many parcels over multiple regions, especially small micro parcels where the predominant purpose of the land is to hold advertising. In the vast majority of cases we believe it will be very clear whether a particular use is a violation or not but we will provide a way for people to appeal and discuss their own case with us before any action is taken. We will assess any edge cases as we encounter them.'
A limited number of advertising licenses will be made available, and the Lab will be deciding what terms, exactly, a licensed advertiser will have to adhere to. It is not known, at this time, if any costs will be involved in obtaining and holding such a license.
There is already some confusion about what forms of advertising are and are not addressed by this policy as evinced by the number of concerned queries we received from users in the hours following the announcement. That confusion will certainly lead to an increased workload of junk abuse-reports come October if it is not made very clear.
An additional concern for false reports would involve recognizing who is and who isn't a licensed advertiser. A licensed advertiser might be falsely reported many times, while an unlicensed advertiser may make attempts to mimic one who is licensed. Relying on end-users to send in abuse reports would seem to be opening a torrent of extra work on an already maxed-out governance team.
Still, the move is apparently widely welcomed and seen as a positive change, as near as we are able to determine. The only question remaining is whether the policy will actually be seriously enforced, or whether it will be largely ineffective, like the weak enforcement of the ban on gambling or banking.
