As a part of their ongoing effort to renew and improve the overall experience on the Second Life mainland (Linden estate), Linden Lab have announced that they're going after a number of so-called 'land-cutters'. Land-cutters were formerly almost synonymous with ad-farmers.
Practitioners would buy a larger plot of land, and then subdivide it into the smallest possible squares (16 sqm). Sometimes the squares were packed with advertising towers (some ads were genuine, and others merely fabricated), some were left bare, and some packed with junk. High prices were set on these parcels and many paid them to be rid of the eyesores. There were few places on the mainland where you could stand and not see at least one group of them.
Many land parcels throughout the Second Life mainland are odd-shaped or have bites taken out of them as a result of a number of years of such cutting. While Linden Lab policies on ad-farms have slowed the process, it hasn't stopped it entirely. More than half of those many thousands of tiny parcels are in the hands of just ten users.
Linden Lab has not indicated what action will be taken. Only that such practices are no longer permitted, and that they will be contacting the offending users directly. Of course, this is all to achieve the result that two different ad-farm policies were supposed to have achieved over the last two years. Both only proved to be partially effective, and the core problem remained. Perhaps this more hands-on and proactive approach will be more successful.
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