A tricky subject. I think Tor's post illustrates the dilemma well. There are at least three issues at stake here. One is paying tier in due time. The second one is notifying citizens if they are in arrears and allowing them some leeway to pay back. The third one is linking land to citizenship.
Paying tier in due time is the citizen's responsibility. Of that there cannot be any doubt whatsoever. It's not the CDS' fault if the citizen is forgetful, or absent, or has some physical issue that prevents them to pay. In all those cases, we cannot be more 'soft' than LL. We have to impose the same rules. Sorry, guys, but that's how it is!
Some of you might have noticed that the server hosting this forums was down for a day or so, during early July. At that time, I was some 10 days without Internet access. I knew that the server's payment date would happen while I was away, but I was confident, since I had set the payment system up to use a recurring payment using PayPal — my account has two cards in it, so there is some redundancy: if one fails for some reason, the other is very likely going to work.
Sadly for me, both failed on that day. The company hosting the server notified me repeatedly over a period of five days. But I was away without Internet connection. So, on the sixth day, they regretted to inform me that the server would be put out of service. I could still pay what I owed, and had a few more days to do that — if I ignored them, then they would delete all content on my server and sell it to another customer.
But I was away from all those notices. It was just by pure chance that I managed a brief, 9600bps connection through my ancient iPhone, and got to see that email. I panicked! Unfortunately, I was completely unable to log in to the service and try to get it to accept my cards again. The 9600bps connection was simply not powerful enough for that.
So, the next day, I had no choice but to try to find a free Wi-Fi connection and log in with my laptop. Unfortunately, again, my laptop is so old that it had already blown up its second battery; it manages, at best, some 20 minutes of battery power. That was enough to pay back what I owned, but not enough to log in to see if all was working well... I had to go back home, recharge it, and try again on the next day. Fortunately, the server was up by then, and no content was lost. I do have a secondary server on stand-by, with real-time replicas of all the sites (including this one!), but switching over takes considerably longer than 20 minutes...
My point is that real companies operating real services make all the efforts to notify their customers, and might even give them a few days over the date of service termination, but their flexibility stops at that. They don't care if I'm forgetful, if I'm away from home, if I have a working Internet connection, if I have a faulty laptop... those are all plausible excuses, but they couldn't care less about them. I could even be running the website for the American Cancer Society, the United Nations, or even the personal blog page of the President of France (this server is running out of a data centre in France). If I don't pay at the correct time, I get disconnected. Simple as that.
If LL acted differently towards us, then, yes, I would be all for flexibility. But LL simply shuts us down without questions if we 'forget' about paying, or if Sudane's credit card fails, etc. They couldn't care less if we told them that we're one of the few communities in SL being around for a decade and never missed a payment. They couldn't care less if we told them that their beloved Draxtor, who has been such a huge promoter of LL through his videos, would have done nothing if he hadn't been a member of the CDS and started his news service through us (yes, few people know that). They would just pull the plug on us, and end of story.
And they treat every other customer in exactly the same way — even though they're not even a democracy!
Now, where I think we can make a difference is in how the land is actually claimed and re-sold. The proposed amendment suggests that the land is claimed on the 14th day, announced 72 hours later about the date of re-sale, which happens 72 hours after the announcement. During that period, the citizen in question is allowed to pay everything they have in arrears and buy their land back. This is equivalent to my hosting provider saying that they will keep the data in my server for a week or so, and, if I pay, I can restore the service to what it was. Allegedly, LL also keeps backups for 2 weeks, so, in theory, if someone wants their region back, before it gets sold to someone else, they could theoretically restore the last backup. I think this is fair and reasonable and gives citizens a last chance. Also, all Chancellor notifications during this period are made to be much stronger — they really have to make a strong effort to get in touch with the citizen, or the citizen can complain to the SC. Technically speaking, we're being actually very nice about this point, because it's the person's responsibility to pay in time — not the Chancellor's responsibility to run wildly after non-paying citizens. In RL, if you don't pay, and are unreachable by the company, they assume you don't wish to continue the service. They might make an extra effort to notify you because it's easier to keep a client than to attract a new one, but you cannot sue them for failing to notify you! We, in the CDS, are much nicer about that — we make the right to reclaim the land dependent on proper notification.
Why? Because land is tied to citizenship. Unlike what happens with LL — or any other service, in fact — you don't get deprived of your citizen's rights if you stop paying LL for your land So it makes sense, for us, to be stricter in depriving citizens of their rights, which is what happens when all their land is claimed. We also give them extra rights to complain to the SC. So I see this as two separate things. On one hand, citizens have to pay every month to keep their land. But on the other hand, removing citizen's rights is something extreme, and should be handled with utter carefulness. It also means that all citizens have to be treated in precisely the same way.
I really don't want 'more flexibility' here. I want the same laws and rules to apply to all. But I can certainly agree that the extreme case — removing a citizen's right by reclaiming all their land — has to be exercised very carefully and given all the chances for a citizen to pay back. But... within limits. Someone disgruntled with the CDS might never talk back to us, and ignore all attempts to get contacted — because they really don't want to contact us again — and in those cases we should be able to reclaim their land and sell it again. There are plenty of such examples, where people failed to pay for months (yes, months) simply because they never logged back to SL, and we had no idea if they wished to remain citizens or not. In the mean time, their land was stuck being unsold, with people on waiting lists. That should not be allowed to happen!
Please take a look at the amended proposal — http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php? ... =30#p29335
Many of your concerns have already been addressed there. Maybe you can contribute all to some further changes, if you deem them necessary.