Home / Covenant

There are several things that cost server power. The number of prims, mesh objects and textures in the region and the number of concurrent avatars are heavy counting. Also the moment that an avatar enters a region and the moment prims are rezzed, put extra burden on the server.

Swondo regions are meant for avarage use. With avarage use we mean building stuctures like houses with everything in, gardening, terraforming, creating and testing non-physical scripts and be around with up to six people concurrent as an average. If you like to use the region as a group with more than 4 members in, then please tell us up-front the plans. Camping (leaving your avatar inworld on the land for a longer time without really be at the stick) is not allowed on land not owned by the avatar. Artificial avatars (NPC or Bots) are not allowed.

Sims come with an unlimited number of prims but are not completely unlimited. The mesh load and texture adding have to stay within reason of its price class. We call this fair use policy. You can see it as avarage usage. It is impossible to set a number on this but the use of a lot of mesh objects which were build with no regards of weight at all will eventually take you over the edge of the intented server burden. In principle Swondo regions can use about 1GB of memory and up to 750 MB of OAR size. You can always ask a Swondo manager if you are in doubt.

Swondo regions and parcels are meant for living, building, exploring, creating and socializing. This can include having parties or other 'gatherings' with lots of visitors. It is allowed to have a club as long as the server burden stays within reason. A popular club with every day 20 people in all the time might be a bit over avarage usage if you compare it in the longer run to other leasers. We then have to find a solution to work with this when that should happen.

A shop or Freeby place is very hard to do within the limits because prims inside prims are not rezzed on the land but do count on the server burden rather heavy. exactly like rezzed prims/meshes/textures. A shopwall with several storage or sell-boxes take you over the limits fast without it is actually showing in the inworld primcount. Specially if the box contains multiple textures and or mesh objects the limit is reached very fast. So a shop or freebie shop or storage area is NOT within the scope of fair-use. However if you are an artist and create things and offer these in a shop then usually the number of items is way less then someone who collects and imports a lot to offer for sale or as give away. An artist with shop is allowed. A importer/collector offering items not. can you feel the difference? It is common sense mostly. You cannot use your sim as a storage area as a backup of your inventory for the same reasons. If you need a backup of your inventory ask Sylvia to create an IAR backup of your inventory. She will make your inventory available as private download.

The usage of auto-prim-rezzing scripts and other heavy duty scripts are not allowed because they consume too much server power all the time even when nobody is around. Scripts that let prims move continuously or make other changes continuously are usually heavy duty while nobody is around and for this reason weigh high on cpu usage. An exception are scripts that make prims rotate. Rotation scripts can be used with no problems. If you are in doubt about a certain script, please contact Swondo to test it first.

It is not allowed to sub-lease or sub-rent the region or parts of the region to others. It is not allowed to let others pay for the usage of the land or parts of the land in any way. This is mainly again to prevent more standard concurrent visitors and to prevent making others asume they have certain rights on the land. />
The use of Physics and physical objects is allowed as long as these do not slow down the simulator. In OpenSim sometimes a physical object with mediocre scripting makes as sim lag, halt or crash. These physical objects should be taken out or will be taken out and never be rezzed again on Swondo simulators. Swondo cannot be used as a testing area for physical scripted objects. OSgrid has sandboxes for testing. There are some really good working drivable cars, boots and trains. Be sure to use well build physical objects. In doubt ask a Swondo manager first.

It is not allowed to run scripts intended to scan or intrude the server or in any other way do things that have nothing to do with the land itself. It is also not allowed to run server scripts of any kind or scripts that make contact with other scripts or servers. Because almost always these scripts have malicious intentions, Swondo will stop the region directly at notice and suspent the contract in await of a reaction by the leaser. Malicious activities always lead to termination without refund and sometimes to legal charges.

Swondo regions cannot be used for real financial transactions of any kind. For example A shop which involves the selling for real money or having a meeting in which deals are made about RL transactions are not allowed in Swondo's regions in OSgrid. But also charity or donation requests involve real money transactions and are not allowed within Swondo regions. (Freeby) shops with inworld (free) products are not allowed for other reasons stated earlier in this covenant.Sylvia Sonoda choses horses as one of her two favourite pets. You'll need this information to confirm you red this document.

Swondo regions cannot be used for controversy or illegal things like extreme political outings, child pornography etc. etc. Gambling is not allowed as it is forbidden without gambling licenses in The Netherlands, Europe. (The country where Swondo is registered and has its servers located)
Because of the polarization of politics and religious beliefs it is also not allowed to advertise or present any ideas regarding politics or religion in the region. Created avatars which by name or profile advertise politics or religion cannot apply for a sim. This all to keep the peace between people in the virtual world

In general Swondo regions are meant to use like people in general use their real Life homes. This including people who work from home in small practices like architects, music writers, cloths designers, programmers. etc etc.

It is not allowed to copy and handout or sell the Swondo landscapes, Swondo Buildings and other Swondo creations. When you receive an OAR of your region, the landscape is included and you are allowed to use your OAR elsewhere. But you are not allowed to sell or give away the obtained landscape otherwise than as a part of a completely created region containing lots of buildings by yourself on it. In other words, the landscape cannot have a value on itself when your sell your oar.

It is allowed to sell your complete build region as long as the new owner agrees to the Swondo covenant and understand the monthly lease costs to be paid. This has to be mentioned in the selling advertisement.

It is not allowed to advertise anything on your land by big signs or worldmap sky advertisements. Keep signs indoors. It is allowed to place a salesign on your land when you like to sell your region but keep it within reason.

It is possible to ask initial free floating regions to be parked next to a friends region only if that other region is also hosted by Swondo. In all other cases Swondo will move the region if a not Swondo hosted region is put in connection (8 places around) with your region. Connected regions can use up a lot of server power from the neighbouring region and third party regions are harder to measure.

It is not allowed to set your land so everybody can rezz objects unless you are present at that time yourself. If you want others to be able to rezz and create add them to the landgroup. Ask Swondo staff for help. Dogs are Sylvias other favourite pets. You'll need this information to confirm you read this document.

The leaser has to be able to communicate fluent in English, Dutch or German without a translator. This to prevent misunderstandings with Swondo regarding the usage of regions, the rules and the covenant. The covenant is currently only presented in English. It is the (potential) leaser its own responsibility to understand the covenant.

Swondo is allowed to put more rules in the covenant when needed to protect Swondo or leasers interests. Swondo will notify leasers every time the covenant changes.

Breaking the covenant rules constitutes a breach of contract. This might lead to the termination of the contract.

We never declare a termination of contract lightly. In most cases we will issue a warning or a polite reminder first or we might reclaim the land temporarily to remedy the source of the violation (usually that is the case with ban lines, agressive security scripts, destructive terraforming and buildings in violation of the Covenant). Some violations will result in termination of contract withot warning, though. This is the case with violent attacks (and ... No, we will not discuss who attacked whom first!) and anything that is clearly against the law in The Netherlands. Don't worry, Most Dutch laws are less intrusive when compared to other countries. Gambling and child pornography is more strict than in other countries we think. Termination of contract because of a violation of the Covenant becomes effective immediately. There are no refunds in this case.

The fineprint (legal) part of the covenant:
Swondo, Swondo World and Swondo Estate are trademarks of Drietraps Entertainment. Drietraps Entertainment is registered at the Dutch chamber of commerce with number: 60153105, Netherlands.
Should you decide to become a Swondo resident by making your first monthly payment for a parcel Swondo Estate owns, you are entering a contract between you and Swondo. This contract is defined by the covenant on this page and this “fine print”.

1. All deals are final. When you make the monthly payment for your parcel, you are entering a contract that runs for at least 30 days. This contract ends when this time period ends and no new monthly payment is made, or, when you decide to cancel the contract.
2. The contract terminates automatically (with no entitlement for a refund) if you violate the rules in this document, Swondo Estate covenant or fineprint or the T.o.S. of OSgrid or Swondo World.
   
   
3. When you enter the contract with Swondo Estate, you agree to make certain periodic payments. The height of these payments is determined at the time you enter the contract and is fixed for the duration of the contract. Swondo Estate reserves the right to change the height of the necessary payments at any time (becoming effective when the next payment is due). We will only do this when circumstances outside of our control will force us to do so (changes in the payments we have to make to our internet connection provider, for example or exchange rate changes), but this might happen. You have the right to terminate your contract with in this case.
4. The current payment plans can always be checked on the website of Swondo Estate at http://www.swondo.com/osgrid
5. The duration of a contract is 30 days. It is automatically prolonged if not cancelled before the next payment is due.
6. The contract enters a state of probation, if you default on a monthly payment. It does not matter how much you pay as long as it is not enough to cover the full sum that is due for the next period.
7. After entering the state of probation, you have five days to make the payment. If full payment is not received after this time, the contract terminates automatically and the land is reclaimed by Swondo Estate
8. The termination of the contract, either automatically or willfully before the next payment is due, does not entitle the customer to any kind of a refund.
   Only in the following cases, there will be a refund paid:
   
   (a) If the contract is cancelled by Swondo Estate (but not when this cancellation was caused by a violation of this fine print, the covenant or the OSgrid, Metroplis or Swondo World T.o.S.), the customer will receive a full refund and the land falls back into the ownership of Swondo Estate
   
   (b) If this fine print, the covenant or the OSgrid, Metroplis or Swondo World T.o.S. is changed or the fees, which are due monthly, are raised, the customer has the right to cancel the contract. If this option is chosen, the customer will receive a full refund and the land falls back into the ownership of Swondo Estate.
9. You cannot sell the land that you bought on Swondo Estate to another resident of OSgrid or Swondo World as you did not buy the land. You can however sell the landscpae including all buildings and handover the lease to another person who is "in good standing" with Swondo Estate and OSgrid or Swondo World (i.e. has a clean rep sheet). We will assist you in the transfer of your rights as an Swondo Estate resident to this other resident.
10. All negotiations with other residents regarding price and other proceedings are of no relevance to Swondo Estate, though. We will transfer the rights (especially: deed a specified parcel to the land holding group of another resident) no sooner than we have received your agreement and the receipt from PayPal, confirming that the new owner has entered an appropriate payment method for this parcel.
    
11. Swondo Estate reserves the right to decline to enter a contract with any resident without stating a reason for this decision. Don't worry, this does not mean you. We usually only do this with avatars who are known troublemakers, have defaulted their payments in the past etc.
    
12. Swondo Estate does not make any guarantees regarding the state of the land offered to you or its usefulness for any intended purpose. We provide this land “as is”, as it is.
13. Should some officially announced, unannounced or unforeseeable event lead to a state where the region(s) which contain the parcels that you have paid for, are inaccessible to you, we will see that access is restored as fast as possible. We can not accept any responsibility for times of inaccessibility caused by third parties (i.e. other residents or OSgrid or Swondo World ).
14. We will proceed with all due speed (and caution) to remove the causes for the state of inaccessibility, should it be in our power to do so. There will be no refunds for times of inaccessibility.

DISCLAIMER: Leasing or renting virtual land in OSgrid, Metroplis or Swondo World will not make you the owner or tenant of "real" land in physical reality, of course.

What you will receive from us, when you enter a contract with Swondo Estate is the right to use a certain part of the Virtual World of OSgrid or Swondo World with some additional access rights (the right to name this piece of land, the right to change this land within certain limits, the right to create permanent objects there, etc.), which are not available to someone who is not the owner of this parcel of virtual land. From a technical point of view this is more alike to leasing or renting a webserver in a data center than owning physical land.

Please read the Swondo Covenant on this page at least once. This can prevent misunderstandings.



The covenant is a mutual agreement between Swondo and the leaser of a region, regions or part of a region. The covenant is meant to keep the use of the Swondo servers within the intentions of Swondo Estate. A part of the covenant is the fineprint. In the fineprint Swondo makes sure all legal parts are covered. There are no hidden tricks in the text, just legal covering.


Every leaser agrees to the covenant at the moment the land is handed over to him or her.
The person who pays for the land is the real user ('land owner') of the land for Swondo. The person who pays the lease always determines which avatar(s) 'own' the land inworld and what should happen to the land within the rules set by Swondo.


Attention:
Unfortunately disputes between 'friends' building on land owned by one, lead to ugly situations sometimes. Swondo cannot be part of a dispute. For this reason it is also not possible to share the lease payments among multiple persons. The one who pays the monthly fee has all say on the region. So also incase of a dispute. The amount of time (or prims) put in into the region by a different avatar can also not be taken in account by Swondo.
Please be careful putting a lot of time in building on land you do not lease(pay for) yourself.

4139 bezoeken About us / Imprint