The Covenant is a set of rules that you must read carefully and agree on before buying your land. They are there to help make sure that you enjoy Second Life® as much as possible, by protecting your investment and your privacy. If you have any questions or doubts, please contact Giancarlo Takacs.

All terms and conditions of service set forth by Linden Lab®, both in their official Terms of Service (TOS), Community Standards and in all official blog posts, forum posts or other official statements regarding policy, allowed behavior and terms of service must be adhered to first and foremost prior to the application of the covenant set forth below. Under no circumstances does Costa Rica Sims permit any behavior or actions not permitted by Linden Lab's TOS or publicized policy.

All our regions are themed to reflect the natural beauty of Costa Rica, which leads to some additional rules regarding building style, flora, fauna and weather. These rules ensure that the land remains what it is now: a beautifully and realistically landscaped area, showcasing RLs most attractive landscapes and a pleasant neighborhood that makes you feel right at home!

A lot of thought, effort and money were put into setting up the initial vegetation and landscaping of our estate. This is perhaps as important for the overall impression and beauty as it is for the shape of our estate. Please follow these standards. You came here because you liked the overall look of the estate, so let us keep it like that.

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General.

Costa Rica Sims is a privately operated-estate which means you do not need a premium account with Linden Lab® to own land with us, thus avoiding the $10 monthly charge by Linden Lab®. However, you do need to pay a maintenance land fee (tier) directly to Costa Rica Sims. The land maintenance fee or tiers fee is comparable to property tax in real life, and is paid in-world at our ATM machine located at our welcome center.

You must pay your first month of land fees (tiers) within 24 hours of land purchase. You do not officially own the land until you have pay the land maintenance fees (tiers). You can safely downgrade you Second Life® premium membership to basic Membership after purchasing your land.

Monthly land maintenance fees (tier) payments are due the 1^st of each month and must be paid by the 3^rd at 12:00 noon SLT. Any payments made after this time will incur in a L$1,000 late fee. There is a 3-day grace period by which to pay the land maintenance fees (tier). After this, if you have not made any contact with the Costa Rica Sims Management, your land may be reclaimed and no refund will be issued, your parcel will be cleared and we take no responsibility of any loss of objects or time rebuilding. Please consider this your warning.

Please note that the Costa Rica Sims Estate is a mini-continent of regions (sims). There is no guaranteed coastline at this time on any region. Every attempt will be made to work with coastline residents as expansion occurs should they choose to move.

Tier price per prim.

Full region (Sims with 15,000 prims).

Our full regions have a tier price of L$7 per prim. This means that if you buy a parcel with 937 prims your monthly tier will be L$5,560.

Homestead Region (Sims with 3,750 prims).

All our homestead regions have a tier of L$11.15 per prim. This means that if you buy a parcel with 937 prims your monthly tier will be L$10,420.

Region Description and usage.

Full region.

This is the flag product of Linden Lab®. With 15,000 prims per region and an avatar limit of 100. This type of region has the better performance and parcels are closer to each other. Full regions are ideal for both residential or commercial use. One other advantage is that the tier per prim is lower than the other two types of regions.

Note: The Costa Rica Sims will never mix residential regions with commercial regions, meaning that a commercial region cannot be use for residential purposes.

Homestead region.

This type of region once called by residents water sims, due to the large amount of open water around, come with 3,750 prims and an avatar limit of 20. This type of region was designed for quiet residential areas with just a few parcels, low-density rentals or light commercial. The tier per prim on this type of region is higher than a full region.

Note: Since homestead regions have an avatar limit of 20, residents having a private event on their properties must consider at all time not reaching the limit of avatars so other tenants will be able to enter their parcels.

Buying land.

1. Read this covenant completely.
2. Click on the land and select about land from the menu.
3. Select the "Buy Land" option.
4. Pay the land purchase amount.
5. After purchasing the property you will need to contact Giancarlo Takacs, to finalize the purchase. This needs to be done within 24 hours of purchasing your land. 

If you are buying from a reseller and not directly from Giancarlo Takacs, ask the current owner what is the maintenance fee (tier) for that particular parcel or simply contact Giancarlo Takacs.

Note: At least 32 unused prims must be allotted on parcels at all time. Owners of an entire homestead region need to leave at least 96 free prims at all times. This allows for flyover and sailing without the auto-return kicking in.

Selling your land.

We hope you come to love your land here at the Costa Rica Sims that you will never leave. But if you decide to sell your land please visit the sell your land tab for more information.  Sales/transfer of land is allowed. Any remaining monthly tier will not be refunded to the seller or the new owner. It is important that new and potential residents, read, understand and agree with the terms of the covenant and tier policies.

Note: Any plot can be put up for sale only as it was purchased, without splitting into sub-plots or joining with other plots.

In case tier payment is overdue on a plot, that plot cannot be put up for sale under any circumstances. Any plot found to be up for sale, while violating this rule, will be reclaimed immediately without any notice or compensation whatsoever.

All sales are final and binding. Giancarlo Takacs/Costa Rica Sims, cannot be held responsible for group-owned parcels if an officer sells your land.

Setting up your new land.

1. Click on the land and select "About Land" from the menu. Under the general tab, change the "name" and "description" to reflect the parcel as your own.
2. Go to the "options" tab and uncheck the create  objects "all residents" box. This will prevent strangers from creating objects on your land.
3. Make sure that "Object entry" and "Run Scripts" boxes are set to "all residents"
4. Go to the media tab. Next to the word "sound", click the box labeled "restrict spatialized sound to this parcel". This maintains privacy for you and your neighbors is you are using open voice chat.

Behavior.

• All commercial regions (sims) have a "Mature" rating, which means that adult carnality may be very visible. The Costa Rica Sims strongly abide by Linden Lab® rules towards age verification, and strongly discourage minors from entering. If a minor is founds to be impersonating and adult, that individual will be banned from the estate and reported to Linden Lab®.
• Always respect your neighbors. Do not create problems among other residents or tenants.
• Weapons and use of parcels as combat zones is not permitted.
• No "live" sex acts are permitted in any area considered to be publicly accessible. What you do in the privacy of your home or skybox is entirely up to you, so long as it conforms to Linden Lab® TOS and publicized policy. All our community regions have a "PG" rating and must remain free of sexual activity.
• Personal disputes between residents are by definition "personal" and neither Giancarlo Takacs and all other members of the Costa Rica Sims Executive Team will involve themselves in the resolution of such disputes. In the case of groups disbanding or partners splitting, the person registered with the tier system is considered the resident on record and will retain the rights of the property.
• Tenants are responsible for the actions of their customers.
• No littering of objects on other commercial, residential or community land.
• Commercial Landowners need to report incidents of griefing or other problems to the Costa Rica Sims Executive Team.
• Age play is not permitted.
• Harassment of any kind will not be tolerated.
• No spy or listening devices permitted.
• Derogatory comments about others based on their ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability or any other personal attribute of any type will not be tolerated.

Building.

Most commercial tenants that come to live at the Costa Rica Sims, do so because they love the overall design and style of the estate. Remember this is a theme estate and please keep that in mind while setting up your business. No skyscrapers, fantasy buildings and no parcel filling boxes are allowed.

The style of your business should blend in with the environment. Remember the Costa Rica Sims are designed to look like the real life Costa Rica. Style means something elegant and in keeping with the sim as a whole, it can be modern or traditional but should not be detrimental to the environmental surroundings as a whole.

Note: Commercial tenants are strongly encouraged to contact Giancarlo Takacs before building their businesses, as the Costa Rica Sims Executive Team have the right to refuse any building.

• No castles, spaceships, fantasy houses, floating structures, or tree houses below 1,000 meters.
• The maximum height of a building cannot exceed 27 meters.
• The size of the house must be proportionate with the size of the parcel and it cannot take up the entire lot.
• Only one main structure (building) per parcel.
• Skyboxes and other flying structures may be built at 1000 meters or higher.
• Your land cannot be used and a sandbox or construction site. If you plan to build your business and the building lasts more than five days, consider the option of building your business above your parcel at 250 meters above ground level and then bring it down.
• At least two trees per 4096 square meters.
• No high scripted objects that run above 0.105 ms.
• No objects that cause collisions are permitted, this include walking pets.
• Particles can be used in effects that have real-world analogies such as leaves, bonfires, smoke, etc. Particles should not be set higher than 10 particles per second. Please remember that particles are a major cause of lag therefore they lower the performance of the entire region.
• No rotating, flashing signs, lights or structures this causes the region to lower its performance.
• No weather systems. This type of device puts a a lot of pressure on the server.
• Waterways must leave enough space clear for other boats to sail.

Terraforming.

To maintain the consistent and attractive appearance of the estate, no tenant terraforming will be allowed.

• Please contact Giancarlo Takacs with terraforming requests, these will be fulfilled on a case-by-case basis.
• Only minor terraforming will be done such as to smooth the land for a build and will only be done by Giancarlo Takacs.
• Terraforming changes will not take away water, flatten mountains, changing the overall look of the plot, affecting neighbors, etc.
• Tenants cannot alter the terraforming on their land using prims.

Land Access.

Residence in our estate is based on common sense practices. We strive to provide you with a fun safe and pleasant environment. Since you pay for you online time, you undoubtedly expect a nice, pleasant experience on the Second Life grid. You don't want to feel as you are living in a prison. When you purchase a parcel in a real world environment you expect no less, you expect to be able to walk down the street freely, take your pets out and enjoy the surroundings without someone or something knocking you for a loop. Therefore Access Restrictions/Red Tape/Banes Lines are strictly prohibited.

• Respect your neighbor's privacy. We all know that privacy is largely an illusion in SL, but surely, we have better things to do than camera around to find out what our neighbors are doing in their bedrooms, basements or skyboxes.
• No spy or listening devices are allowed.
• No stalking, spying or eavesdropping scripts. If someone does not want you on their land, please respect their wish. 

Lag Control.

All residents on one region (sim) share the resources of one server. If this server has to work too hard and cannot keep up with the demands of the residents currently in it, "lag" happens. Lag often is not local. Too many highly scripted objects running in one parcel can lag the whole server down and everyone in that server will experience it.

• Keep the number of your guests on your parcel in proportion to the parcel size. What this means is, for example if you don't own half the sim do not throw parties with more that 15 guests.
• Try not to use too many unique textures, specially when they can be seen outside your home. Use 256x256 textures as much as possible and 512x512 maximum.
• Do not set up too many highly scripted objects on your land that will impact the performance of the sim.
• No scripts should ever run higher that 0.150 ms. If we discover you have scripts running at 0.150 ms or higher we will ask you to remove them.
• No parcel may run higher than a total script-time of 2.00 ms ( all scripts combined)

Note: Ask someone from the Costa Rica Sims Executive team if you suspect there is a lag nest in your sim. For more help on this please read: How can I reduce lag?

Eviction or banning of tenants.

Should the Costa Rica Sims Executive Team be forced to make the decision to permanently evict and/or ban a tenant, for failure to pay, repeated infractions, or severe Linden Lab® TOS violations, termination will be immediate and with no refund of any prepaid tier monies or monies paid for the land up front. There will be no exceptions to this rule.