****buying Lifetime Account****

Well, first of all when I talked to a Linden earlier it was their impression that section 4.1 of the TOS made it impossible for us to sell an account that we don't own. As usual Linden Labs seems to have taken an unnecessarily anti-player stance toward a normal game process. When i asked I was told there might be other 'incentives and opportunities' for us peons in the future if we are lucky and stick around. Maybe nows the time to take this discusion off the forums .

As for the risk Cubey, I'm sure an acceptable arrangement could be developed that protects both the buyer and seller equally. Obviously its a bad idea to just give out your account to anyone but I'm sure thats not the only way to go about it.

There have been numerous refereces to certain parts of the TOS here, but thus far it seems no one has pointed out what is perhaps the most relevent line in the whole ducument. In section 2.5 it says, "you do not own the account you use to access the Service".

So, the question really becomes can one sell that which one does not own. The obvious answer is no. However, precident does exist to get around this point in other online games. One example that comes to mind from a 3 or 4 years ago was the selling of Diablo II items on Ebay. Blizzard Entertainment owns the items so clearly no one has a right to sell them except Blizzard. When challenged with this legally valid point, sellers found a way around the problem. By simply changing the wording of their ads to read "finder's fee" instead of "purchase price", they were able to effectively shift the question from can one sell an item he or she does not own to can one charge a fee for the service of playing the game long enough to find the item. As far as I know the answer to the second querstion turned out to be yes, and so the sellers (er, "finders" were able to continue.

In my opinion the question of can one sell a SL account is pretty easy to answer. No one can sell something that does not belong to them. However, the question of can one charge a fee for the service of creating the account is not as immediately obvious. This appears to be where the aforementioned section 4.1 comes into play, which says "You may not charge any third party for using the Linden Software to access and/or use the Service". While it may be legal to charge for the service of creating a SL account, it appears that we all agreed not to do so when we agreed to the TOS. We agreed that we will not charge anyone else for our use of SL. (This may raise a question in regard to how we are able to charge eachother for things we create in SL since we have to use SL software to do it, but that's another issue.)

I would submit therefore that buying someone else's account would indeed constitute a TOS violation (sorry) and therefore you shouldn't solicit for it here. I'm fairly dismayed with this answer myself since I know a lifer who doesn't play anymore and I was going to ask him if I could have his account for the land. Oh well.

I had a basic membership alt account I wanted to give to a friend. I found I couldn't erase the credit card information that I'd entered into the account. I contacted Colin Linden to ask him about this, and he said that he couldn't really help me with this. He basically said that it would be okay to give the account away if I trusted this person with my credit card information, but he wouldn't erase the information from the account for me. This was about a year ago, so I don't know if LL's policy regarding selling or giving away accounts has changed since then.

I'll sell my "Cubey Terra" account for $500,000 USD, payable in advance.

Heck, I'd settle for US$25,000 Then I could get out of debt and spend more time in SL lol

Getting a liftetime account actually doesn't to cost anything:

http://secondlife.com/evolution/soul.php

If you think about it carefully enough it's not that hard to win this contest.

As Beryl pointed out, you can't just "erase" your credit card info on your account. How would LL be assured of payment for land tiers etc.?

Now, you could give your password to another person, they log on, change the credit card to theirs and they have a new account.

Or, they can give you their credit card info you change it on the account and then give them the password.

As an example only, I don't know Trifen, never heard of Trifen before this thread. If I were selling my lifetime account which option do you think I would choose? Which would Trifen choose?

Why would either of us ever expect the other to just hand over a credit card to the other?

It's just plain idiotic to think someone would do this with a complete stranger.

Nough Said.

It's just plain idiotic to think someone would do this with a complete stranger.

Haven't you noticed? People tend to be idiots.

"Okay Pahoa" *pats you on the head* It'll be ok-ay. Don't worry. Everything will be just fine.