Bank Ban Needs To Be Amended To Include All Financial Operations.

Ultimately the exchanges are providing a "service". Some, like WSE are being operated as a way to screw people out of their funds and as someone who has a strong background, experience, and education in the real-life equity sector it was obvious to me that WSE was operating as a scam and as such I never placed a single L$ into it. It is extremely unfortunate that yes Luke has in effect found a way to screw people out of a lot of money via the means he is using, however not all of the SL exchanges are operated as such. Someone mentioned that ACE and the SLEC are operated by the same person. While IntLibber, who is the primary owner of ACE, was the founder of SLEC, he turned over the operation of it to others who had the right real-life background to head it up and who were not directly involved with the management of any of the exchanges (as should be the case for such an organization). What he was trying to do was set up standards for self-regulation of the SL commodities exchanges so that they could continue to operate with ethics and watch out for the investors (by trying to minimize scam artists who try to screw investors out of their L$’s). Someone above also talked about it being illegal if it is not controlled and regulated by the SEC, however the SEC is swamped with trying to regulate real-world publicly traded companies and even then the companies that they regulate screw over investors fairly regularly due to there being so many that are scams (yes, real-life publicly traded companies). And someone said that you should not invest into the SL exchanges unless you want to lose your money, but what they should have said is that you should not invest what you cannot afford to lose, regardless of if it is in SL or real-life, as there are no guarantees in business. I think it was the same person that referred to it as gambling, which is correct, however investing (in SL as in real-life) is a form of gambling, however it is gambling based primarily on skill rather than chance (although chance and luck often do still play a part). Anyone who knows squat about how business works knows that in real-life investing (as in investing in SL) that if you are willing to do your homework and research the companies that you invest into it greatly increases your chances for success. Look at all the people who have recently been screwed over by the 100+ year old companies that have been trusted by millions around the globe with their real-life funds and lost millions and in some cases billions in real-life funds due to bad gambles on mortgaged backed securities (which anyone who was truly paying attention could see this crash coming more than 2-3 years ago before it even started (there were several indicators prior to the real-estate crash in the U.S. that the crash was coming, and yet millions of people turned a blind eye to the obvious and got screwed because of it)). As such with risk comes reward, if you are not willing to take a risk then you are less likely to see substantial rewards. Therefore, if you feel that exchanges are not safe, do not invest your Lindens into them. If you do invest into them, be sure that you truly know what you are investing into (what the company does, what their products are, know what principles they operate under and what their management strategy is, what their assets are (and be sure to check to see that the assets that they claim to have are real, or at least real from a virtual standpoint when it comes to investing into SL based companies).

And before anyone says anything about it, yes I am biased, because I manage L$ investments for people and serve on the ACE Board of Directors. After having spent roughly a year watching the different exchanges and reading over their operational information and such, I chose to focus the majority of what I do with ACE, as it is the most principled of the exchanges in how it operates. And someone said something about them using the funds from ACE to fund the Woodburry University sims, this is flat out wrong and that person should really learn to check the facts prior to making such false statements. Woodburry is paying BnT (related to ACE, but a different company) to provide sims, management services, and security for those sims (to solve the griefer problems that they were having).

Kool-Aid

Clearly the FBI, SEC, FTC etc. is up to their neck figuring out vastly larger RL issues.

It all comes from the same scammer, exploitive unethical mentality that has been running rampant.

It's coming up with a great scam idea and siphoning money away as fast as possible, before anyone catches on. It's all about hiding behind the idea that ETHICS interferes with a "free market."

They wear the "Golden Parachute" for when the scam catches up to them.

To claim LL is absolved from legal responsibility for the scams in SL, is the ultimate Kool-Aid they want you to drink.

They sell you the money and charge you for using it. They provide the Linden Exchange and then claim they are absolved from legal responsibility in a virtual space they OWN 100%. Even your own ownsership of a Linden is Kool-Aid.

They own your Lindens.

Believe it or not, it is illegal to be unethical in business in the United States. It is against the intent and letter of the law to scam people. A "TOS" like a disclaimer means nothing when an activity is illegal.

That people get away with scams, because no one cracks down, does not mean that it is then okay to do all that. That just means, the policing fails due to an overwhelming amount of scams going on in the world. That is however, not an excuse----it is an exploit to those who take advantage of inefficient policing. It harms others in an economy which is intertwined with the countries economy.


That crackdowns on Online scamming is obfuscated, due to the virtual environment and legal confusion, does not mean that it is then okay to ignore the basic intent of the laws regarding the creating of an exchange of made up tokens for real life money.

Ultimately LL can print Lindens and sell them on the "exchange" and use the Golden Parachute if things get tight and they are being closed in on. Since they own the medium of exchange and own the mechanism of the exchange and own the means of production. They will be ownzzzd.

A Linden is NOT a counterfeit dollar but is in fact an unbacked currency that is equal to X amount of the US dollar. The Linden itself is an Exploit of the intent of the laws.

To say that the US dollar is technically a unbacked, fiat currency and that whole tired argument----has nothing to do with it, nor does it excuse LL, anymore then inefficient policing or using exploits inside SL make it "legal."

We also have security, gambling and fraud laws, enacted with the intent to protect the society from turning it's economy into a joke. That there are many who exploit these laws does not excuse LL or various behaviors in SL.

Instead of looking at the letter of the law like counting angels on the head of a pin, look at basic common law which people seem to bypass.

Fraud:

"All multifarious means which human ingenuity can devise, and which are resorted to by one individual to get an advantage over another by false suggestions or suppression of the truth. It includes all surprises, tricks, cunning or dissembling, and any unfair way which another is cheated."

LL has allowed it's product to be used as as a casino in many ways, not just outright virtual casinos.

Go to the main page of SL website and click on "What is Second Life?"

From the very first sentence, they put it on the residents as the "creator"--sorry they (LL) are the creator.

They use the phrases, "retain intellectual property" and "Your World, Your Imagination," which are in fact cancelled by the TOS.

"..............the Linden™ dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden dollar exchanges."

"Under Linden Lab's Terms of Service Residents retain intellectual property rights in the original content they create in the Second Life world, including avatar characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs. The result is a vibrant marketplace of Second Life content. If you create it, you can sell it, trade it, and even give it away for free, subject of course to our Terms of Service."

One would think, reading this, then that one really OWNS the land they buy and their avatar and their builds, etc.--TELL ME--what is the term of tier payments to OWN the land? --no matter how you look at it you are renting it from LL and they can pull the plug tomorrow.--say BuhBye

Yet the SAME TOS says LL owns all Lindens and every little byte and bit.

Can't have it both ways.

The TOS describes what is called "Community Standards" of ethics and behavior, but this is ignored and then cancelled by other sections of the TOS in terms of any responsibility of LL to enforce Community Standards. ie., Banks, scams etc.

Hack attorneys wallowing in and exploiting loopholes are scabs on the wounds--not at all the Kool-Aid philosophy as presented in the advertising---we are supposed to believe about SL as advertised. In short SL is a wolf in Sheeps clothing and trusting souls, entering SL will get screwed.

Can't resist this:

Can't resist this:

After having spent roughly a year watching the different exchanges and reading over their operational information and such, I chose to focus the majority of what I do with ACE, as it is the most principled of the exchanges in how it operates.

I know many people who lost real money in the WSE crap...some around 20K USD. Given the fact that Ansche Chung, who has made the most money from SL of anyone ive heard about, is and was a serious investor in many WSE companies, I think calling anyone who had any involvement in WSE or banks stupid is a bit of a stretch. Instead of putting the fault on folks who read the rules and followed them for months and then get ripped off, i think the fault lies with those who ran what appeared to be a reputable SL biz for many months and then ran away with the loot.

I don't think investors are necessarily stupid, but the claim by some of these so-called financial institutions that they are somehow self-regulated, or properly and safely regulated by other in-world institutions which have no legal underpinnings or inherent authority themselves, insults the intelligence of nearly everyone.

Creating the illusion of accountability is not enough. There must be actual accountability. What's to stop any of the trusts, stock exchanges or holding companies, when confronted with questions on their ethical standards, practices, or individual actions, from just saying "@#$#@ you, we're doing as we @#$! well please"?

The answer, of course, is nothing. Without the presence of any binding authority, and without constant attention and monitoring of Linden Lab to the point of requiring quarterly audits from the SL users claiming to be running these sorts of businesses, any of them is capable of pulling another Ginko and vanishing from SL, leaving its victims with no recourse whatever.

This is, in fact, quite likely to happen again as it did with Ginko, considering that some of these financial institutions give the appearance of cooking their books, omitting critical information from their quarterly investor reports, and in some cases diverting funds for personal use. I'm of the firm opinion, as I've stated before, that this is yet another disaster waiting to happen, and every sort of group that charges any sort of fee for handling other people's money as a service should be immediately shut down and this sort of business be completely and utterly banned from Second Life.

Simply allowing them to reorganize and make slight changes to their business models has not mitigated the risk to consumers one tiny bit.

[...] some of these financial institutions give the appearance of cooking their books [...]

Even this is being generous. The "books" are simply works of fiction, and the "institutions" are just individual grifters. They are all, without exception, complete scams in every possible way.

I know many people who lost real money in the WSE crap...some around 20K USD. Given the fact that Ansche Chung, who has made the most money from SL of anyone ive heard about, is and was a serious investor in many WSE companies, I think calling anyone who had any involvement in WSE or banks stupid is a bit of a stretch. .

WHY do you keep giving your money to strangers? aren't you disciplined enough to hold onto it yourself?

The WSE is back in action maybe in restructured form but i havent got the time to do any looking atm

The WSE web site is gone now. Where did all that money go?

into Luke Connell's pockets.

Ok, so now, as per their web site. The World Stock Exchange has closed without warning AGAIN for whatever reason and may not be back for a few months, while holding everyone's money.

One of the last companies on the market SNE Sarah Nerd Estates, has announced that the slowed economy and WSE downtime has driven them out of business and so they are shutting down. What a mess and/or scam this all is.

These in world firms and funds should be shut down by LL. These people have no idea what they are doing and are losing and/or stealing hundreds of thousands of real world USD$.

Amend the banking ban to include all financial operations which would be regulated in the real world. Not just "banks". This is a major loophole.