Interview with Bragg's lawyer

No, that isn't what Bragg did, and no matter how many uniformed opinions line up saying he did doesn't make them any more true.

Thought-bite: Bragg has never claimed that he should have gotten the $300 sim once LL realized their error in selling it to him.

That's a terrible analogy.

More accurately, suppose I come to your front door, ask to buy your TV for $3, and you sell it to me. That isn't theft, but if you came to me and said "I made a mistake" then we might come to a more fair price (since we're both reasonable people).

If, however, you came to me and said "I made a mistake so I'm taking your car and house in retribution", then I'd probably get miffed.

I don't think that's quite it either, Malachi. If you get caught cheating in a Vegas casino and thrown off the premises, do they let you cash out your chips first? Or do they confiscate all of them, regardless if some of them were obtained legitimately, and toss you out on the sidewalk (or hand you over to the police).

Abusing an automated system is hardly equivalent to asking to buy the TV for $3. LL's mistake was having lax security - the equivalent of leaving the door unlocked. The analogy is sound.

You mean he dropped his claim to the dishonestly acquired land once he got caught?

Gosh, that was big of him. A modern day Sir Galahad if ever there was one.

Ah yes. It wouldn't be a post on a legal issue if the "I want LL to BLEEEEEEEEED!" brigade didn't come along and chime in.

Better analogy:

A store has self-checkout lines. Someone goes into the back room, gets items that aren't yet placed out for sale, runs them through the self check out line (which only requires a barcode, which all items have when they are shipped from the manufacturer), pays, and leaves.

Legal?

Sounds like Bragg committed Wire Fraud.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_fraud

Another annology for what he did: It is like going into Walmart and changing the barcodes on the products and buying them.

A better analogy, but for the "goes into the back room". To date, the cases touching on "URL fabrication" have leaned in the direction that if it is accessible on the public web then it is public. I'd also add a door guard who checks your receipt for agreement with goods as an analogy for LL requesting and accepting the (low) payment.

Do I think Bragg ought to have tried to game the bidding process? Absolutely not. Do I think that the Vegas "house rules" noted above should apply? No. I do think LL was in error for their "security by not-so-obscurity" and that their response was quite ham-fisted.

Unlike a grid-bomber, Bragg was not an imminent danger to SL/LL. I think if LL had thought about it instead of acting hastily, refunded some portion of the virtual land they took from him, Bragg would have little legal standing. I don't want to see LL bleed; LL could have made this go away for not much money if they had acted wisely. If they are indeed standing on principle, then I think it clear they picked the wrong battle.

wheres the brigade then? i feel quite alone on this.
i just find it interesting that if this happened to anyone other than ll, theyd say '$ has no value, land has no value, we dont involve ourselves' and theyd wash their hands. when its THEIR $ or land though...

Well, your characterization of the facts in this case indicate to me that either you've not made yourself aware of what happened, or you're deliberately misrepresenting the situation.

Hanlon's razor would advise us to assume you're simply ignorant of what happened. That's not a crime. However, if that's the case, then your opinion is completely without value. i.e. an opinion on a complex legal/technical matter proffered without knowledge of the surrounding facts contributes nothing to the discourse at hand.

I would hope this is more palatable to you than the alternative -- that you're aware of the facts in the case and have chosen to deliberately misrepresent them.

That's my point. You are the brigade. Well, theres one or two others, but mostly just you.

They left the door unlocked he went in and asked if he could buy the T.V. for $3 they said yes.

Their automation said yes, not them. If an item is mispriced due to human, mechanical, or computer error, which results in something like a giant flatscreen TV being priced at $25 at Amazon, and someone buys it at that price, the law does not require Amazon to send them the TV, AFAIK.

Basically LL made the mistake of setting land for sale at a temporarily low price believing that the for sale webpage was only accessible by them whereas it was accessible by anyone.

Exactly the same mistake within SL results in many being being the victims of landbot swooping. LL's inaction on this, means they get very little sympathy when they get caught out in a similar manner.

LL's reaction was totally disproportionate to the crime - if we take the walmart example (although a better example would be if walmart had mispriced stock in the backroom but left the door open and bragg entered and took the stock to the checkout), the analogy would be walmart repossessing without recompense *every* item Bragg had ever purchased from Walmart - even when Bragg could prove he had paid the correct price!

The ToS is not a particularly good defence. Many of the clauses within the ToS (e.g. the ones allowing LL to terminate without notice and without refund of unused membership fees etc.) wouldn't stand up in court, as indeed the Bragg case has demonstrated over the clauses claiming that adjudication has to take place within California.

However, in most cases, it just isn't worth the effort or cost to take a contest of the ToS to court, which is how LL and other companies get away with grossly unfair ToS. However, Bragg has called LL's bluff, and I suspect LL will not get away from this completely unblemished.

Matthew

Nope, that's not a good analogy at all, since you're equating physical goods that he would have taken home with virtual goods that could only be accesssed or used on Walmart's private property. If Walmart banned you from their store for stealing from them you would then be unable to access or use anything you ever bought from them no matter how legitimately it was obtained, and if they also had a "all sales final" policy (which is perfectly legal) they would be under no obligation to reimburse you.

Not quite - if an error results in a flatscreen TV being advertised at $25 the law does not require the TV to be sold at that price

At this stage it is an "invitation to treat" - the buyer can offer to buy at that price - however, the seller is perfectly at liberty to refuse to sell. In an online system, an e-mail could be sent at this stage confirming that an order had been made, but provided that e-mail merely confirmed the order and not the sale, the sale could still be retracted.

However, once a sale has been confirmed e.g. by an e-mail confirming the sale and/or money being taken for the purchase - the sale is deemed to be legally complete (this is exactly the same argument given by LL when it refuses to take action when a landbot has grabbed land, or when the searchbot resulted in people losing no-copy items mistakenly priced for sale at L$1).

Matthew

wow. one comment earns me the title of 'anti-ll brigadier'
what do your comments earn you?

And if this was your first comment, you might have a valid complaint.

And don't you know? I'm a witch hunter. It says so clearly on the left hand column. I fought a hard fight to earn that title.

Well the difference seems to be that when people complain on the forums about landbots taking advantage of a mistake people have very little sympathy for them and tell them tough titty, whereas in this case people see Bragg as deliberately defrauding the system and LL have sympathy even though they made a mistake.

Did the sale get authorised? Did LL process the payment and let him have the land?

Bragg's actions were wrong... and very likely illegal.

LL's response is understandable... but also possibly illegal.

It's Bragg going after LL, not the other way around.
LL responded by seizing his assets and clearly felt the issue dealt with,
until the lawyers got involved..

Committing a crime does not give the victim cart-blanc to retaliate any way they please.


(Can LL claim they sold off Bragg's seized assets... in self defense? )

Note that Bragg v. Linden is a civil contract dispute and has nothing to do with criminal law or criminal acts. It is understandable that readers may believe this is a criminal matter because LL blogged*:Yet no criminal charges have been filed by LL nor are there likely to be. It appears to me that LL likes drama and insinuation as much as SL the forum participants.

* http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/06/29/linden-lab-files-response-to-complaint/#more-1060

They didn't. The assets were frozen. Bragg threatened to sue the same day LL locked his account so they put his assets into limbo until a settlement is reached. We don't know what they would have done with his legitimate assets if he'd just taken his punishment like a man. They may have gone ahead with the forfeiture clause of the TOS, or they may have auctioned the land and given him the proceeds. I think there's precedent for LL having done the latter in the past, but don't quote me on that.

LL said nothing at all publicly about the case until a loooong time after Bragg had already issued press releases about his "precedent setting" case.

Good! Sorry it's been a while since I read up on this case and thought that was one of the issues.

Then again, I get all sorts of stuff twisted around in my head, like:

In the article, they keep referring to it as 'land', not 'virtual land'.
Virtual disk is not disk, virtual memory is not memory...
Therefore: Virtual land is NOT land... it is something else.

The way I look at it:

Owning land in SecondLife is like owning a DVD.
I can sell the parcels or DVDs that I bought to nearly anyone at any price I want.

However, there are aspects of those parcels or DVDs that we do NOT own.

If we abuse our rights with the parts we do not own,
then we should lose the right to use those parts,
without which, our parcel or DVD becomes quite useless to us.

Bragg picked a lock by "Back browsing"... and he entered a web content
prematurely. I'm quite certain he knew that LL considered the space
"not open to the public yet" and that he did not have their consent to use
it in the way that he did. But he slipped in anyway and knowingly took
advantage of their lack of security. To me, that's burglary, "knowingly
entering an establishment to permanently deprive the owner of property
without their consent".

IANAJ. (judge)