Interview with Bragg's lawyer

I agree with that assessment, Watermelon, and I am very interested in the posts that really do explore the legal (and ethical - sometimes) issues. I wasn't commenting on those. I was commenting on the posts that read very much like their authors are rooting for Bragg to put one over on LL. It's one thing to root for the bad guys when you go to a "caper" movie (The Lavender Hill Mob is a classic). It's another to root for turning SL into a big game of "Gotcha!" using real money - to what end? A profit motive I could understand, however badly it speaks of the profiteer's character. At least it's sort of rational. But grasping for arguments in favor of an outcome that could only harm LL, SL and its Residents, including no doubt the very ones grasping for the arguments? Or rooting for Bragg simply out of pure malice directed at LL, which has its flaws but tries its darndest and after all did bring SL into existence and maintains it? I don't get it. If we're not talking about greed here, seems to me we are talking about people who are, to use the technical, scientific term, frigging nuts.

- The page was not accesable through normal navagation on the website
- There was a security oversite
- Another security oversite - Bragg at no time was authorized by LL to auction sims.
- The minimum bid is meaningless since the auctions were not meant to be started by residents.
- The basic billing is likely automated or largely automated. The fact LL billed him does not mean they knew what had happened.

The fraud is the fact that a Reasonble Account holder would know that they were not authorized to start the auctions of sims. They would also know that by gaming the process they would be able to get the sims at a highly discounted rate.

Bragg obviously owned a lot of other land. He wasnt unfamiliar with the normal land auction process.

I wish they could both lose, and they probably both will.

first, what Bragg did was wrong and I suspect he KNEW or should have known it was wrong.

LL's response was totally disporportionate to the offense committed.

What they should have done was confiscate the land, give him a chance to sell by proxy land he acquired honestly, refund whatever money he has in his account and ban him.

None of us know all the facts yet, just various spins on them. The discovery - documents, written questions answered under oath and depositions will hopefully fill in most of the blanks.

I doubt if the case will be ready for trial in December.

I think, based on what I know now, that Bragg will lose. I also think LL's TOS agreement is in serious trouble legally. I also think that ultimately, LL will lose even bigger than Bragg, even though they may be the prevailing party. Airing their dirty laundry is not a smart move. the negative publicity will hurt them far worse than Bragg.

There is a coherent argument that he did not commit fraud - he took advantage of a lapse in LL's processes, and Bragg has as good as admitted that he acted *immorally*, but that does not per se constitute fraud.

However, even if Bragg *did* commit fraud, a clause in the ToS allowing LL to shut down an account without recompense merely on *suspicion* of fraud is very dangerous.

As Har and Watermelon have indicated, the case is extremely useful in providing a long overdue oversight/review of LL's ToS - it is a pity that this is clouded by the morality of Bragg's actions which initiated this.

Matthew

LOL - well I see this as missing something

He didnt just "Maybe" (w/e) defraud some resident or group of residents.

He "Maybe" (w/t/f/e) defrauded Linden Lab/ The powers that be in Second Life. Sorry but you get things a little rougher then.

Land doesnt actually have a value assigner by LL . its like the Linden$ .. oh they will sell you an island. They will auction the sims.

But they wont buy it back from you. You have to get someone else to buy it.

So the "property" they seized only has a value to other players of the game of second life (or residents semantics). Since Bragg had been banned for exploiting the system, he couldnt sell it to anyone else and thus he is out of luck.

Until open source happens Second Life is Linden Lab's pool. Swim at your own risk.

Out of interest, the mechanism that Bragg used for accessing the auction URLs (substituting the id from a sim yet to be auctioned in a URL of an existing auction) is older than the internet.

Nearly 100 years ago, people were doing tho same thing with piano rolls. Collectors noticed that the roll number in the catalogue were sequential but there were a few ommissions here and there. Out of curiousity, they ordered the missing numbers to see what would happen.

As an order would be processed by just taking the master roll for that catalogue number and running off a copy, those ordering these missing numbers received rolls that the publishers never intended to be made publically available. Typically these were recordings with which the artist or publisher wasn't happy with for various reasons (outtakes if you like).

This then became a kind of game with the piano roll collectors who would carefully look over the catalogues for missing numbers (the catalogues being sorted by artist or work rather than number, so the gaps were not immediately obvious) and it did result in various works which might have been lost being still available to us.

Matthew

None of these matters. If a page is reachable by "someone" simply typing in a URL without any sort of access control, it is deemed to be public. If there *had* been some security on the site, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. If the minimum bid had been set to $1,000 rather than $1, we wouldn't be having this conversation.


Ummmm....aren't *all* auctions started by residents? Isn't the point that the auction runs for 48 hours after the first resident places a bid?

At the end of the day, the fact stands that the auction page Bragg accessed was a *public* page. It contained a valid auction interface, set to receive a minimum bid of $1 for a sim. The court filings indicate LL *knew* what was happening before Bragg won his auction. Several others had bought discount sims previously. Bragg emailed LL asking what was going on. There is evidence they *knew* it was happening and allowed it to continue.


So, a Reasonable Account Holder should know that accessing pages LL has placed on the web and bidding on Linden-sanctioned auctions will get his stuff taken by LL?

Having just read the Linden counterclaims*, I am no longer convinced that the claim of fraud is meritless. This is based on IM chat logs that LL accessed and put in their counterclaim alleging conspiracy between Bragg and two others to activate inactive auctions.

This doesn't change my belief that LL was wrong to sieze all Bragg's assets without compensation and it has made me aware that in-game IMs aren't private.

If you would like to argue LL's case, you could do a lot worse than to actually read it*. You might want to skip to the affirmative defenses or counterclaims, as the answers to Bragg's complaint (the first part) are long, pretty boring, and not too informative.

The part I found most interesting is that LL, like most of the rest of the world, doesn't really know what the rights in virtual worlds are:*http://lawy-ers.com/linden-answer.pdf

The "it was just a URL anyone could have guessed" excuse.

Is just that.

An excuse.


As I understand it only Bragg has made his side of the story really public. Is this not true?

Isn't the money/value of the property he had frozen and/or in Court custody now?

Thank you.

SO LL's side of the story is far more recent.

Except that the burden of proof in a civil case is on the "balance of probabilities" - meaning LL only have to show that Bragg probably committed fraud. To secure a criminal conviction, however, they would need to prove it "beyond all reasonable doubt".

Who did he speak to? If he didn't actually speak to a real live Linden, then the original analogy is sound. If the auction was completed using an automated system then they can hardly be said to have "said yes". The man's a villain.

In civil litigation, the plaintiff wins if the preponderance of the evidence favors the plaintiff. For example, if the jury believes that there is more than a 50% probability that the defendant was negligent in causing the plaintiff's injury, the plaintiff wins. This is a very low standard, compared to criminal law.
A few tort claims (e.g., fraud) require that plaintiff prove his/her case at a level of "clear and convincing evidence", which is a standard higher than preponderance, but less than "beyond a reasonable doubt."

there wont need be "clear and convincing evidence",...and there neednt be "proof" he commited fraud or a fraudulent act...just is it more or less likely he did...and with the existence of IM's discussing the "plot"...it is pretty much going to the more than 50% side that yes, he did.

Do they

Or do they just have to convince the Judge and Jury that its their Sandbox, and Bragg was just renting a part of it?

And he broke the deal.

That's the ends - and the easiest means of doing that is to show that he probably committed fraud

This case won't even touch the sides - Bragg hasn't got so much as a pot to piss in.

On the other hand if this is true



and Bragg *had* e-mailled LL letting them know about the exploit and what he was up to, and LL took no action to prevent it then the analogy holds - this also weakens LL's claim that his actions were fraudulent, if he told LL what he was doing!

Matthew

Thanks for that link, Malachi. I couldn't get that link to work for some reason so I googled the name of the PDF and got the HTML version. That was some hilarious reading. If after seeing those chat logs anyone still thinks that what Bragg did was anything less than premeditated fraud, they need their head examined. The good stuff starts on page 43. Bragg has brass balls. I can't believe he tried to demand that LL should compensate him for profit he expected to make off his fraudulantly obtained land! He's exactly the kind of unethical dirtbag that give lawyers a bad name.

There is one question I would like to know about the auction part. Were they really pages that LL made or were they made dynamically by the numbers? Did the system read the numbers in a auction and from that make the page? But I do agree with others that any person with ¼ of a brain should have known that an auction not started by LL was not a real auction.
I also don’t see how their response was to hard. He exploited a hole in the system for any computer company this is a big deal. He was kicked off as should be there rights. If he can’t use the system the land part becomes void. It is like saying “I am not paying my bill but I still own the land” If I don’t pay my bill I get kicked off and all my land is taken back.

I wouldn't go that far. That would indeed weaken their defence, but would not destroy it all together. To take the original analogy further - say I leave my door unlocked and you remind me to lock it. If I still don't and you go in after I have gone to work and take my TV - that's still theft. I haven't given you permission to exploit my lax security just because I have failed to act on your warnings. It still leaves Bragg looking like an opportunist jackal I'm afraid.

Interesting there were claims that those who offered up their opinions against Bragg supposedly without having done research, were offensive.

When LL's side of the story wasnt availble till just very recently.

but those claims were made by rabble rousers trying to convince people their opinion is weightier than our own. personally...i hope this guy gets laughed out of court finally and the judge awards LL's court costs as a judgement against him, so it costs him and his sleazy attorney a bundle...

the attorney is trying to make a name for himself in the "new" realm of virtual world law...i hope the name he makes is "MUD"

my two cents worth...

Is a little gem in this portion though number 99.

Who is Bragg's lawyer on this case?