I am being sued

Actually it's not so silly, your assumption that anyone other than LL owns anything is completely wrong, people really really don't own anything in SL, you pay for a service, you cannot own a service, unless of course your the service provider.

It's all up to the Judge, be prepared!!

This is completely correct in my view. The OP's first port of call is the TOS, not an attorney. In a claims case you have to prove you have made a loss - you can't do that if you did not own anything in the first place, even if you perceived (wrongly) that you owned it.

If no other action was taken by the OP (i.e. hacking the account and stealing a password), or it cannot be proved, then the OP has absolutely nothing to worry about. Buy yourself a suit (as suggested by another poster), make it a very nice one, keep the receipt, and be ready to counter claim for its cost, and any other cost you incur, after the other person loses her case.

Small Claims is very simple. Either prove the Sim is yours or not. Or she proves the sim is hers. Not having evidence with you would be the way to lose, so you have to have the evidence or any witnesses in hand and in court. If you mention evidence or witnesses, they have to be there. Don't wear jeans.

Even though Small Claims is not handled by attorneys, you can still consult with one as to how to handle the case, and there are also non-attorney legal forms services, that can help you do all the paper work.

So enjoy your Second Life.

My ex started rumbling about illegal this and illegal that after I rescinded 6144 of land I let him have for nothing, relinquishing it to the Estate Owner instead. Presumably he understood that it was her choice and decision and that as I had said to return the tier he had paid he'd have had a hard time taking me to court to prove loss of cash.

However, get expert advice. Seems to me this is more than likely drama, manipulation and BS - however, without knowing where you are, the sum of money involved may or may not fall under small claims.

You may also want to discuss with your legal advisor about harassment ...

Trout is absolutely right that anything said here is admissible. I doubt that even prefacing your posts with "Without Prejudice" would work.

Best of luck!

Isnt Love Grand?

Snowman, I have to disagree strongly with you and Dekka on this. Of course there has been a loss. Have you looked at the up front costs to "buy" a sim recently? If you lose the rights to that sim (whether we call those rights "ownership" or something else), there has been a real loss.

Did the plaintiff give away her land, or did she have a reasonable expectation of compensation? That's what's up to the court. But there is no question in my mind that there is something of value at issue here. Call it a lease if you want, call it a service. Whatever you call it, the plaintiff paid good money for it and it has real value. Your arguments that it does not simply do not hold water. Would you claim the entire SL "real estate" market is a fiction? If so, please explain to me, and to Anshe Chung and others, just what the hell we have been doing all this time.

Is there a receipt for bill of sale? Is there a written contract? Was there a verbal contract and THEN a receipt for sale? If there's no paperwork to document any of this, the judge is going to laugh this out of court. No one can prove anything without documentation. Both of them need to get bank statements or paypal or whatever, and property statements from LL, etc.

Dont forget to take a laptop with you that you can connect to the internet with so you can show the judge just exactly what SL is. Just dont let the judge see any pixel sex. OMG, better yet, let the judge see some of it. Who knows, your ex may get laughed out of court on that one.

According to Robin, knowing the RL identity of people you deal with in SL will only lead to more trust in Business dealings.

Bet OP feels that way now.



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She sold you a SIM, you two were so close you never got a receipt -

Now you broke up and she claims she never sold it to you.

You have no proof you paid her? Because you handed her cash.

She has her Transaction record in SL to prove she paid for the SIM originally.

Sounds like you have an uphill battle.

I'm not aware of the law in Virginia. I do know in some states you are always entitled to get a lawyer when you are sued. Even for small claims.


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One thing to think about -

If the sale had been done in Lindens there would have been a record of it.

If its done cash/paypal always make sure to get a receipt.

The Second Life site refers to "Owning land", and they are the only ones (without your direct interaction) who can remove that land from you without any issues. The ToS only protects them, not resident-to-resident, as I understand it.

If he ended up with a sim that she had previously owned, one of two things had to happen:

1. She was at his home, she logged onto his computer, she had the game up and left the room, he sold the land to his avatar/deeded it to his group (which she must not be an officer or owner of, or not have any "accounting" rights set for her.)

2. She was at his home, she logged onto a computer that she brought with her, she sold the land to him/deeded it to his group (which she must not be an officer or owner of, ornot have any "accounting" rights set for her.)

From the OP, I got the impression that the transaction took place when they were together in reality, which would put all transactions for this land transfer under his IP address.

If there is no indication of hacking into her account, it must have been either option 1 or option 2 above.

Not knowing if this was a small or huge parcel is a big missing factor in the equation. If it was a smaller parcel, no email requiring her approval would have been sent to her. I get the feeling that this is a case of "hell hath no fury" etc, and she's just going for the jugular and trying to inconvenience him.

If that's the case, she'd best come to the realization that she's also inconveniencing a small claims judge, who probably won't think that's so cute.

For the OP, your best bet is to find a lawyer who can advise you which way to go in terms of virtual property, as stated by other posters. On top of that, an old military saying:

Proper prior preparation prevents piss-poor performance.

Good luck.

Dragger,
This is very interesting. I hope you will let us know how it goes in court. Chances are it will be the first time the judge has had to deal with something like this.
Good Luck

QFT

Actually in a way I bet the judge has to deal with this sort of thing between ex-lovers all the time.

Although my guess when it comes to computer related things, its the actual physical computer that is the object of contention.

dunno if this will help or not
but you can read here more about VA small claims courts

http://www.courts.state.va.us/pamphlets/small_claims.html

i would recommond you do this


Before the judge decides the case, the defendant has the right to remove the case to the general district court by completing the Removal to General District Court form on the back of the civil warrant and giving it to the clerk or judge.



then you can get a lawyer, this is not something so simple it should goto small claims court, if she wants to 'play' legal take it to real court, supenoa LL and paypal for records the discovery process alone you could run up charges to her and her lawyer in excess of 100X the amount she wants very very quickly

I've always thought that verbal contacts were, in general, just as binding as written ones. A judge or jury can listen to verbal testimony and decide what to believe, even with nothing written. While it's quite plausible, even likely, that the plaintiff's case will fall flat if there's no written documentation, I doubt the judge will laugh at it. So it still means spending time in a courtroom, and it means being prepared well enough to give credible testimony.

(By the way, in my state at least, real estate contracts must be in writing to be enforceable, but other contracts need not be. But no matter how much Linden uses the term 'land', sims and parcels are still not legally real estate; they're just licenses to use the SL service in a certain way.)

There has not been a clear assessable loss. From the TOS:

"3.3 Linden Lab retains ownership of the account and related data, regardless of intellectual property rights you may have in content you create or otherwise own. You agree that even though you may retain certain copyright or other intellectual property rights with respect to Content you create while using the Service, you do not own the account you use to access the Service, nor do you own any data Linden Lab stores on Linden Lab servers (including without limitation any data representing or embodying any or all of your Content). Your intellectual property rights do not confer any rights of access to the Service or any rights to data stored by or on behalf of Linden Lab."

At best, the original "purchase" of a sim is a start-up fee for use of a service. This start-up fee is not refundable or recoverable. It has no intrinsic value. It is not reasonable for the plaintiff to say that "the defendant could have paid his own start-up fee instead of taking on my liability to continue paying for the service I signed up for". Even if the argument is upheld that "ownership" of the sim (which was specifically handed over, not stolen) has a value, then I still cannot see any way that its value could be assessed at $5000. Drop that immediately to $1675, subtract $295 worth of maintenance gives a maximum value of $1380 - then chuck in a healthy dose of depreciation (or at least, an incentive to not buy the sim direct from LL)..... then maybe the sim is worth about $1100 to someone that wants to take on the $295 per month liability. The plaintiff would then need to prove that she had a buyer at this value in order to prove the sim's worth - if she tries to hoodwink the Court into assessing the value of the sim at $5000 then she is taking a terrible risk.

The defendant could argue that the sim start-up fee was not directly recoverable and that he was doing the plaintiff a favor by taking on the ongoing maintenance fees.

Can you imagine the concept of land in SL being explained in Court... "it is a bit like Sim City Y/your H/honor...."

To answer your last point, all land owners and content providers operate in SL at their own risk - LL can cancel any account, and without looking up the TOS again, I am sure it includes the phrase "for no reason".

~Judge Snowman~

There is a lot more that comes to mind than what I saw in this thread. Since this is all public, like others have said, these arent to be answered here but just ones that I found of interest.

When did you take possesion of the sim? Was it right before the break up or sometime before it? If it was days, or weeks, why was the suit delayed? Did she ever request the land back in exchange for what you paid for it or did she expect to get it back regardless at the time of the break up? Was this the cause of your break up? When the break up happened did you clear off anything she had on the land, ie a business, that could have caused her a loss? If you were holding it while you were together in order to pay for the monthly fees, are you looking at information on a counter suit in order to get back your own losses? If this transaction happened at your home and you paid in cash (silly, silly thing to do) do you have record of that large withdrawl from your bank account on the date near when the land was deeded?

Did she file a complaint with LL about the land? If not, why did she go directly to a suit instead of attempting to get the land back. Did she even pay 5k for it? If not, why that amount for the suit? Small claims, if I recall, was designed for amounts lost, how the heck does one lose 5k on one sim? (Unless she paid that much for it, at which point...ok I wont go into that lol). If she is trying to claim you hacked into her account to do the transfer, thus the IP, why didnt she go to LL? (Not sure if they would have done anything, but, yanno)

IF this case is winnable, wouldnt every other case of land being stolen (mispriced misclicks, lag sales etc) leave people with the option of suing LL for that land? People have lost a LOT of money over the last couple of years by losing land, LL tosses it aside as their own carelessness, but this time someone is claiming that someone else logged in their account and stole it?

See...lots of questions, lots of confusion (dont clear any of it up in here though!) ....those are all things you will probably deal with in court. Good luck to whoever is right in this case, because with the little details we are able to get you could assume a lot of different things. Good luck to the judge, no less lol

An FYI I just sold my island and I never recieved an email from LL regarding the sale or the transfer. I did have to talk to Concerage over the phone because 10 days later the island still had not been transfered and I was charged the fees for the island for another month. They said they were way behind on transfers, have had alot of them this past month, but again I never recieved any emails from LL regarding the transfer. Guess could be cause they were so busy but getting documentation from LL isnt always automatic.

Yes it's delusion for anyone to think they own anything in SL. Of course that's probably why Anshe has her money tied up in real on-line business connected to SL as well, she has shares in the SLEX service, now that does mean she owns something. Lindal, I hope for your sake you have made a decent profit in SL and that you take money from the game, because then, at least you own that money.

Edit: of course Lindal I fully understand that if you have a lot of money tied up in SL that your going to argue to your back teeth that you do own what you purchased and are no way delusional, and that's fine. We just disagree with each other.

$5000 US that seems an awful lot of money to want for one sim. How did you arrive at that figure?

maybe its an American thing, punitive damages?

that was a joke by the way (please don't AR me, thanks)

i did not arrive at that amount she did in the court papers i recieved that is the amount she is asking for shrugs hard to say

Dragger,

Knowing some of the real background to this, and some of the dirty tricks which have gone on (which, may I add, Dragger is too much of a gentleman to list) all I can say is - you got nothing, but nothing, to fear. Sit back and enjoy the festive season.

Sorry, that paragraph of the TOS doesn't apply to land, it applies to "intellectual property".

Look, we use the metaphor of "land" in SL to designate certain upgrades to the service. These upgrades can be purchased direct from LL (via auction, or purchase of a private estate), and they CAN BE TRANSFERRED from one person to another. These rights have value...the ability to restrict access of others, an allowance of prims to build things with, etc. You're right, there's nothing tangible here, no "real land". But there IS an item of value.

But since you don't seem to agree, please feel free to deed all your land to me. You too, Dekka. Since it's worthless, you won't mind that I don't pay you anything for it.