Purged of Intellectual Property... Is this fair?!

Ah, yeah forgot about that. I stand corrected about being updated with ToS'.

I still see the ordeal as a whole to be rather unreasonable.

Thank you.

I don't particularly remember but it can't have been all that long ago. But even if we are not forced to agree to *every* change, we are certainly forced to agree to enough of them that Chance must have either not logged in for a very long time, or he agreed to much newer ToS than 2003. And, judging by his reply to your question to me, it sounds like he's been agreeing to them through the years

I don't remember either. I think it's moot since they say changes will be posted on the website.

I think that the TOS is pretty clear that LL can do whatever the heck they want whenever the heck they want to. I severely doubt that most of it is enforceable in court, but it will take lawyers guns and money to find out.

A "contract" is manifestly not "a contract" if its terms violate any laws governing the establishment or content of contracts in the relevant jurisdiction. In the USA, people cannot give away their rights even if they prick their fingers and sign a paper that explicitly takes them away in blood.

Desmond and Argent are right that good business often does not involve rigid enforcement even of legal and reasonable contracts.

Personally, I do pay attention to the expiration date of my credit card and I make sure I get new information on file everywhere necessary before the card expires. I don't find it that difficult to do.

However, assuming that Chance is not exaggerating the historical value of his property, it might be in the Lindens' interest to restore it.

In any case, it seems reasonable that they could get his estimated last login date, pull up a backup and copy his stuff to his live account for a fee. And before a recently-reported massive permanent loss of data by a big "cloud computing" company, I would have expected this to be easily do-able. Who would have believed a large reputable company wouldn't have a valid backup strategy? (One more reason why people should not surrender ownership of their data to "the cloud". Just step..away... from ... the cloud... people, before it's too late!)

And although "life" may be unfair, *humans* are specifically enjoined by every code of ethics under the sun to do their best to be fair, and just, and reasonable, and kind. Humans who continuously take the law of the jungle as their only creed are liable to be thrown to the lions when the opportunity arises, while a sizable crowd cheers.

Good Business DOES involve enforcement of contracts.



Enforcing a contract can hardly be labeled as the "law of the jungle." A "code of ethics" would also involve paying your bills on time or accepting the consequences. "Human" works both directions.

I hope someone at LL helps the OP out. But if the last 50 people who had that happen to them did not get the same treatment....then give us your lecture on "fairness" to that one.

Good business involves intelligent enforcement of reasonable contracts. The purpose of business is making money, you make money by encouraging customers to do business with you. Contracts and policies that discourage customers from spending money are not good business. They are commercial suicide.

dont trust lindens to keep your stuff safe back it up yourself if you want to save it.
but someday SL will be gone anyway and any new 3D world will not use "prims" so it will not be compatible. ive done lots of 3D objects in diffrent worlds alot of it is vrml and RWX i still have backup copys but its not usable much today.

One thing that occurs to me is that this same scenario could easily happen if LL makes a billing error.

The draconian step of deleting inventory is rather like the death penalty: since you can't undo it, it's better not to do it at all.

The only protection, I guess, is to have an alt who owns nothing but the land, while your own main account owns everything BUT the land. It wouldn't matter whether you main account was premium or basic; as long as it doesn't own land, your inventory isn't at risk.

.

How often does that happen?

I don't know....it would seem that enforcing the rules/policies across the board would be more encouraging. Quite a few people in a tizzy here now about that. Make up your minds what you want.

Yeesh you guys. Chris and Mickey are right -- a contract is a contract and if you screw up, LL has the right to say tough cookies. Desmond and most everyone else is right, it's bad business practice to treat someone this way.

Desmond pointed out that somebody might not pay their rent in SL because they're in the hospital.

In RL, years ago, I rented an apartment. There was no parking with the apartment, so I parked on the street. I had to go into the hospital for surgery. I was in for five days. I parked my car in the closest available space at the time (legally as far as I knew; there were no posted restrictions on street parking), across the street from my apartment, and a friend drove me to the hospital, since I wouldn't be able to drive home. When I got home, I learned that a busybody neighbor had my car hauled to an impound lot the day after I parked it, because it hadn't moved in 24 hours. At this time I was working a very low wage job and it cost me nearly a week's pay to get the car out of impound. The woman who did this was not in the least apologetic.

Was what she did legal? Sure. Was it right or fair? No. Would it have cost her anything to make inquiries and find out that I was in the hospital before she did what she did? No. Did she have an ethical obligation to do that before she put me out of a week's pay? You betcha. Does she owe me that week's pay? I think she does. "Life" didn't do that to me, *she* did, and she had no valid reason for doing it beyond her busybodiness.

It's these kinds of things that we're talking about here. Rigidity in the face of all circumstances is never the right approach.

Not if they're BAD RULES.

And they are.

An idea has been nagging at me, but I don't know enough ancient SL history to guess if it could be true: Back before there was such a thing as a completely free "Basic" account, I understand there were opportunities to sign-up for a "lifetime" account (or something like that) with benefits including a forever tier-free 4096 (I guess), in exchange for some noticeable amount of money; presumably such accounts could never suffer the OP's fate.

Could it be that "mere" paying, not lifetime accounts were intentionally made to suffer cancellation and Inventory "clean up" when payment lapsed, as an extra incentive for lifetime sign-ups, and the stupid policy just never got fixed when Basic accounts were introduced?

Your mad, you think Linden lab has *reasons* behind anything they do?

Good point. I am quite completely insane. In my defense, however, my "issues" only arose after exposure to Linden Lab.

Also, my theory relies solely on the well-established principle of Linden Lethargy™: "If it's broke, don't fix it." The competing principle of Lab Entropy, "If it ain't broke, fix it until it is" only applies to things that aren't yet broken, and we know such things are thin on the ground.

Maybe it's discussed in this thread but I have a question:
why aren't unpaid Premium accounts simply converted
to Basic accounts? According to my programming experience
that would be a doddle.

A further comment to the OP: that's a real bummer, my friend.
I can only imagine how I'd feel if that happened to the stuff
I've been building and working on for 3 years, let alone if
it was 6.

- Infrared

I don't know. I'm not saying that it did happen, only that it could. I have seen posts about people being billed twice in the same month.

My point is that resorting to deletion of inventory as a remedy for late payments is not wise.

One thing LL could do is make tier and Premium payments payable in Lindens. This way if an account does go dormant, if there is a sufficient balance in the account, it should keep the account open. If not enough to pay the debt, whatever available should keep it "inactive" but still available. then after the money runs out, and a reasonable amount of time passes, the account can be purged.

You're correct Seven....it particularly USE to happen on occasions to Estate Owners paying monthly SIM tier where this double billing occurred....we've had many a member complain in the Concierge Info Group over time. Likewise on Mainland, people tiering down by selling land only to be billed a further few months by LL. (by all accounts it takes quite a few months for those refunds to come through!)

When I went to basic..I hadn't owned any mainland for a year as a premium. All of a sudden LL hits me with a $5 land use fee. I put in a ticket, got a a runaround. I cancelled my account a week or so later, but when I came back in a month, I never did get my 5 bucks back.

It's not moot. Chance said that he had agreed to the ToS that existed in 2003 but not to any later ToS - it was a significant part of his argument. But when there's a significant change to the ToS, nobody can log in without agreeing to them on the login screen. It's not a rare occurence, and Chance admitted that he'd forgotten about those forced agreements, so that part of his argument was unfounded.

Oh it happens alright!

I have been double billed or incorrectly billed on several occasions just in the last year alone......but not for Tiers thank god!

I've been double billed Group charges and Search fees on two occasions this year. My (30L) Search fees alone are about 3-4K+ a week!
The funniest double billing was cancelling a Classified advert back in Mar 09 (for a New product launch).....and being continuously billed all the way to Aug 09!!!.
I made enough noise in Live chat & tickets and got several thousands back after 4 weeks of complaining! Because I run about 20-30 adverts in any given week....it wasn't so easy to spot. It also happened during the back end of last year for a smaller advert but over a shorter period of time (billed an additional 4 or 6 weeks).
The funny thing, it's not easy to detect....because it indeed doesn't appear in your Profile section of classified adverts.....yet you'll still see it appearing in the Search section of Classified adverts despite cancelling it. Needless to say i keep a closer eye these days!

Like I said, I don't remember ever being asked to agree to an updated TOS in the two years I've been here. I've been waiting to see this for the adult content policy, and haven't.

From the 2003 TOS:



Either way, yeah, that part of his argument is unfounded.