One Person With A Plan To Help

No need to, thanks.

Why should LL be the guarantor for any screwups / dishonesty by an inworld financial institution?

Actually, scrub that. That question has been asked a million times, yet many still think that LL (actually, as Colette rightly points out, *we* ) should bail out the naivety of investors who were happy or greedy enough to entrust large sums of L$ to a self styled financial institution. In the real world, such institutions are monitored and operate to a code enforced by a regulatory body. I don't understand why LL should turn ombudsman because some crook decides he will set up a bank.

The value of your investments can go up or go down. Why should there be a safety net?

Sorry but I use WOW as an example. It actually works. Its the very best example of what works. They are smart.

The Linden is just as fictional as WOW gold. Wow too has an "economy," and inflation etc., but it is still a fiction.

You can't have the linden$ being a "fiction" and not being a "fiction" at the same time. Thats where the problem comes from in the first place. A contradiction---wholly owned and created by LL.

DAVID
Why did we come to Las Vegas? Because it was
a new beginning and I wanted to
remarry my lovely wife. That's
nice, don't you think?

SHUSTER
Very nice.

DAVID
I wanted to get remarried but I
wanted to spend our honeymoon in
the Grand Canyon, places like we
intend to spend the rest of our
lives in, but my wife is very fond
of your hotel and all of the
employees and she said, "Oh, come
on, let's spend our honeymoon here."
And we did and the room was very
lovely and everybody was very nice
to us, but my wife lost the nest
egg.

SHUSTER
Mr. Howard, stop right here. I
think I know what you're getting at.
I realize you've lost a great deal
here and I want you to know that
your room and your meals are comped.

DAVID
That's very nice but that's not
exactly what I'm saying. I think
I have a multi-million dollar idea.
Now, you have to be very secretive
about what I'm going to tell you
because the other hotels, if they
heard about it, well, they'll grab
it in a minute.

David leans over Shuster's desk and whispers to make
the idea really sound secretive:

DAVID
(continuing)
I think, as an experiment, you
give us back the money we lost.

SHUSTER
I beg your pardon?

DAVID
Well, imagine the publicity? I
mean, the Hilton, for example,
they have billboards all over L.A.
where they put the faces of the
winners of those slot machines.
Now, those people win a couple
hundred thousand dollars, but the
hotel is getting millions of
dollars of publicity with those
billboards because people drive
by and say, "Gee, the Hilton looks
like a nice place. Look at those
smiling people." So, what about a
billboard with my wife and I on it
and we would be smiling and there
would be a saying, something like,
"These people dropped out of society,
they couldn't take it any longer,
but they made a mistake. They
lost their nest egg at The Desert
Inn, but The Desert Inn gave it
back." And maybe there could be
some kind of a visual with you
handing us an egg or something.
Now I mean, I'm just formulating
this now, as I'm talking, but you
can imagine, when it's worked
out how effective it could be.

SHUSTER
(chuckling)
That's wonderful.
(he gets up)
Well, Mr. Howard, nice to meet
you.

DAVID
What do you mean nice to meet
me? You said this is wonderful.

SHUSTER
We're kidding each other here,
right?
(starts to
laugh again)
I gotta tell you, this is one of
the best things I've ever heard.
What's the board gonna say again?
"Gamblers, come and get your
money back."
(he laughs)
Great. That's great.

DAVID
(standing up)
No. No. Wait... Not "Gamblers,
get your money back."
That's wrong. We're not gamblers.
We're the few people in society
that have tried to do something
with our lives. See? We're drop-
outs. We're finding ourselves.
Someone's got to help the few
people like us, because if they
don't, nobody will ever drop out
again. Nobody will ever have
the courage to find themselves.

SHUSTER
Well, I understand what you mean,
but I don't think The Desert Inn
can help find you. I'm sorry, but
thank you for the idea and good
night.

He begins to escort David to the door.

DAVID
(stopping him)
Listen, I've experienced this
before. I've had clients that
didn't understand the idea until
they saw it on television and
then they said, "My God! What a
brilliant idea! Why didn't I
understand this?" I might have
used the wrong phrase. Okay,
picture this: maybe, my wife
and I will do a television
commercial for you and there
could be a jingle and it could
go:
(begins to sing)
"The Desert Inn has heart! The
Desert Inn has heart! The Desert
Inn has heart!" Something like
that. See what I mean?

SHUSTER
That's a nice jingle. Mr. Howard,
let's assume you're serious here.
What if this caught on? Could you
imagine what would happen? Why,
we would have to return everybody's
losses. The casino would just
crumble. We couldn't pay our bills.
You know the casino accounts for
a great deal of our profits.

DAVID
I understand. Of course, you don't
pay back everybody's losses. You
make a distinct division between
the bold, who are out there searching,
and all the other schmucks, who come
here to see Wayne Newton.

SHUSTER
I see. Now, I like Wayne Newton.
So, I fall into what category?

DAVID
(realizing this was
not the best example)
Oh, look, I picked a name out of a
hat. I like Wayne Newton, too.
I'm saying a schmuck, representing
the gambler and a bold person,
representing me and my wife and the
one or two others that probably
wouldn't come here anyway. You
wouldn't have to do this more than
once or twice, there's not too many
bold people around. I think it was
a mistake to use entertainers as
the dividing line. We could find
another system. Anyway, what do
you say? We do need that nest egg
back.

SHUSTER
I say good luck to you and stay
away from the tables next time.

DAVID
Oh, that's for sure, but come on?
Half the money, for courage?

Shuster opens up his office door. He escorts David out.

This is where you are missing the point.

The Linden isn't just as fictional as WoW gold. Everyone knows this. The Lindens even run a Linden to USD exchange and maintain a fairly constant trading value. The Trade of L$ for USD$ is an *officially sanctioned activity*

Wow Gold has no constant value. The Owners of WoW don't support its exchange for USD. The trading of WoW gold for USD is a Black Market Activity only.

-----------------------

Unless something were to change LL's stance towards trading L$ for USD$ - your comparison doesn't go anywhere.

Because it's just good business sense not to have trusting customers get burned by the technology and creation they own and their own lack of action in what was Noobviously was known, to be a scam and ponzi, clearly outside any semblance of decent community standards.




Well I certainly agree here. "We" have no responsibility in the matter.




LL made money on all that. They own it all as well.

Nope.

Show me where you can go on Blizzard's website to cash in your WoW gold for real world currency. You can't. In fact it is against the WoW rules to sell your gold for RL cash and doing so will get you banned. The economy in Second Life (err..Second Life™ ) is real. You can create and sell your own products to generate real income. Where is the 'fiction'?

The only people responsible for Ginko's misrepresentation and poor management decisions are the people who created and maintained Ginko.

Nick actually had LL fooled by all sounds of things, just like his "depositors" ;

And potentially even himself. OF course I am positive he realized he was a Ponzi long before the end.

Well lucky SL isn't a casino. it's an online game advertised as a wonderful place--a kind of Utopia and at one time they had banks in it, that looked like serious banks, whose advertising and kiosks were nearly everywhere all throughout SL.

And lucky, LL is a company that has "Communty Standards," and the Linden is fictional....then people discover that it's the other way around...the "community standards" are actually fictional and the Linden $ is actually real.

And the company that most profited from all of it was LL itself, a wolf in sheeps clothing:

Once upon a time there was.......

He may have had them fooled, but all the more reason they are responsible, i'm sure they didn't refuse his money. But c'mon of course they knew it was a dangerous scam and if they are so dumb as to not think it was, then how in heaven's name can they be expected to be trusted?

That the point. The Linden$ is said to be fictional and it is in the TOS as a fiction, yet it can be exchanged.

There is a huge outside market for WOW gold that makes the entire Linden market look like pocket change, but Blizzard fights it tooth and nail and it is forbidden in the TOS to sell gold. Those that do, when they are caught, which is all the time, are banned and law suits happen in the big cases and all that is ongoing.

Thats is because Blizzard is smart and knows who their real customers are so they take care of there real customers, not the crooks.

Sl should just have real money transactions when money is to leave the game and a severe banhammer for those who violate community standards. If that was the case then LL would be doing the best they can. I am not saying they need to pay people back in real money, but lindens while they are still in existence are fake so print them up and pay off the people who were scammed, then quietly phase out the Linden Exchange and advise real businesses to use real money instead via paypal etc.

l'm askin' Your Honour,
is this justice?


ls this justice?


Never stop fighting
till the fight is done.


What did you say?.


l said, never stop fighting
till the fight is done.


- What?
- You heard me, Capone. lt's over.



[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_61X4_RL3CU

You acknowledge that the Service presently includes a component of in-world *****fictional currency ******("Currency" or "Linden Dollars" or "L$", which constitutes a limited license right to use a feature of our product when, as, and if allowed by Linden Lab. Linden Lab may charge fees for the right to use Linden Dollars, or may distribute Linden Dollars without charge, in its sole discretion. Regardless of terminology used, Linden Dollars represent a limited license right governed solely under the terms of this Agreement, and are not redeemable for any sum of money or monetary value from Linden Lab at any time. You agree that Linden Lab has the absolute right to manage, regulate, control, modify and/or eliminate such Currency as it sees fit in its sole discretion, in any general or specific case, and that Linden Lab will have no liability to you based on its exercise of such right.


They want to have it both ways.

You can always charter a boat to Brazil, but I'm not going to help pay for it, and I'm not going to help pay for your loss.

The Ginko "investors" willfully involved themselves in something that had a very high risk of being a scam (and proved to be so.) They were either ignorant of the risks or found the risk acceptable. Either way, "paying them back" by minting lindens to give them would make the entire content provider community of SL pay for their mistake. This is blatantly unethical and shows unaccountability.

The person to blame is the runner of Ginko. If you want your money back, sue him, and get your lawyer to subpoena LL for his contact info.

Second Life, where the closest things to 'real' are your feelings.

It will take a cooler head that the OP's to sort this thing out.

So:

I'll take it on for the sake of the community.

However, even though I will be doing this pro bono as far as possible, I may be perhaps looking for some small up front assistance with funding lawyers, various filing fees, modalities, etc.
Let's say 10% of whatever you lost to Ginko. The percentage basis would be the fairest way.

Sounds ok?





No. I am NOT Nick's alt.
Who said that? Who..... ?



Character reference:
Many people would think of me as being Presentan Careful as opposed to being Absentan Careless.

Oh ,you mean just like they are going to do with the current RL Sub Prime bailout? It is easier than going after the people responsible, isn't it?

It would have very little effect but make people who were ripped off happy and make LL a hero. It might also make LL do things to prevent this kind of crap from happening in the future.

The Linden is fictional and SL is a make believe reality. If you arent safe in Second Life then who needs it? People putting money in the "bank" to basically store their lindens and maybe make interest is not a bad thing, but it was LL that allowed unregulated "banks" to pilfer their customers. Shame on them.

SL is not a game. That doesn't mean that many users of SL don't treat it as a game, but it does mean that the SL business model is quite different from the WoW business model. WoW is a weak analogy for comparison, not totally wrong but extremely limited in its validity.

Part of the business model for SL is to have a real economy the deals in virtual goods. This sort of combination of real world and virtual world issues is a difficult concept for many people to handle. It comes up in other ways, and the history of people being befuddled by it is well documented in this forum. For example, there are many discussions where people have trouble understanding that gambling in SL is real gambling, but prostitution in SL is not real prostitution. The key point is that just because the context is a fictional world doesn't mean that real world aspects never apply.

In this case, labeling the Linden Dollar a fictional currency has no bearing upon its economic status. The real world laws of supply and demand are as applicable to the Linden Dollar as they are to any other sort of intangible property. They are that way because Linden Labs is experimenting with a business model that is, in part, relying heavily upon that premise. That's what many start-ups do - they experiment with new products, new technologies, and/or new business models. More start-ups fail than succeed, but start-ups and venture capitalists understand and accept that. You may decide to stay a user or not, and again, start-ups and venture capitalists understand that they're not going to instantly get a customer base, nor have 100% retention rates.

If you really think you can improve their business model significantly, than apply to become the new CEO. Discussing their business model here is also appropriate, when done analytically and objectively, but bemoaning the fact that it isn't the same as the WoW business model is pointless.

well, if we're gonna expect LL to pay us money...I want them to compensate me for all the sales I *could have missed out on* because of down time and asset server failure.

LL isn't a welfare agency. You paid your money, you took your chances. If you gave all your money to some guy by the river, you would expect the local bank to pay your the money you gave him back, and track him down? The bank has no interest in those you trust with your money, be it real dollars or fake lindens.

You gave your money to a guy in an overcoat down by the river, now you wan't the local bank to fix it. Sorry. Be a grown up, accept your mistake, move on.

Take your own advice...the TOS also says quite specifically that they are not responsible for any losses you incur...and that's whether the losses are due to some other user, or LL themselves.

And SL's economy IS a "real economy". Or, from another point of view, NO economy is "real". Any economy is a collective agreement to let something (dollars, yen, lindens, or teddy bears) serve as a measure of value. Take a dollar out of your purse. Look at it. It's a piece of colored paper. It has an intrinsic worth of...NOTHING (or maybe the cost of materials and printing, if you want to be picky). It only has value because we all, collectively, agree that it does.

nope. if you willingly gave your money to that thief, YOU let it happen. take responsibility for your own foolishness and quit trying to blame everyone else. i didn't give the jerk any money. i knew better. i will not be paying for YOUR bad choices.

QFT!

It amazes me that anyone would give a random stranger their money to hold. You wouldn't do that in RL(I hope),so why do it here??

Disclaimer: I think I lost US$2.30 in the Ginko collapse, so probably I'm not taking this seriously enough.

But really, this is pretty old news at this point. Way back when it was collapsing, LL could have stepped in and frozen Ginko Guy's account, and gone ahead and reimbursed investors, but *not* because it was somehow LL's responsibility to do so: the ToS is perfectly clear that it is *not* their responsibility. The reason they might have done it at that time is analogous to why the Fed recently took extraordinary measures to restore liquidity to the capital markets: they might have done it to smooth out a bump in the SL economy. Instead, though, they followed the pure monetarist playbook and just managed liquidity through Supply Linden. And eventually--far too late, if you ask me--they banned in-world banking that's not RL regulated.

Frankly, I think the real tragedy of the Ginko collapse wasn't the lost L$s, but rather the signal it sent to a generation of residents that SL was just a game of competitive con-artistry. Only recently, with the banking and adfarm bans, has LL taken steps to really reverse that signal, and act like they're taking their creation seriously as a business platform. It's about time.

Whether they want to have it both ways is besides the point.

The simple fact is that the system is maintained in such a way that the only place the USD $500,000 is going to come from is to cost users.

You may see Ginko as the perfect example of why LL should follow WoW's lead on virtual currency, great. But it doesn't solve the problem within the confines of the system that exists.

The implications of your argument - for LL to declare and act as if the L$ has zero value - Would affect the users on a massive scale.

Large sums of Real USD that are tied up in Second Life activities would be lost. This would continue until a Black Market value for the L$ was established. A value that would no longer be remotely stable, I would add.

It would be throwing the baby, the tub, the soap, the washcloth AND the rubber duckie out with the bathwater.


---------------------------
Longer term, the SL economy isn't like WoW's, even if they did as you suggest and insulate the L$ as fictional in name and in treatment.

in WoW people go out do quests, kill monsters, earn money. Its an employment system basically.

in SL theres no way to do that. There is no way to get new money in SL except wait on Stipends.

So they would have to completely redesign the model. Second Life would need to become a Game in entirity and would need a fictional economy, with a fictional employment like WoW's.