If someone cons you out of L$ is that a RL crime?

If I created a bank called "blinko" and then convinced 1000s of people to invest in me by paying dividends for a short while .. similar to a ponzi scheme, and then went and transfered all the L$ to my buds and then vanished .. would that be a RL crime?

i hope it is.

This will not end well.

As you state it, no. SL is based on trust. If you trust someone you will invest with them, if you don't trust them then you won't. It is just like RL money markets. If you trust the system, you will invest, if not, you won't.

A better question to ask is, "Is it enforcable?"

Rubberstamping these things does nothing for enforcement; just "awareness."

L$ is play money so no nobody stole anything but wind

so no its probably not enforceable

i dont think Linden Lab protect idiots

That said, at least one country in Asia (I forget offhand, I think South Korea) has ruled that yes, in fact, stealing virtual property is still property, particularly when it has a signifigant RL cash value.

It's stupid in the first place to 'invest' in something like that

Yeah it's just play money that you can buy and sell for hundreds of US dollars on GOM and similar sites.

If your happy and you know it clap your hands.

on topic: unless it states some whwre that L$ has a RL value, then no.

There is no precident yet....except for the above poster mentioning S. Korea having some laws on the books.

Speaking as a US citizen someday there WILL be a precident, someone WILL sue and then we'll see.

I believe eventually it will definately be a crime.....gonna be tough to prosecute as are a lot of on-line crimes, what w/ jurisdictional issues and such, but it'll happen eventually. Look how fast laws have been implemented to cover cyberspace already. Hell 20 years ago noone had heard of a 'Cybercrime Task Force'.

Yes it would be. Slander is also a RL crime, even when perpetrated via inuendo.

Not actually relevent.

Say I paint / sculpt something IRL. Someone steals it. That painting / sculpture didn't have a RL value per say, but it's still legaly theft.

Yeah, but it's just a number in LL's database.

And people are allowed to run Casinos in SL, which are illegal (except in certain states) in the US.

Why is that OK to be a Casino operator but being a con artist in SL isn't?

'Cause nobody has sued one of the casinos yet, basicly.

In RL someone could talk you into investing in a project that eventually goes under. You lose your money with no recourse. Investing is a risky business. Unless you know what you are doing there is an excellent chance you will lose.

People lose all their investment in the stock market. It's all very legal. The only way it would be a crime is if it was proven the intent of the scheme was to steal the money.

The congress bailed out many banks in the 90's. Tax money paid back those investors who were duped, because we insure each account up to $100k. Most of that money was "loaned" to the bankers friends for favors(you scratch my back syndrome). The bankers who "loaned" a lot to politicians had fewer problems when their bank was bailed out for millions.

Those loans were never paid back, and the people who borrowed the money are free of the debt. That's how the RL World works.

It's who you know, not what you know that matters.

The moral to the story... get insured in some way to protect your investment. Either get insurance or collateral. Of course, you have to trust the one who insures you. lol

Also is it worth your while to pursue it? Even small claims courts... assuming you determine which jurisdiction to pursue it in, expects that you be trying to recoup an amount larger than a few dollars.

That's not correct.

If they perpetrate a fraud, for example by lying about the "project", or omitting important information, then that would be a criminal act and they could be thrown in jail for that. Regardless of whether they are thrown in jail, if the "project" is fradulent or illegal, you can sue them and get your money back. (If you can find them.)

While it is true that you can lose money on investments, it is not true that you never have any recourse. In the event of a fraud, you do have recourse.

Buster

That would be theft, what you have made is your IP and thus has a value.
Numbers in a databse 'belonging' to LL has next to zero (if ay) value.
Remember you only own what you make, not what the lindens do

Its an interesting distinction.

On the other hand, the (one) case to date I know of worldwide went the other way.

Would be interesting to see what happens over here. It's gonna get tried one of these days.

I'm not going to get into whether or not the investment plans which exist in SL now are legitimate or not, as I only have a healthy dose of distrust and no evidence either way. However, if an investment scheme relies on the recruitment of more members in order to generate revenue for existing customers, it is absolutely, undeniably doomed to failure and people are going to get burned. That's why these schemes, which blaze has correctly identified as Ponzi schemes, are illegal.

If such a confidence scheme were being perpetrated, it would most certainly be a crime. Though LL may claim that the L$ has no actual value, the market has ascribed a value to the L$ which means that if someone were to steal or scam you out of your L$, you may be able to seek criminal recourse and you would certainly be able to pursue it in civil court. Even more interestingly, wire fraud committed over state lines is (if I recall correctly) a Federal crime. Thus, thieves and con artists risk drawing the ire of Pa Gubmint if the scam is of a sufficient magnitude. A couple of L$ is meaningless. If someone absconded with a couple million L$, it may be sufficient for them to step in. Really, it's not whether it's illegal but whether or not the People would actually prosecute. The same is true of casinos.

I think there are two completely different issues: property rights, and contract law.

Determining property rights to database content is a very sticky issue, and one that is very difficult for courts to enforce. Particularly in the case where the TOS explictely say that "all data is temporary".

Contract law is another matter. If you agree to do or provide something in exchange for something of value, that's a contract. I think that $L rise to the RL definition of "value" because of the GOM and other exchanges. I think that agreements between residents are, technically, RL enforceable contracts. Of course, proving that such an agreement exists would be very difficult.

Buster

On a related subject, according to U.S. tax law, american citizens that make virtual money must pay taxes on that money. Regardless if they sell it or not. With that in consideration, I don't see how this could be judged any differently than any other fraud. The biggest problem would be getting Timbuktu to accept your ruling.

Actually this is really moot point now. The vast majority of human wealth (trillions of dollars) is currently stored as numbers in some computer database, be it in your bank account or treasury bills or stock market. You can steal millions of dollars in the Internet without ever touching a dollar bill, it's all bunch of numbers somewhere.

The same is true for a lot of the media like music, movies and written text. If you were to steal thousand songs from Apple iTunes web site, you can't argue that these were simply numbers in Apple's database.

Now what I am really curious is, what happens if Linden labs tomorrow suddently shuts down Second life or deletes your account and 1 million L$ you have in your account without any notice. Do we have any protection for this? In fact without such guaranteed protection (such as US $ been backed by US government) a true economy can not flourish.