Linden Lawyers? Linden Police?

They can't.

The TOS says so.

Ohhh, I had heard of this incident. I did not realise it had actually gone to court. ... and actually, having just read the article, it does not say in there that the case has gone to court and that the plaintiff 'successfully sued' SOE.

The wiki page makes no mention of a successful law suit either.

-Ghoti

The TOS is their corporate policy. Of course they can be sued if their policy violates the law. A trial is often where you find out if the policy is deemed to be illegal.

This is exactly the kind of issue that the Law Society of Second Life will be researching.

Earlier this year, at New York Law School, there was a symposium called "State of Play," which included some prominent Internet law people focusing directly on the law that affects and that emerges inside of virtual worlds and Massively Multi Player Games. James Grimmelman remarked in a recent paper that one paper presented there pretty much wrapped up the legal theory on dealing with in-game "crime."

There are developing theories of "virtual property" which is something quite different from "intellectual property" (copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets). There is a lot of controversy among legal scholars, but in China, Taiwan and Korea, the law is developing much faster. In China, in fact, the government is actively promoting protection of "virtual property" (like your interest in a private island and the goodies installed on it), in order to attract MMOG operators to set up shop there and elect China law (instead of California law) in their Terms of Service.

For those interested in a focused examination of these and similar issues of "law and order" as well as "order without law," please consider joining the Law Society, because that is what we are going to be researching and discussing. In the Law Society Group Forum, you'll find a page with a short list of readings on these topics as a starter. If the readings look long, its because the answers are not sound bites.

Of those readings, the one most accessible is probably Ellickson's book "Order Without Law," which is about the ways in which close-knit communities enforce societal norms among themselves without the assistance of a "government" or "police." Ellickson builds on the important early work done by Axelrod in "Evolution of Cooperation."

But you must not miss the article by F. Gregory Lastowka & Dan Hunter, "The Laws of Virtual Worlds," if this is an area of interest for you. There is a link to it in the Law Society Group Forum (look for the entry to that menu below the bottom of the list of Discussion Forums).

What Ellickson and Axelrod and others tell us is that there are built-in societal processes to address these issues without LL action. It will be fascinating to watch them evolve. But they will not evolve everywhere in SL.

Torley is on sound ground when he mentions that the answers are already emerging in closely held private islands and island clusters. Those which have a strong common culture and lifestyle resolve these disputes quietly and also tend to have some very well designed islands. You might not agree with the philosophy or lifestyle choices of some of them, but they do keep the parks tidy.

Some of you will have to choose between some chaos and disorder and moving to a better managed sim, where you may give up some freedom in exchange for order. That's life. You pays your money, you takes your pick.

Well..I want to join that. lol. Law fascinates me.

But ultimately though, 'Virtual" anything is owned by it's parent company, as stated before, neh? So no matter how much money you sheel out RL or Linden-wise, it's still all owned by LindenLabs. Even owning an Island is still just basically 'renting' from LL.

Or..did I miss the boat again?

agreed, there is no other way that i know of that funds could be frozen or a player banned without their assistance.. which makes them liable for such actions; so having arbiters or juries ( I think juries would be prefered to handle the independent issue, but whatever, somthing is better than the wild west nothing of today) would give the community more protection and only allow the lindens to duck more responsibility, seems like win / win to me..

so, say we do agree .. some questions..
how do you get the lindens to agree to that? .. how do we even get them into the conversation?

I am a bit baffled, about how the process works to get something done here.. does it take a forum thread that will have 2, or 3 or 10 pages? is there somewhere in SL one must go? submit a form? petition? .. really how? :/

edit: answered some of my questions by seeing this post: /108/c0/75934/1.html
seems i'm not the only one that is confused

That's actually surprisingly easy, talking to a Linden...Livehelp. I've gone on rants in Livehelp quite a few times and had a Linden answer, allowing me to vent as much as I wanted without condemning, judging, or being harsh. They merely listened, agreed with some points and expalined why, and disagreed with other points and also explained why. You should try it some time, the Lindens are surprisingly easy ( and gratifying ) to talk to. Even if it ultimately goes nowhere, having a Linden actually listen and respond does wonders for one's stress levels, to be sure.

It happened. Remember Paris Parks?

Really interesting it becomes for those who would take the time to research who that person was, how she conducted business, what she did to get banned and why Paris Parks hated Anshe...

Well, my ALTS (and this account, really, for that matter) are completely trustworthy. After all, they have reputations to uphold.

I think, given the ability to code in user friendly trust network functionality (right click you're my friend) I think we should focus more on that and less on laws / contracts / etc.

Second Life needs user reviews. Just like the product reviews on websites. You should be able to look up "Michael Seraph" and find out if he's been dishonest or honest with his business dealings. Maybe a fee for posting your review would help keep people from spamming the thing. Of course, with the whole alt thing, maybe this wouldn't work? Or even better, maybe a resident could come up with a service that does this? A Better Business Bureau of Second Life? You could pay a fee for business info on a resident. Or the SL BBB could charge a fee to businesses to join and display their logo and agree to binding arbitration. If a business reneged on it's agreement, the SL BBB could make that information available to other residents.

In 1985, Neal Workman, a struggling lobsterman who was tired of being stiffed by commercial customers, set up a little business sending a weekly fax to producers in the fresh fish industry, telling them which buyers weren't paying as agreed. He collected a modest fee, but soon *everybody* wanted to be a subscriber ... even the buyers, who wanted to keep track of their competition.

It didn't take long before he'd accumulated a valuable data base, and the buyers were bein careful to stay off the list. He's since expanded and added more lines of information and has become a major online credit information service.

Study the TOS, but if properly done, this business might be duplicated by any member of SL, and the results sold

From the NOAA website:
"SEAFAX
Seafax is recognized as the leading provider of business information for the perishable food industry. Headquartered in Portland, ME with regional offices in New York, Florida, and Washington, Seafax employs over 50 professionals dedicated to delivering accurate and timely information to its 1,100 customers. Neal Workman created Seafax in 1985. Originally known as Debt Management, Inc., Mr. Workman transformed the commercial collection business for Maine lobstermen into a business information utility, which has amassed a detailed and valuable knowledge base on the perishable food industry. In 1997, Seafax offered its business reports online. In less than six months more than 50% of the Seafax customer base was pulling business reports from the online site. Today, all Seafax products and services are available through the Internet at www.seafax.com. Over 80% of Seafax customers utilize this online resource to help make credit decisions, stay up to date on the latest industry news, and prospect for new customers. "

The problem with BBB is that they aren't one size fit all.

Trust networks are better, because that way you can get domain expertise as well.

I'd have to agree with blaze's take on the issue. At this time, there are no enforcement mechanisms beyond whatever LL is willing to do based on their own judgement, likely NOT based on community opinion or experience.

I can think of several different examples. Trust networks sounds like the most appealing to me because a built in reputation or buyer/seller rating system seems to work fairly well for sites like ebay or what have you. A person doesn't get a high rating on ebay for being a cheat and if you find a seller with thousands of positive ratings from individual buyers, then you have some idea of whether or not the seller has come through in the past (which of course does not guarantee future performance, but still).

Another permutation of a trust network would be something like a Consumer Reports organization that gathered information about sellers and products and published their findings and ratings and/or certified sellers who meet established criteria (refunds for faulty products, for example).

Yet another example is voluntary associations of reputable business owners who have a vested interest in being seen as honest and trustworthy. I certainly check to make sure any contractor who works on my house is registered with the local Chamber of Commerce, fully bonded and insured, etc. before I let them work on my house, and that only works as a measure of reputation because I know the local Chamber of Commerce investigates claims of fraud and ejects those businesses who do not meet their standards.

Surely this has all been discussed before, I know none of these are novel ideas. I'm just surprised to have not found anything similar in SL already.

I can just see the logical outcome of this. decision to plaintiff... judgement(s) awarded... LL files chapter 11 protection... receivership... Lindens shed in efforts to meet payroll... physical assets sold for pennies on the dollar... last LL employee standing turns out the lights in the sim hosting datacenter... voila, all SL issues resolved forever.

Be careful what you wish for.

this is what makes me angry:

the TOS says "you don't own anything"

but the instant Linden:

1. takes real US money for land in SL
2. Allows you to buy and sell Lindens through their portal (whether they supply the Lindens or not)
3. ADVERTISES the fact that people can use Sl to make money

they have undermined the concept that "property in Sl has no value".

What they need to do is get with the fact that it DOES INDEED have value and establish a "buy out" process:

1. If a user is banned, the user's L$ go on Lindex at the current selling rate.
2. Their property goes to public auction.
3. Items they have for sale are posted for auction with mod/copy/transfer rights. - if the owner wishes to selll them. The auction would be for the IP rights to those items.
4. Any items not sold at auction would be backed up somehow and transferred to the user. This data should be in some format that is easily readable..XML or plain text.


The proceeds would go to the owner of the L$ and property, minus a certain percentage as a handling fee.

To make it fair, offer this service to anyone wanting to cash out of SL.

anything else WILL eventually get LL sued... and probably successfully. TOS or not, it's pretty obvious that money spent in SL has ramifications in the real world and not acknowledging that situation is harmful to LL's long term survival.