Class action suit: SL Businesses VS Griefer

Due to all the current greifing recently many businesses have lost potential income.

Does anyone know if there is a possible case for a class action suit against griefers for loss of potential income because of down time?

Anyone interested in joining a class action suit?

Are there are any lawyers out there that can comment on this?

We need to show these griefers that we are serious about stopping them from disrupting the community. LL has mentioned working with the FBI on cases against griefers but that all seems like a lot of talk. So far we have heard nothing more about this and the griefing continues.

The L$ is not real money. Therefore suing someone is basically impossible, since you can't prove financial damages.

Get Linden Lab to redifine the L$ as real money, and you have a case.

Take the latest griefer to court and get a judge to rule that the L$ is real money, and yo could also have a case.

I would think there would be a case, just as anyone messing with a commodity such as coffee or inflating junk bonds. its a serious trade violation. the bigger concern is whether or not you want the government, that being the US government, legislating rules and laws. Count me out. Ill take the 100 dollar hit haha

ll won't redefine L$ as a currency, it would open them to too many problems,

stop dreaming with your lawsuit bullshit

Go troll elsewhere Kyrah. I don't need your bullshit remarks just to increase your post count. I am trying to talk about the possibility of a class action lawsuit and the pros and cons of it. It is not bullshit or a dream.

It is true that the $L is not defined as real money, but you have the option of trading to convert it to real money. Most who are doing a business here are doing it to convert their L$ into real money and to some this is their only source of income. I know a few who are making a rl living only on their SL business. To have a disruption in their sales affects real world incomes.

If we think about real world potential loss here (and not about the L$ as being real money) is this a possible case?

Jesus Christ everytime SL goes down you have people complain about "oh my God, I'm going to lose potenail profits cuase of the downtime." How pathetic is that? I mean come on how much do you really have to make in Lin get a decent return in real money. Man how much is it really worth it to get worked up over pocket change. Now even more rediculus is the thought of suing for these potenial lose of fake money. God don't take this so seriously, remeber Second Life is JUST A GAME!

You may think of it as a game, Halo, Unreal Tournament and such I consider games. And I would not consider thousands of dollars each month transfer on the exchange pocket change. Infact, LL alone pulled out over $70,000 dollars last month, Thats a serious amount.

The other thing is that everytime SL goes down we are prevented from enjoying what we pay for. Some here have lots of money they pay each month on tier and to have a disruption is very serious to them, myself included. No it is not a game in my opinion.

If real damages can be established then legal action should be possible. It's clear there are people who make real money in SL and could have very real damage claims. The problem is not the validity of the damage and value, which seem very easy to establish, it is finding those responsible. If they are identified they will have much more legal trouble with LL. If LL finds them and takes action I'm sure others will have the option available to them.

Pocket change? rofl. Wow, pocket change never felt so good!

This talk is all very well and good, and supposing that you find some basis to sue a griefer under American law, how much will that help you if it is some seventeen year old from the UK who has lied about his/her age and owns nothing, lives with their parents and logs in from an internet cafe (assuming they can be found)?

it's not a matter of profit really, it's a matter that we pay to have our space our land our store whatever it be.....we pay! got that? and yes we shall complain....why? because we can, we pay to play the game and build what we want let us rant how we please since we can't get our money worth in game that once again i will say "we pay to play" for crying out loud

While it would be interesting to see how such a prosecution case might proceed, the first hurdle would be proving that the plaintiffs have indeed suffered genuine financial loss. That would certainly change LL's position as regards the currency nature of the L$ and would quite likely have all sorts of repercussions for many players / residents in SL. Will california residents be required to pay state sales tax on their SL purchases? How will that affect residents outside california / US? Will traders and businesses have to pay tax? If so, where would it be levied?

It would seem logical to levy the taxes in the same locale as where the servers are hosted, but that's bound to be contested especially by traders / businesses logging in from outside the US. Example: Does anshe pay US and california state taxes on the profits from her dealings in SL or does she pay tax in Germany where she lives? Or is t3h int4rw3bz a nice little tax-dodge?

At some point of time that bridge will inevitably be crossed. Whether it's with SL or another similar MMO matters little. In the meanwhile the mice play while the cat's away, so to speak.

You can make a living from SL. Lindens are transferable for real money. Some people do make a very good income from it.
Saying "its just a game" is utterly meaningless reductive cynicism. It is like saying Microsoft is "just" a computer company.

Rather "Microsoft is a SOFTWARE company." Let's at least make THAT distinction.

(but if you ask me "Microsoft is the virus" would be more accurate)

And yeah, SL is turning into a "Game" where the greifers are the ones having all the fun. That's right - a GAME. Like hide-and-go-seek, or monkey-in-the-middle, and we're the monkey. HEY!! GIVE ME BACK MY HAT DAMMIT!!

And to stay on topic, I would not support a class action suit. The only winners are the lawyers. If you got anything for your troubles it wouldn't be worth the time to cash the check. And to top it off, your hat would still be hanging in a tree.

what i find pathetic is peoples whining and screaming for a lawsuit each time they get a broken toenail

Indeed, the chances are you'd lose more cash in trying to sue that you'd ever make if you managed to succeed. It's very easy to forget that SL is an international community and as such the laws some of use work under are very different to those that others do due to their locale.

In fact it wouldn't surprise me if, technically at least, a UK resident SHOULD declare the money they make from selling Lindens. I would say from the tax office PoV it's no different to (for instance) selling Cars for cash. Lindens indeed are not real money but making money from selling them I'm sure the Tax office would say it taxable.

hmm with Linden$ at 250 to the dollar, those who make money as escorts, dancers or selling things, even those with big gambling wins, are losing money as we speak. assuming of course, someone has the willpower to hold onto their Linden$ and not keep shopping constantly on SL *lol* but yeah, conceivably if you had a business let's say selling skins and you made $3000L per day, ahh crap i'm lost on a friend's Windows 'puter and can't find the calculator! you do the math *lol* what would a person lose in real dollars?

All those claiming that a lawsuit of the type Raster has mentioned is not possible because $L are not real money, I invite to please read this post, and consider thoughtfully what it says. Think about how business in SL really works in a RL sense. It's not about whether or not Linden dollars are money. In fact, the fact that they're not money actually makes the process of defining profit from an SL business (and any related lawsuits to said profits) that much easier. I'll explain

You see, the definition of what the Linden dollar is or is not is completely irrelevant to an SL business's real world profit, as is the nature of whatever specific business practices are involved in earning them. What is relevant are the real dollars we're able to generate by the service of collecting Linden dollars and then selling them to those who are willing to buy them.

That's what every SL business essentially is, after all, just a collection and distribution service for a certain commodity, which we happen to call Linden dollars. Linden dollars are not money; that's true. What they are, again, is a commodity, one which certain people want to buy and sell. As such, there's a market for them. Because there's a market, people can sell them, and make real money off them. Griefers interfere with that capacity to earn real money, and that's what Raster's mention of lost profits is all about.

It's not directly about lost L$ at all. What it's about is the loss of ability in time to earn real money. The fact that that money is earned through the sale of L$ is just a minor detail, and has nothing really to do with the major concept.

The overlying principle is that SL's being open equals ability for us to earn (it matters not precisely how), and SL's being offline due to griefing equals a loss of that ability. That's it.

For a real world analogy, think about trading any other commodity, say, gold. Gold is not money; it's just something that people are willing to trade money for, just like L$.

If you owned a gold mine, and someone bombed the entrance, preventing you from mining your gold for a day, you obviously could sue them for your lost profits. Technically they didn't take money out of your hands that day, but they did prevent you from doing the activity that earns you money, and that carries legal consequence.

That's the exact same thing that happens when someone shuts down SL. They prevent inworld business owners from doing the activity that makes them money.

SL business owners are exactly like gold miners, except that the resource they mine is not gold; it's Linden dollars. Where the gold miner has his pickax, chisel, dynamite, and ore cart as his collection tools, the L$ miner has Photoshop, the SL building interface, LSL, and land deals. Neither miner nor the SL business owner collects money directly from his daily activities; both simply collect commodities that later get traded for money. In both cases, any deliberate interference with the mining operation by a third party is an actionable offense.

Now your instinct at this point might be to say, "Wait a minute. That analogy doesn't hold up because gold has real value, and Linden dollars don't."

Well, think about what you're saying there. First, why is that you believe gold has real value? Take a step back from your socially instilled preconceptions for a second, and it's pretty apparent that gold nothing more than yellow metal. It just happens to be that that yellow metal is something a lot of people are willing to go to great expense to acquire, so it's generally accepted to be valuable.

That value only goes as far as what people are willing to pay though. It so happens that at this moment in history, enough people happen to want gold badly enough that all kinds of markets have sprung up around it, so much so that its perceived value happens to have widespread implications, but there's nothing inherent or magical about yellow metal in and of itself that makes it valuable. If tomorrow, people somehow stopped wanting gold, it would no longer have value.

So, gold is only valuable because people want it, right? Right.

Well, those properties of value that apply to gold, do they apply to the Linden dollar? Let's see:

1. Do people want gold? Yes.
   
   Do people want Linden dollars? Yes, not as many as want gold perhaps, but still yes.
   
   
   
2. Are people willing to spend money to get gold? Yes.
   
   Are people willing to spend money to get Linden dollars? Yes. Again, not as many people are willing to spend money on L$ as on gold, but the answer is still yes.
   
   
   
3. Do enough people want gold badly enough that formal markets have sprung up for it? Yes.
   
   Do enough people want L$ badly enough that formal markets have sprung up for them? Yes.
   
   
   
4. Does their perceived value of gold have widespread implications? Yes.
   
   Does the perceived value of L$ have widespread implications? Yes. Said implications obviously are not as widespread as those of gold, but they are still very real. Last I checked, over 700,000 people were in SL. That's equivalent to decent size city. Also, many real world businesses are starting to develop a presence in SL. The perceived value of the Linden dollar has profound effects on the experiences of all involved, whether people are directly aware of it or not.
   
   
   
5. Is gold money? No.
   
   Are L$ money? No.
   
   
   
6. Is gold valuable? According to people who want it, yes.
   
   Are L$ valuable? According to people who want them, yes.

Hmm. Linden dollars would seem to have a lot in common with gold. They sure do seem to have value. They're not money, but they're valuable nonetheless.

It's like Monopoly money. Hasbro prints it and sells it. People buy it. In fact, right now on Amazon, you can buy 17,550 Monopoly dollars for $3.95 US. Obviously, Monopoly money is not real money, but clearly it still has value. You better believe that if someone were to shut down Hasbro's operation for a day, they'd sue the pants off the guy.

So why does Linden lab say L$ have no value? Well, actually they don't. They're in the business of selling L$ now (throughSupply Linden on Lindex), and as soon as they slap a price tag on any amount of them, they're declaring value, by definition. Whether it be market value established freely by demand, or an imposed value set by an arbitrary price sticker, the admission of value is certainly there.

What they actually do say is that Linden dollars are not money, because they're not. They say they have no value as currency, because they're not currency. Again, they're simply a commodity. They represent an asset within a specific computer network, and that's it. That asset is not and cannot be money, but it is valuable, and it can be traded for money, which it is.

So, bottom line, if someone deliberately interferes with the activities of those of us who are in the business of collecting Linden dollars and selling them to the public, can we sue them? Damn right we can.

The important question really is whether we should, not whether we can. Personally, I'd love to. I absolutely think we should. At this point in time, I'm not willing to invest the effort to be the one who organizes such a thing though, so I'll say to Raster what I've said to all who have broached this topic in the past. If you want class members for your class action, count me in. I'll even be willing to render some assistance if I can. I can't give it a full time effort, but if you can, great.

Dr, there is no need to redefine $L as 'Real money... Hit the blue button at the top of the screen when in game and there is your correlation to real money. The LindenEx MAKES Linden$ directly transferrable to RL cash, which means any loss of income is REAL, and therefore a class action would be valid.

The class action would not be against the griefers, but against LL themselves. It is their deliberate management decision to permit unrestricted and unverified logins to the grid, a feature which is used by these griefers each and every time. None of the grey goo attacks has been caused by a registered and verified premium account holder. This decision to allow anonymous griefers into the game places blame 100% inside the LL corporate structure.

Yes, I WOULD join a class action, if only to get this ludicrous anonymity issue resolved.

I agree with your assessment of the Linden Dollar. I don't think a class action suit will ever happen though.

Class action suits are started by lawyers, not plaintiffs, usually. A law firm sees a deep pocket make some mistake that might be litigated over, and then seeks out plaintiffs.

There's no deep pocket here. There's probably some 25 year old living in his mother's basement. If he even has a job he probably makes less than 35k a year.

No lawyer in their right mind would bother suing someone like that in a class action suit.

Victoria, you obviously dont know anyone running a serious business in LL if you believe this is pocket change. How much money do you think some of these stores are turning over in a day? Some are in the 6 digit range...yes, per day....without a decimal point. Converted to ANY currency, thats a significant amount of money, in the thousands EVERY day. If you think that even $1000 a day is pocket change, I think maybe you should go buy microsoft cos you got far too much money to be playing with SL.

There's where you and I differ. Did LL open up the doors for the griefers to get in? Absolutely, but they weren't the ones who did the griefing. Put the blame where it belongs, squarely on the ones who did the deed.

If my bank gets robbed, I don't sue the bank unless they were somehow in on it. I sue the people who took my money. If the bank were to change their policies to a point where, I felt my money is no longer safe there, I'd simply take my business elsewhere. No one's forcing me to bank there.

If I thought for a second that LL were somehow behind the attacks, then of course I'd want some compensation from them. That's not the case though. They made a policy decision with which I disagree, sure, but they didn't actively invite the griefers in or directly encourage them or support them in any way.

If LL's policies were to get ridiculous enough, then I'm sure I'd leave, but we're far from anywhere near that point yet. On this issue, they just need to find a better way to verify people's identities. They know it; we know it; everyone knows it. We'll see what they come up with.

In any case, it's nothing to sue them over. You likely couldn't anyway, since the law generally holds service providers harmless from the actions of their users.

Make sure you're directing your anger at the right people, Dissme.

Oh, good to know. I was not familiar with that term. Thanks for that.



Most likely you're right, of course. The case would be more about emotional satisfaction than actual financial compensation. We'd likely never get to collect whatever judgment we might win since the defendant wouldn't be able to pay. Still, it would be well worth it to drag the guy through court if for no other reason than to let him know there are consequences to interfering with thousands of other people, even if we are just nameless, faceless internet people. A judgment and a resulting bankruptcy I'm sure would illustrate the point quite nicely, not to mention send a message to others that it could happen to them.

What we need is a lawyer who's also an SL'er, someone who hates the griefers as much as the rest of us and wants to cause one or more of them some real world grief of their own.