Liability?

Hey,

last week I lost 4500L$ worth of property in the big inventory bug desaster.

Today I got such a heartwarming reply to my support ticket...


verbatim quote:
"Our efforts to recover the items related to this ticket have been unsuccessful, and unfortunately, we have run out of options. It isn't enjoyable to have to deliver this news, and we know it isn't pleasant to receive it. We recognize that an inventory item can be an irreplaceable happy memento, a carefully-chosen expression of personal taste, a gift of significant sentimental value, the trophy from a difficult contest, the fruition of hours' worth of personal design and development work, and more.

We sincerely apologize for the loss you've suffered, will use the data obtained from the incident to best advantage, and will continue to strive toward improvements in both the asset system and other aspects of the Second Life experience as quickly and carefully as human ingenuity, available hardware and tools, and research and development efforts permit. We are thoroughly committed to improving asset reliability within Second Life. Our high-priority goal is to perfect it, and while we may never arrive at 100% reliability, some of the best minds at the Lab are focused on the challenge as their principal, if not their exclusive, task.

For the Inworld Experience Team,

Frontier"


and they dare to close the ticket with this and the status "solution provided"...


As far as I understand it, every time the inventory bug destroys someone's property, it sums up as net earnings for linden labs.

So here's the poll:

Should linden labs be held liable for such loss?

Is database corruption really due to their negligence? Or just an inevitable consequence of their platform growing at such a fast rate? They don't earn money on the Lindex, just facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers, so it's hard to see how they make a net profit from inventory loss. If anything, it loses them business. My ex lost over 4,000 items at the end of last year and hasn't logged in much since January..although other reasons were mixed up in that decision too.

I've lost valuable inventory before too, but if anything that just encouraged me to develop strategies for dealing with it in future. Ie. I make more of my own stuff these days. I only buy mod/copy items. I try to buy from SL Boutique where possible because if any mod/copy items become corrupted, they'll just resend them at any point in the future at no extra charge.

every single l$ has been bought from them initially...

Nope.

not? ok then where do the "extra l$" come from?

As stated above, when you buy Lindens on the Lindex, you don't buy them from LL. You buy them from other sellers. That is also why you can sell Lindens on the Lindex.

As for where Lindens come from in the first place? They are given away. All accounts created before June 6th 2006 get free Lindens on a weekly basis (provided they log-in once a week), they also come free with premium accounts, etc., etc. Are they sold directly by LL? No.

Having said that, Supply Linden exists to keep a lid on L$ value, but the last time he sold Lindens was October 2006 if i recall correctly.

didnt know about the free stipend for anyone "born" before june 6th 06, but the stipend for premiums is not "free", since a premium account is not free.

I think you'll find you are incorrect. LL is in the business of printing L$ and selling it. I assure you that all of the L$ in circulation in SL is NOT from stipends, which are less and less used as time goes on. Very few people I know bother with Premium accounts, because frankly they can purchase the stipend amount of L$ every week from LL directly via the Lindex for less money.

No, all of the L$ in SL were not "given away" by Linden Labs to make up the economy.

Historically, millions of Lindens have entered the system without money being paid for them. Aside from pre 6/6/6 basics, there was also the ratings system and dwell.

Having said that, nobody goes premium so they can get Lindens to recover they lost goods. They would buy Lindens already in circulation via the Lindex. So I reassert my original position: "It's hard to see how LL can make a net profit from inventory loss".

Premium accounts are a payment in cash to Linden Labs for a stipend. Direct sales of L$ to a user of SL for real $. Unless you know of a situation in which premium accounts are free?

Ratings system payout was at best a wash, as it was also a source of income for LL. Dwell was gone long before that, yes? The actual "We're giving money away to these people" systems have all been long gone.

The umpteentrillions of L$ in circulation today were NOT given away as gifts from Linden Labs to it's happy customers. They were, in the main and by far, purchased from Linden Labs. This is a source of revenue for LL. And there is nothing wrong with that, at all.

being able to make real life money like this with no tax forms or any kind of real verification is going to have its drawbacks, it's the wild west baby...

Yes. But they are direct user-to-user sales. Not, user-to-LL sales.

When the ratings system resulted in users being *paid* for positive ratings, they were hardly a source of income for LL.

No. Dwell went long after the ratings system I'm talking about here. Ie. the ratings system that rewarded the rated avatar in $Ls.


Nope. Any avatar born prior to 6/6/6 still gets L$50 per week, just for logging in. No exchange of US dollars required. They absolutely are "giving $Ls away to these people".

No they were not. The vast majority of L$s in circulation today, were not purchased directly from Linden Lab. If you buy L$s today to replace items lost due to inventory corruption, you are not buying them from Linden Lab.

Edit: Regardless of this obfuscation, I once more assert my original point: "It's hard to see how LL can make a net profit from inventory loss".

Because people who lose inventory are more likely to purchase L$ from Linden Labs.

Regardless of your wish to believe that the L$ in the economy are from really old legacy account stipends.

The what, 4 million account signed up SINCE 11/06 have a factor into the economy that demolishes what those old legacy accounts get on a stipden. You betcha. *shakes his head*

Linden Labs makes and sells L$. It's a source of revenue for them. And there's nothing wrong with that.

AGAIN. You *cannot* purchase L$ from Linden Lab. Only from other users.

The majority of those accounts don't even have payment on file, so you're damn right they're eclipsed economically by the $Ls received weekly by accounts registered prior to 6/6/6.

OK then Nick. Do enlighten me. How do you go about buying $Ls from LL? Not from another user. LL. You just lost an item worth L$4,500. You have L$0 in your account, so you're going to buy L$4,500 this instant directly from LL. How do you do that?

by clicking the link labeled buy L$ which sits big and bold on the left hand side of your account page on the sl website?

Which allows you to buy Lindens on the Lindex. A service through which you buy (or sell) Lindens from other users. Ie. Linden Lab links buyers with sellers. You don't actually buy those Lindens from Linden Lab. They simply faciliate the transaction.

so when i buy there, i buy from some joe u. nknown, ok. where did he get the l$?

Here's the fact:

Database corruption is exceedingly rare when the database software itself is appropriate for the application, and is run by people who know what they're doing. And even when it does happen...it NEVER RESULTS IN LOST DATA, EVER, IF THE DATABASE ADMINISTRATORS KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING, PERIOD.

There was a stipend for anyone "born" before that date, but at some point they repealed it, since I haven't gotten anything in some time.

If that was true, the price would fluctuate per 1000 lindens. And it does not, at all, when you press that little "buy more lindens" button inside the client. It's been *precisely* the same for more than a year.

I've already explained this, right around the time I explained that LL only _facilitates_ transactions through the Lindex but you still came back suggesting purchases via the Lindex were purchases FROM LL. Millions upon millions of Lindens in the economy were not paid for. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Linden dollars still enter the system without being paid for on a weekly basis in the form of $50L stipends to free and additional basic accounts registered before 6/6/6.

Why have I got the feeling you'd rather boil your carrots a few more times before listening to this though?
Rubbish. Database corruption happens and data gets lost. The more users, the more chance of it happening, making it exceedingly probable in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game like SL. Repairing databases and recovering data can be very difficult, and often, impossible. Now please calm down and stop shouting.
Then you should query that because my basics registered before that time certainly get 50L a week - provided they login once a week.
LOL. That's simply not true. I've used the Buy Currency dialog many, many times and it doesn't only say "Buy L$ on the LindeX currency exchange" before calculating the current exchange rate (hence the slight delay before the figure updates), but the figure varies throughout the day. Right now it's at 1000 per US$ 4.06 which...quelle surprise, is exactly the rate reported on the Lindex page.

Ha, and it's just dropped to $L1000/US$4.05. Both on Buy Currency dialog AND the Lindex.

Says 4.06 over here, and has for over a year.

You sure do post a lot of bullshit, dontcha.

A word about your extreme misinformation about databases.

In the decade that I worked directly with Sybase and Oracle databases--large ones actually, culminating in over a thousand databases, the smallest of which was 200 gigs, I saw very, very few corruptions. And when they did happen, they were *always* because of underlying hardware failure, since smart people stick databases on raw devices.

Of those corruptions, in ten years, exactly NONE of them ultimately resulted in even a byte of lost data.

So, once again, you're full of crap.

Interesting.

You were wrong about the Lindex. So you chose not to dispute that.
You were wrong about the Stipends. So you chose not to dispute that.
And you are now spouting chapter on verse on Sybase and Oracle, providing no evidence whatsoever beyond the classic: "I worked for/so I know more about you than that".

Rather than insult you with childish words, I'll let people make their own minds up about the projection contained within your final sentence.