Wanted: Your Questions for the SL Town Hall with Philip Linden

In an attempt to better organize the Linden Town Hall format, we're now taking a group of questions before hand here in the forums, for those who may not be able to attend the in-world events.

On Tuesday August 30th from 3:30 - 5:00 PM PDT/SL-Time, Philip Linden will discuss questions about the Currency Exchange (per this thread).



This thread will be closed tomorrow morning, so please post your questions soon. Please note that it is not always possible for us to answer all questions during the Town Hall

Thanks!

(more info on the Town Hall here )

In the new proposed system, who will the sellers be, the current exchanges or direct end users, and how will payouts be handled?

Is Linden Lab willing to provide us the results of any further discussions with GOM (assuming there are renewed discussions) released as a joint statement from both companies?

My thought is this will be very helpful in eliminating rumors and drama.

What will the requirements to be considered a 'money exchanger' under the new system?

The issue of taking user-created code and innovation and making it integral to Second Life sets a precedent in regards to the now real possibility that Linden Labs will co-opt user-created innovations for the greater good of the virtual community. With that in mind, is there a possibility that Linden Labs might create or support the development of legal patents for user-created content/services/innovations, support for in-world public companies for stock markets, and developer incentives specifically for those creators in Second Life who innovate new things which are eventually integrated into the basic services of Linden Labs?

Only one question per resident? Does that include alts? Does this count as my one question?

lol (just do what I did and make it a long, multi-part question, ie "If only one question is allowed per resident will you be checking if people use their alts to ask more than one question, and if so, how will they be punished and will we know they are punished?"

ok, just one queston... in multiple parts...

a) How does LL intend to counter the fraud threats that GOM has had to soak up?
b) Would the currency exchange be open to trial user accounts?
c) Would the exchange be avaiable on the teen grid?
d) Would the exchange only be avaiable to "new" users, referencing Philips concirn about new users...
e) What commission rate would LL be charging.
f) Would LL charge "sellers" to use the exchange?


Surina Skallagrimson.
Day Trader

Please comment on whether LL is in the process of attempting to develop an in-house currency exchange which directly re-creates, duplicates, or may otherwise be described a "carbon copy" of any existing third-party service.

Is the Attorney General of the State of California aware that LL, by endorsing within the SL application, has given actual monetary Value of the currency being traded (ie creating it's own currency) and how will this effect things like labor laws for payments, sales taxe collection, legal issues pertaining to gambling, income tax and such.

When the Linden was traded on unaffiliated 3rd party sites, there was no worry about this as LL asserted that nothing in world has real world value. Allowing for and officially sanctioning in-world cashing out or purchasing currency implies that the Linden Dollar indeed has value, which opens up a substantial amount of real world taxation, licensing, and regulation, including but not limited to state tax, federal taxation (requiring LL to collect social security numbers and maintain W2's on all residents cashing out a specified USD amount of Lindens), gambling for real (not fake) money, minimum wage, duties and tariffs, and similar heavily regulated Real World financial obligations.

Turning over ones Social Security to LL does NOT seem to protect the privacy of residents contrary to one of the stated goals of this endeavor, as paying with Paypal only requires 3rd party sites to know an email address.

Will the ratings go back down to the original price 1L per rating such as 1L for appearance and so forth?

What protection will there be for residents' financial data?

By this I mean:

- Will this be "opt-in," or should we be concerned that our data may be used at any time?
- If so, what warnings and "social-engineering" mechanisms will be put in place before a resident "accidentally" buys currency?
- Will "shared accounts" now have to "trust" that other parties will not buy thousands of Lindens on the owner's credit card?




And I second the need for addressing how this affects GOM, IGE, AnsheChung.Com, and other currency traders, because this outlook has a ripple effect on other fields.

I've seen one resident state (to paraphrase) - "The Metaverse concept is a sham. The real goal is to separate you (the residents) from your money." While this is a bit overboard IMO, how do you plan to address this mindset?

I ask this because several residents (myself included) do put in a large time commitment, largely at our own expense. LL draws both marketing power and press coverage from this, nevermind the advancement of the platform.

If we are to continue doing so, we would like to see that our time is well-spent, and not being "used" as a testing ground for ideas that are later taken from us.

In that sense: How do you plan to address the ripple effects this decision will have on the rest of us?

Cheques are stone-age, and the fees for handling them, in any country except the US are insane. Will we still be able to get the USD paid to our PayPal accounts just like we can now with GOM & IGE?

What happens for users like me, where Paypal is not an option...

Paypal does not operate with guatemala.

What can i do to invest in L$?

Please clarify whether LL will be buying $Ls as well as selling them - and the methods that will be used to credit the sellers with their US$.

1) When will you launch this service?
2) And is there any way to make you change your mind?

J

What's the status on the Linux client? Is it even being worked on currently? Vague Icculus screenshots notwithstanding, we've seen nothing substantive.

~Orenj~

I hope to be there with youse guys, will be my first Town Hall in awhile!

As I read it thus far, this new economic gui bug insertion will only enable LL as a middleman. My question is from so far back you always said LL will not be involved in the sell or trade of $L. How do you defend yourself from your own history and how long til you aren't the middle man ?

Your figures indicate that only 10% of residents of actively buying in the last month also used a money change system. Thinking of my own situation: this month I'm one of that 10% I would only be in it for 3 or 4 of the 13+ months I've been in SL - I've not needed to hit the currency exchanges at other times for various reasons. If we assume that other residents who do use it only do so 1 in 4 months for various reasons your 90% of residents as a market suddenly becomes 60%. I also know of several residents who will not ever use such a system for various reasons - mainly they don't want to invest more RL cash in SL for personal reasons or because they are alts and will pump money through one main avatar. This suggests pretty strongly that you won't get 100% of residents using such a market system and that actually 50% or less of the residents might be interested.

So my question is, what actual demand rather than this hypothetical 90% demand are you seeing for this service from residents and is there sufficient demand to be acting in a fashion that the forum reaction tends to quite clearly demonstrate makes a large number of residents uneasy about the ethics of your proposal and it's impact on the ethos of SL?

Having read many of the threads (at both the LL official fora and 3rd party fora) there is nothing so unclear to me as what exactly is being proposed with this "new system". As usual, the simple reply "it's a way to get residents better access to buying/selling L$" hides much more than it reveals.

Thus, I just have a philosophical question:

Will the "ease" with which L$ are going to be bought in-world not make the US$ the de facto currency in Second Life?

As you see, my trouble with all these proposed changes is that the L$ will be basically pointless as a "currency" - it will be just a convenient "temporary" point-based system for micro-payments. Even eBay could have used "eBay dollars" and work in tandem with PayPal (an eBay company) to promote their "new" currency for micropayments, but the truth is, eBay simply didn't went that route.

The way I see this proposal is that in the very near future all content and services in Second Life will simply be paid in US$. No problems with controlling the in-world inflation, no problems with L$ sinks, no problems in "secure transactions" using L$, and bye-bye GOM, IGE, Anshe, or whatever system the residents come up with. Second Life will just become a new marketplace in the real world, offering 3D content for US$.

Is that Linden Lab's ultimate aim?

To emphasize ..

Who will be able to sell L$ via the new system?


Will gambling be against the TOS after this change?

Linden Lab has taken an idea (currency exchange) from a business existing within SL, and is re-creating it in their own vision. Are we likley to see more 'absorption' of resident made ideas in the future?

If SL is to really become the next generation Internet platform we need open working groups that includes both residents and LL employees to develop API's everyone can use. Would Linden Lab consider creating an Engineering Working Group to develop open, secure, and well defined protocols for money exchange?