What happens to income when someone dies?

If someone who is premium is banned from the SL grid due to unpaid tier (because they have died in RL), and they had a region with a store on it selling their creations:

1. At what point (if at all) does the store and its contents get either returned to the resident's inventory, or deleted? Are the rules here different for mainland and private islands, or the same?

2. While banned, but before (1), is that store still available for customers to buy stuff?

3. If the answer to (2) is yes, what happens to that income?

Rock

I can't answer the question, but it is a good one. One that LL should be answering, along with so many others, that they let go to be speculated on by us. If Lindens still do look at these threads as some claim, then shame on them for not piping up in these situations.

If the person left his/her SL account(s) to someone in his/her Will, and the beneficiary contacts LL soon enough, then the beneficiary will get the account and, therefore, all of it. There shouldn't be a problem with the beneficiary contacting LL in time. S/he is very likely to be aware of the SL accounts and it's value, so it's not something that's likely to be looked at months down the road.

That's a big if.

Admittedly, although some family members know that I play, they have no idea of the value of my holdings in Second Life and it would certainly come as a surprise.

Mainland: It gets returned/deleted when the payment method defaults, and Gov. Linden reclaims the land. I believe 30 days after payment default.

Private sim: It gets returned/deleted when the sim owner finally decides they can no longer ignore the fact that theyare not getting paid their rent. This could be many months.

Yep. The vendors countinue to work, and continue to provide merchandise for funds received, unless the vending system driving them somehow fails or gets deleted first (As with a JEVN Networked vendor, if it's server prim gets deleted). I have purchased items as much as 6 months after a merchant vanished from SL.

If the account was perma-banned or deleted, it just goes away. Like the money you pay for texture uploads, it becomes another "sink" on the economy, and ends up in no one's pocket at all.

If the account was only suspended, and if it hasn't been more than, I think, 60 days, they will have lost all their inventory and land, but might still have the L$ balance.

One person I know was away from SL for 18 months, because she went overseas and had no internet access. Her credit card that was on file expired, and so her unattended Premium accounts went delimquent. She lost everything in inventory, and all her L$ balance. The Lab also would not reinstate her accounts until she paid the delenquent Premium dues and tier that had accumulated before her accounts were deleted.

Thanks for that Ceera.

By mainland or Private island I meant to ask if the rules were the same if she owned a mainland sim or owned a private island, not renting from any 3rd party.

Of course, when people buy Lindens to spend in that store LL gets the real US$ in their pocket, which seems strange that LL gets US$1 for every L$250 dress that is sold, even after the resident is banned, and the resident whose goods are being bought gets nothing.

Rock

Wrong. Any "sinks" go into LL's pocket. Classified ads, group fees, etc. are monies LL is pulling from the economy (to maintain L$ stability), hence, the money doesn't go to 'no one' as you state, it goes to LL. Real money was paid initially for those L$ (to LL) if no resident cashes it out, then it's LL's money.

OK. No, there is no difference in LL policy for a privately owned sim or for a single parcel on the mainland. If LL is your direct landlord, they suspend the account as soon as you default on payments due, and they take the land 30 days after default.

But from what I understand, LL does not "cash in" any unclaimed L$ in accounts that get closed out, or from vending systems that have no valid owner, so they don't "get that as cash". There was a discussion a few years back about SL economics, and "Sinks and Sources" regarding the currency flow. The gist of it is, for a stable L$ economy, your sources of new L$ in the economy need to be balanced by similar sinks, or drains on the economy. Otherwise you have rampant inflation.

When LL issues L$ as stipends, that is a "Source". It is essentially "printing money". Yeah, they got paid real money for that Premium account, but they are not required in any way to use up or set aside any hard currency to produce a few million L$ to pay out as stipends.

When you buy or sell L$ on Lindex, that is roughly neutral, since most of the time it is a resident to resident transaction. Sometimes the Lab buys or sells on the exchange to keep the levels stable, but generally, they don't.

When you pay fees in L$, for classified ads, places listings, texture downloads, etc., that is a "Sink", drawing L$ out of circulation. Like when the Treasury Department gathers up old dollar bills and destroys them.

Ideally, sources match sinks exactly, for the value of a currency to remain stable. If you inject a million L$ into the economy each week in stipends, you need to be drawing back out a matching million L$ in classified ad fees, texture upload fees, places listing fees, etc..

None of that has any direct impact on USD transactions, which is why the Lab wants hard currency for Tier, and won't accept L$ as tier. They can rake in millions of real dollars for fees paid in US$, and that doesn't affect the SL economy. If they allowed everyone to pay in L$, they would have to sell those L$ themselves to get their real money, and that would destabalize the SL economy.

Related-ish: Do you think it's sound in a legal-y way for them to disallow LIVING people to transfer accounts to another living person?

If LL thinks the new owner might conduct themselves in a way detrimental to the reputation of previous (still living) account holder, then why not simply demand a name change, but allow transfer of assets?

How would LL know how anyone is going to conduct themselves in the future?

That's why it says they might, not they will..

Trying to think of the reason they don't allow it - probably as simple as they don't make as much money that way.

They do allow it. But it requires writing to them on paper. And both people providing personal identification.

A couple things to consider. I'll admit that there is some missing data to my observations.

Observation one:

A few years ago, someone who was active in a private sim had a store there and sold products from it. When I made a purchase there, she shouted a thank you almost immediately. This leads me to believe that SHE got the cash, directly, and that it did not go into an estate pool. It's my understanding that such disbursements take a day to cycle.

My point--a few months later, she dropped from the game. Profile gone and everything. However, her shop operated for years in her absence. In fact it's only recently been cleaned out.

Observation two

Someone who owned the land on the sim where I make my home, used to gamble for what he described, a serious profit. He dropped out soon after the gambling ban was instituted. I know he was gone, because I wanted his land and tracked his presence carefully. (I did nothing nefarious to make the acquisition however.)

His builds on two parcels existed for a YEAR before they were finally cleared for the auction que.

Maybe the lindens are quicker now about clearing land, but in my experience, they've been slow.

I've also heard about group land that operated for months with no one contributing tier.

This is what I was wondering. If the resident is no longer in the game then just 'who' is selling the stuff?

If I went into that store, with L$0 in my balance, and thought hey, I think I'll buy those cool jeans for L$250, and buy L$250 for 1US$ in order to buy the jeans, then I get the jeans, and LL get 1US$ (and the store and dress owner gets nothing). To my mind LL have sold me those jeans for 1US$. Is that the right way to think of this?

Rock

Supply Linden L$ sales only account for 2-3% of all LindeX sales anymore so it's far more likely that your $1 would have gone to a resident with a L$ sell order rather than LL.

The account who owns the prim/vendor is the one who sold you those jeans. They just don't have anything to show for it.

As far as "where does the money go then" goes: the money went to whoever "owned" (technically you can't own L$ since they belong to LL and all you have is a license to use/trade them with other accounts) the L$ you bought on the LindeX since L$ have no value except at the time they're traded to someone for US$.

(As an aside: thinking of L$ as money really isn't all that accurate. If anything "trading cards" might fit a lot better: the company printing the cards charges you money for them but they have no intrinsic value of their own (nor would the company who sold them to you trade them back for money) but they will have value to other collectors who may pay you money for your "cards" (L$) or you can pay them to buy some of their "cards"

The only thing LL has sold you is 250 L$, it does not matter what you do with the L$ they are yours and nolonger are have any direct relation to the 1 us$ you payed for it.
If you then buy a jeans from a closed account that account sells you the jeans and the 250 L$ go into that account, but becouse there is nolonger a owner of that account all the income that account gets deleted, the result is that the whole sum of L$ in circulation is increased by 1 us$ in value.

All L$ that gets deleted increases the value of the L$ and all L$ that are given out as bonus or stipend decreases the value of the L$.
Other ways the value can decrease is from abandoned land being sold below market value and buying and selling L$ increase the value of the L$ as wel because of the fees being charged.

I didn't press for details but I know a friend didn't have access to a PC for six months and their account wasn't logged during that time (saw it in another group.) How did they have their place self maintaining?

P.S. They are the only owner.

As long as LL can charge their payment method they're not going to care if that person hasn't logged on in 6 months or 4 years.

Is there a way that the L$ income was paying for it? If the account is in the black far enough?

If he/she was regularly logging on the web site and placing L$ sell orders, but otherwise no.

LL won't ever accept L$ as payment for anything (and as a personal guess I'd think their lawyers would want to keep it that way).

They *might* be able to sidestep that by selling off someone's L$ on the LindeX and taking part of the US$ proceeds in which case they didn't technically accept L$ but just US$. But that isn't an option that's currently in place (or at least not mentioned anywhere).

XStreetSL listings?

Are those payable in US$ as an option though?

They accept L$ for several things. Uploading textures, fees for listings, classifieds, group creation, etc.

Rock

Yes, they are.