Should shop owners be liable for group liabilities?

I recently rented a small shop on a themed island with a very nice mall. As I expected, I was asked to join a group in order to set up my store contents in the mall.

Today, only hours after paying my rent for the next two weeks, I was docked a L$1 for group liability. Now the amount is negligible, but I was taken aback that liabilities are being charged to merchant renters. Is this standard practice?

My concern is that I could be liable for more substantial charges if for any reason the island owners don't meet their financial obligations, but truth be told I have no idea whether or not that fear has any basis.

Before I (politely) protest this newly revealed obligation, I'd like some confirmation that my objections are sound. And if they're not, I'd appreciate some explanation for why this isn't a matter for concern.

If necessary, I'll just write off the rent I paid as "lesson learned" and leave the group.

Since there is now a function that allows us to turn off the liability for the rest of the group, yes, it is kind of silly to have your renters charged for the directory listing. (That would be what the charge was for, as it comes out every Tuesday.)

You might chose to politely point out to the group owner that such a function exists. If they say no or get angry, well, that's one business they lost.

I'm mildly annoyed by the charge on basic principle, but it's not worth any special effort if that's ALL I'm liable for.

My concern is whether or not this leaves me open to greater liability of another kind. What is the extent of the liability? Is there a worst case scenario beyond a charge for the directory listing?

There is a fairly long and very recent thread on the same topic here.

In short, these liabilities are charged by Linden Lab, for Place listings. When a parcel is group owned, the bill gets split between the group members who are entitled to receive profits from the land or from group-owned items.

In the days when dwell generated payments to land owners, this arrangement meant that belonging to that same group would likely pay you a profit every week, as the dwell usually exceeded any Places ad costs. With no dwell, you just have the liabilities, plus profits from payments made to group-owned items. (For example, if I clicked on a group-owned tree and chose to pay it L$1000, that L$1000 gets split evenly as a profit to all group members.)

The default behavior when a group is formed is that EVERYONE in the group shares profits and losses from Group-owned land and items. The group owner is likely completely unaware of this. If he sold that group-owned land, you'd all get a piece of the sale price, split evenly across all the group members. A hefty profit, possibly, for each group member, but a huge loss for the parcel's true owner! If he defaults on mainland tier, the group might be assessed a liability to cover tier. I am not sure on that. But again, that liability would be split evenly across all group members.

That's the key piece of confirmation that I was fishing for, in my own incoherent way. I'm fairly familiar with the general mechanism of group liabilities, having read the thread to which you refer, but was still unsure whether applying that specifically to a merchant's group was considered to be standard practice.

I still harbor this vague fear that one day I'm going to log in and find my account has been wiped out because a group owner has defaulted on a payment to LL. You made one almost offhand reference to that possibility in the cited thread, which underscores my heightened concern over this issue. If it was only a parcel listing fee at stake, I would just shrug that off as the miniscule price of doing business in SL.

You have nothing to worry about there. Linden Lab does not accept payment in the form of Lindens for anything that would ever "default", such as monthly premium, tier fees, island fees, or anything like that. They would not go after group members' Linden balances to recover such debt either. The only group liabilities that I am aware of are parcel listing fees. And as far as that goes, even if it's only a buck or two each week, my take is that the owner of the establishment is paid regular rent, and should be responsible for paying the listing fees him/herself, not the tenants.

The larger the group, the less liability you would ever possibly have. That is because it gets spread across all group members.

I haven't confirmed the conjecture I made about tier liability, and I hope Zaphod is right. But from what I read in the Knowlegebase, I do think that the tier for a specific parcel, if group owned, might get split across the rest of the group - but only after the owner's account first was assessed for as much as possible. Personally, given the choice of a decent mall suddenly vanishing for lack of some portion of their tier payment, or the tier getting split across a hundred or more merchants, I'd just as soon pay a few bucks out of pocket to keep the mall open. Assuming it's a mall that is at all profitable for me to have a store in. And a mall merchant's group should only have deeded land for that one mall, not all the land that the mall owner posesses.

There are a LOT of groups that existed before the Group Roles function existed. Every last one of them, if the group owner hasn't manually changed it, would default to all group members sharing liability. And I would guess that very few group owners read the forums or the blog or would have read a thread that warned of that. Many 'legacy' groups are probably still on default settings. So a polite note to the group owner would be wise, stating that you noticed that all group members are getting docked for group liabilities, and that therefore any group PROFITS, including sale of group owned land, would also get split to the whole group, and advising them that it would be wise to revise their group roles permisions so the one for paying group liabilities and receiving group profits was only checked for the owner, or for the owner and group officers. Once they realize the implications, they will thank you.

eh I hope it wasn't my place ? lol beebo if so it was not intentional let me know honestly (err but I think you would tell me) the default setting for groups makes it so you take 1 L and the person may not even be aware and for the longest time until I read it on a forum I could not figure out where the 1L transactions where coming from labelled group. Anyhow I turned mine off or so I thought but that doesn't mean that it magically turned itself on again. Last week I logged in to find myself mysteriously wearing a blue suit I had worked on boxed and put up for sale at christmas time so right now I would not be surprised by anything honestly

eh well I dont think its me ^^

*goes to login wondering what he will be wearing today*

@Ceera

At no time is one resident ever responsible for another resident's tier. Only the person who defaults on their tier or account fees is at risk of collection action by Linden Lab. Your $L balance is perfectly safe, so long as your account is in good standing. That is, unless you happen to be an alt of the person who is in default, then you could be in trouble, even if this particular account is in good order.

It is conceivable that Linden Lab could suspend or terminate a member of the group for defaulting, and that could cause the group to suddenly be without sufficient tier to hold the land they own, as that person's tier contribution would be no more. In this case, Linden Lab would contact the founder or other acting owners of the group, and explain that they either must acquire the necessary tier, or release 'x' amount of land, within 72 hours.

I didn't read through everyone's reply, no time today. I do believe that most group liabilities are for classified advertising. Could be wrong here though.

Classifeds are charged to an individual, since they are created through an avatars profile. The avatar that creates the classified is the only one who can ever pay for it. There is NO WAY a group can ever pay for a classified.

Should a commercial renter pay a portion of the place listing of the area they rent? Sure why not, its advertising for them in a way isn't it? This is of course if the group is only being charged for SAHRED land. For instance on my sim I cover all of the group fees, since some areas are common areas and even my personal store. It wouldn't be fair for others to have tp pay a share of that.

Sorry, I read that here in this forum!!!!!

Nah, I would have asked if I'd seen the charge.

Upon reflection, I have no trouble with paying the parcel listing fee since it does benefit the entire mall shop endeavor. But it's the ambiguity about other possible liabilities that makes me wary, and no one -- on any thread I've read -- seems to have a definitive answer that has set my mind at ease.

My own conjecture is that if the land is group-owned, all group members are held liable for short falls in tier. And I could have sworn I read that fact somewhere, possibly in the Knowledge Base, but I've lost track of the reference. But based on that concern, I did pull out of a recreational group that owned a substantial holding of land. The owner's unfamiliarity with group roles/permissions made me very nervous.

Chances are, however, that the mall land for my shop is not group owned, so I'm only going to be liable for the listing charge. I'll check the group info this evening to confirm.

The knoweledge base certainly isn't entirely clear but here's what I can surmise from reading through it, in regards to group land.

The group itself can only hold land through the tier that is contributed. So the group itself doens't pay tier, it's just using donated tier. The tier itself is paid for by individual residents. So for example if the group tier was all donated by one resident (the group owner) and that one resident doens't pay his tier for the month, LL will come after him for his late payment. If he never does pay, they will cancel his account or take away his tier or whatever it is they do. At that time, the group will no longer have enough tier to cover the group land. LL has stated what they do in this case:


So the worst that can happen is the group land is eventually lost. But individual group members could not be liable for group land tier, unless they have actually donated tier to the group.

usual disclaimers, not a lawyer, etc etc.

-Atashi

I agree. Looking over how tier is actually paid for by groups, it looks like the only liability that could get charged to group members would be for places listings on group-owned parcels. Max one of these per parcel. So it should always be very low, unless the group itself is tiny.