SLUniverse Forums

FlipperPA Peregrine

PS - yes, the LL ToS is a joke. But it had nothing to do with this case, really; any company can lawyer up their own "law" and call it a ToS, but as usual, the court tends to take the laws of the United States of America into account over a Terms of Service agreement (unless it involve BushCorps, of course).

Regards,

-Flip

__________________
Peregrine Salon: Flip & Jenn's thang.

william Fish

come to think of it.... LL must of been winning... why else would they have posted a blog about it as if they had victory? I mean they never posted a blog a year ago that said "we are being sued for...." nor did they post a blog that said "judge rules TOS unjust and needs to be changed" as it happend a few months back.

Yup im pretty sure someone in LL's office got all excited and pink about this and just had to let the world know "hey we ARE the good guys!"

william Fish

it had something to do with the court... "May 31 (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that Linden Lab’s terms of service for Second Life residents are not legally binding, according to court papers filed on Wednesday.

The ruling came in the case of Bragg v. Linden Research. Marc Bragg, a lawyer from West Chester, Pa., filed suit in 2006 claiming that Linden unfairly terminated his account, causing the loss of his virtual business venture. Linden filed motions to dismiss the suit and compel Bragg to arbitrate his claim out of court, consistent with Linden’s Terms of Service.

Judge Eduardo Robreno ruled on May 30 that Linden’s Terms of Service constitute a “contract of adhesion”, allowing the suit to proceed."

Cindy Claveau

The actual value may have been appraised at thousands of dollars. But that's not what he paid for it.

I guess you could say buying thousands of meters worth of land at $1L is "below market value". I prefer to think of it as ripping people off.

Marc better hope there are a lot of really clueless newbies out there, because most of the rest of us won't want to deal with him.

william Fish

LOL cindy... MAYBE just maybe that's why LL posted it on the blog... to get marc in hot water with the residents. hmmmm

Jessyanne

Huh, I wonder how many phone calls he got from that phone number on one of the article links

william Fish

lmao... well he is a lawyer so they say. this probably bosted his business (or crashed it).

Aodhan McDunnough

So what happened to the part about him using an exploit to get the land? From what I heard of the original case he bypassed the auction procedure somehow, which means he cheated not only LL but others who wanted to bid for the properties.

I do agree that the TOS is one-sided in a lot of places, but if that's the decision of the judge then just about every MMO TOS needs to be inspected also. Their basic constructions are almost identical.

Ingrid

Bring back the full scoop for us nosey parkers.

Joshua Nightshade

Flip there's little question that Bragg was doing something "wrong." That's not the central issue here. The central issue is that they took ALL his assets. Everything, what he owned "legally" and otherwise. This was not about making the problem go away, or they would have done this forever ago. Certainly not if Bragg was going to get "pwned."

No, if this went to court, LL would lose out either way. If they won, it would demonstrate that their piles and piles of marketing material saying YOUR WORLD, YOUR WORLD, BUY LAND, OWN LAND, IT'S ALL YOUR CONTENT is bunk. It's only yours as long as you don't piss LL off for whatever reason. Which would open the floodgates of litigation for those who feel deceived.

If they lost, it would open the floodgates of litigation for those who have been banned and lost property. I'm looking squarely at W-hat here.

That's why they settled. There would be no reason for them to settle if they were going to win. They settled to prevent this issue from setting a legal precedent that they could not benefit from. Their TOS is completely 100% at odds with the material they preached on their website, to newspapers, to corporate entities. That's why the judge blasted it to bits in refusing their attempt at getting it crushed before settlement.

There's little reason this guy couldn't think he was skirting around the system. And from what I've read I don't even think he said otherwise. His gripe was that LL kept EVERYTHING he owned.

Cindy Claveau

From what I've seen lately, the SL TOS isn't the only one out there that has been called into question as to enforceability. Most of the other MMOs can get away with being high-handed and authoritarian in their terms because there's not much of real value for the customer to sue over. Such isn't the case with Second Life, of course.

I seem to remember the Bragg judge criticizing the TOS a few months ago mostly because it contradicted their PR about "free to join, make a fortune and cash it in". Since then we've seen a new TOS and a little different spin on their branding. Some key ad slogans have been revised or disappeared.

william Fish

yes Marc did exploit the LL's land auction system by bypassing it somehow. That was delt with by LL terminating his account.... which lead to the lawsuit... as LL did it in a way that violated some unjust act or something. Had LL returned marc's money, then took marc's land and terminated his account im pretty sure we wouldnt be talking about this today.

Like the blog said, both parties were wrong.

Joshua Nightshade

World of Warcraft doesn't market themselves out as a sandbox where you create the game and everything in it is owned by you.

EVE Online doesn't tell you that your ship is actually your real property.

In fact, most every game I've ever played is very explicit that the items in-world, including money used in-game, belongs to the game developers and not in any way the property of the player.

If WoW was sitting there saying, "COME TO THE FANTASTIC WORLD OF AZEROTH AND BUY YOUR OWN HOVEL TO SPEND SOME ALONE TIME WITH THAT SEXY ORC WIFE OF YOURS" then I'd agree with you.

But they don't.

LL, on the other hand, has for years (and only recently moved away from) claimed that it's "your world." They don't say "rent server space on our network," they said "BUY LAND! OWN AN ISLAND!"

Which all sounds nice until you look at their TOS and think "hey wait."

william Fish

hey wait!

william Fish

<quote> by I seem to remember the Bragg judge criticizing the TOS a few months ago mostly because it contradicted their PR about "free to join, make a fortune and cash it in". Since then we've seen a new TOS and a little different spin on their branding. Some key ad slogans have been revised or disappeared.</quote>

you did. and somewhere around page 2 i left a post with the link from Reuters about this subject.

Aodhan McDunnough

I was not referring to that aspect since of course that's obviously where they'd be different. What I was referring to was about matters of arbitration and service termination which is where they're all very similar.

Cindy Claveau

I don't know how "wrong" LL was. They froze his in-world assets pending the outcome of the case, which was actually the smart thing to do. Returning his money would have basically rewarded thievery -- which they ultimately did, anyway, but I suspect it was more a matter of "pay him the $3,000 now or spend another $50,000 in litigation".

All this case proves is that justice goes to the most persistent lawyer. Most people with any conscience would have been embarrassed to have their lack of ethics exposed in public like this.

Joshua Nightshade

I'm suspect of that personally. That seems to be massaged from the original accounts. I, ofcourse, can't find record of it anywhere else, but it seems to me that they told him they were keeping his stuff first and then he threatened to sue, not that they took it, he filed suit, and they kept it pending outcome.

william Fish

very very true. If i got caught doing this, i'd go hide myself playing HOME instead.

william Fish

hmmmm just found this

"Linden Lab Chief Financial Office John Zdanowski and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, an early Linden Lab backer, have been added to the list of potential witnesses in a supplementary filing."

this might be why they settled... who knows.
http://secondlife.reuters.com/storie...ragg-v-linden/

ALSO this is from the original article about this case;

"Bragg claims that employees of Linden Research,
Inc., the company who creates, manages and maintains this online world,
allowed the auction to be created, and after Bragg paid US dollars for the
land, terminated Bragg's account, without explanation, without citing any
violation of community policy, and have since refused offer a credit or a
refund. Bragg's calls to customer service and Linden Lab's legal counsel
have gone unanswered."

http://www.prnewswire.com/news/index...4356685&EDATE=

Reading further into this article i think we can safely blame Marc for the gambling ban and VAT.

"Bragg notes that this lawsuit brings to light some of the issues that have
not been addressed in the real world about these popular sites. Because
this Internet game uses real US currency and its in-game currency can be
converted back to US currency, Bragg questions how items like gambling
revenues, income from virtual land sales, and other legal issues
surrounding virtual purchases will be addressed by Linden Lab and other
companies like it who establish and control these gaming web sites."

FlipperPA Peregrine

He didn't give them a chance. He filed suit almost immediately after his account was closed for using the exploit. I'm fairly certain LL would have returned his cash, if they had had the chance before the suit kicked into gear. Once that happens, it is scorched earth.

LL would have lost for a total of a whopping $3,000.00. Way to go spending over $100,000 in attorney's fees, Bragg... this was a publicity stunt from the beginning.

Regards,

-Flip

Joshua Nightshade

Joshua Nightshade

And at any rate, even if he did file suit right away, that still doesn't excuse them keeping his stuff.

Ewan Took

So.. victory for the little man or triumph of scamming scum?

__________________
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

Joshua Nightshade

Well it certainly doesn't do us any good.