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Virtual Land, Real Court, Real Money
Wired is reporting on what may be a first: a real world court appearance over a virtual land claim. From the article: "The attorney, Marc Bragg of West Chester, Pennsylvania, says game developer Linden Lab unilaterally shut down his Second Life account, cutting off his access to a substantial portfolio of real estate and currency in the virtual world. He's demanding $8,000 in restitution. Bragg claims Linden Lab froze his account after a land deal went bad. The attorney said he found a legitimate way to purchase land at prices far below market rates, using an online auction on the Second Life website."
but I'll bet a $ if he wasn't his own lawyer, he wouldn't be able to pursue this, as noone (except maybe the honorable Mr. Thompson from FL) would be willing to represent him over such a 'tawdry' thing.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I'm not a lawyer, but given the VERY real value of these pieces of property he may have a claim. Course he was probably in violation of a EULA or even contract that he agreed to but didn't read, which compromises his standing. The scariest thing to think about would be if these companies could seize accounts that use that new ATM system. They'd have the ability to legally seize real money, kinda like people say Paypal's been doing.
The guy exploits a bug, gets his account shut out, and is expecting money?
"Without merit" indeed.
2 things, there is probably somthing saying if you use an exploit you will get your account deleted and also just the sheer fact that he used such a underhanded way to cheat the online auction system... He deserves his account deleted.
So, my wife just heard about second life last night... and wants to get online playing it. I have started researching it a bit today. Second life is very different than the MMORPGs I have played in the past. Second life encourages you to buy land and buy money, with real currancy. Interestingly enough, they also seem to respect your IP rights, for items you bring into the game. I think that the fact that you can convert real money into virtual assets will put this guy in the winner's circle... assuming the judge will understand any of it. :-)
I think THIS is the reason that the other MMORPGs keep you FROM buying items with real money.
I'm so glad. So very glad my life doesn't amount to caring about virtual land. It's so nice out today.
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
Here's how it worked.
You could find land in-world that was marked for auction but hadn't gone up for auction yet. It had the auction ID on the parcel info.
You could then go to the auction web site and change the GET variable in an auction URL to point to the not-yet-existing auction, which would come up with a minimum bid of $0, rather than the normal $1000.
His case hinges on one you hand typed this crafted URL, it says "Be the first to bid in this auction, bid at least $1"... he claims that this formed a binding offer of sale.
The "exploit" was trivial, but it was obviously not the intent of Linden Lab to sell the land for a minimum bid of $0.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Bragg copied the URL for a legitimate auction, then swapped in the ID number for land not yet up for sale publicly, so there would be no minimum bid and few, if any, competing bidders.
Cute, and clever, but he knew he was taking a risk and should be prepare to deal with the consequences of putting real money down on a dodgy trick.
is that an actual publicly financed court will have to devote resources to this.
That ignores the real issues.
The issue at hand is whether crafting a URL is "hacking" or if the subsequent results of typing a hand crafted URL that the creator didn't intend you to type can form the basis of a binding contract or not.
(BTW- Second life isn't a MMORPG, it's a 3D development platform in the form of an interactive social world)
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
That is part of the issue, but they closed his account, which probably had more in it, than the land. That "virtual property" has actual, real-world worth. I think they should remove the land from his account, an refund his money. But, I am not so sure about out right banning him.
That is one of the bad parts about content creation on SL.
You own the IP rights to everything you create, but LL disclaims any responsibility to preserving your access to it. If their inventory server goes belly up and all the backups are eaten by moths, the TOS says LL isn't liable for anything.
There has been some talk of a system where you could make local backup copies of in world objects, but that's hard to work with the internal DRM that all objects in-world have.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
As has been previously noted his actions probably are against an EULA that he agreed to which certainly has the action to delete his account listed as a possible cosequence.
Course having never read their EULA I could be wrong.
I don't know much about Second Life (still trying to figure out the first one) but if it's already a video game, Linden should be able to put together a little PVP system that lets anyone with a dispute like this take it into the Thunderdome. Two avatars enter, one avatar gets deleted.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
How is this hacking? He merely changed the URL, which is somthing I do every day because I come accross broken links and stuff.
An equivalent real world scenario is that an action house was setting up for an auction in an unmarked building. A person heard that they were setting up for an auction and went there to see if he could get in on the action early. The auctioneer is an idiot, and starts the auction even tho only 1 person is in the room and sells stuff to him for stupid low prices.
This guy was being sneaky, but it looks to me like he did nothing wrong to obtain this land. I think at most they should have taken away the land and refunded him the price, NOT frozen his account and taken all his other money.
What if one of the bank's ATMs was giving out extra money whenever someone used it, and because you realized that and used it over and over again they take ALL your money, not just the money it gave you in error.
fucking other toons.
Sure, they DO respect your IP rights. But you have to abide by the terms of service. He exploited the system and violated those terms. He won't win this one. Same as if he cheated a real auction.
BTW, this is off-topic, but if you wife is even a little squeemish on the porn front, she's going to want to join the teen server. It's porn/bdsm heaven out there in the rest of the world. (I didn't join the teen server, but I hear they are pretty serious about keeping it clean.)
I was also very interested in creating items in game, but just like real life, having a storefront is location, location, location and getting your items in front of people that will buy them isn't all that easy.
In short: Don't invest much money until you are SURE you have a handle on the whole business.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Buying land in a virtual world is like buying land in a third-world country. You just got nationalized, bitch!
The guy exploits a bug, gets his account shut out, and is expecting money?
Oh I can give you plenty of similar examples:
A CEO exploits his stock options, gets fired by the board of directors, and is expecting money?
A Jehovah's witness exploits a hole in your yard's fence to knock on your door, falls off your porch, and is expecting money?
A lady exploits her use of the cup holder, spills a McDonald's hot coffee on her lap, and is expecting money?
A group of former terrorists gets elected into power, still doesn't withdraw claims of the destruction of Israel, and is expecting money?
I could go on, but I think you can see the point. People expect money regardless of their actions.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
With a normal MMORPG like World of Warcraft, there's really no issue with the game company taking things away from you if you accessed something you shouldn't. After all, they explicitly disclaim any real value of any items, and fight to stop any sale of them. You just pay a monthly fee to play the game. Thus there's very little legal standing to say that something you had was worth anything. It's all just game data, no real value.
However here the company has specificly worked to create real value behind it's ingame items. It sells them, and encourages you to resell them. Well that opens them up to liability. If they cut off your account, they are depriving you of access to your investment, one that they themselves claim has value. Thus this guy has a case.
Now before people start screaming "But their TOS says they can!" that doesn't necessiarly matter. In the case of a normal service, it's easy to end it. You stop taking their money, and stop providing them a service. Unless you did it for an illegal reason such as race, there's no recourse. You cannot be forced to provide a service you don't want to.
The problem is here, they've tried to turn it in to a good. They are selling you something of value. Ok, fair enough but with goods, there's the doctrine of first sale, or in more gradeschool terms "No takebacks". If you go to a store, and buy an item, they can't later decide to force you to give it back. Even if they accidentally marked it at a low price, if they made the sale, it's yours now and they can't change their mind.
I knew some shit like this would happen sooner or later with this kind of game. When people give you money for something that you claim to be valuable, you'd better believe they want to have that value. They aren't going to be happy if you suddenly try to take it away from them.
From my understanding, most EULA disagreements that have made it into court have been deemed invalid by the courts. Of course it depends on which court you get your case into...
Here is the wiki article on EULA Enforcability
Just because the EULA clearly states that you violated terms of agreement doesn't supercede any existsing laws on the book. So if they guy can get a Judge (or Jury) in a civil court to agree with him they can literally force Linden to give him the money.
Of course, he's got to prove monetary loss at the fault of Linden and that his loss has a value of $8,000. (Of course many jury's will of course over ride any common sense in the matter.)
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
According to their terms and conditions:
"2.6 Linden Lab may suspend or terminate your account at any time, without refund or obligation to you.
Linden Lab has the right at any time for any reason or no reason to suspend or terminate your Account, terminate this Agreement, and/or refuse any and all current or future use of the Service without notice or liability to you. In the event that Linden Lab suspends or terminates your Account or this Agreement, you understand and agree that you shall receive no refund or exchange for any unused time on a subscription, any license or subscription fees, any content or data associated with your Account, or for anything else. "
Based on this, they can do whatever they want. For that matter, according to this clause:
5.5 You will indemnify Linden lab from claims arising from breach of this Agreement by you, from your use of Second Life, from loss of Content due to your actions, or from alleged infringement by you.
At Linden Lab's request, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Linden Lab, its shareholders, partners, affiliates, directors, officers, subsidiaries, employees, agents, suppliers, licensees, distributors, Content Providers, and other users of the Service, from all damages, liabilities, claims and expenses, including without limitation attorneys' fees and costs, arising from any breach of this Agreement by you, or from your use of the Service. You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Linden Lab, its shareholders, partners, affiliates, directors, officers, subsidiaries, employees, agents, suppliers, licensees, and distributors, from all damages, liabilities, claims and expenses, including without limitation attorneys' fees and costs, arising from: (a) any action or inaction by you in connection with the deletion, alteration, transfer or other loss of Content, status or other data held in connection with your Account, and (b) any claims by third parties that your activity or Content in the Service infringes upon, violates or misappropriates any of their intellectual property or proprietary rights.
He's not even allowed to sue them according to this clause. Furthermore, check out this clause:
4.2 You agree to use Second Life as provided, without unauthorized software or other means of access or use. You will not make unauthorized works from or conduct unauthorized distribution of the Linden Software.
Linden Lab has designed the Service to be experienced only as offered by Linden Lab at the Websites or partner websites. Linden Lab is not responsible for any aspect of the Service that is accessed or experienced using software or other means that are not provided by Linden Lab. You agree not to create or provide any server emulators or other software or other means that provide access to or use of the Service without the express written authorization of Linden Lab. You acknowledge that you do not have the right to create, publish, distribute, create derivative works from or use any software programs, utilities, applications, emulators or tools derived from or created for the Service, except that you may use the Linden Software to the extent expressly permitted by this Agreement.
That means that Linden Labs can argue that He agrees to use Second Life as provided without "other means of access or use". Furthermore, the terms include a code of conduct that states "4.1 You agree to abide by certain rules of conduct, including the Community Standards and other rules prohibiting illegal and other practices that Linden Lab deems harmful." which looking at clause (v):
"take any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information;"
Linden Labs can certainly argue that he took actions to transmit Content (a inappropriate url) to deterimentally interfere with the auction system.
I personally don't see how he has a leg to stand on.
In which the husband gets custody of the mutant half-gerbils and the wife gets possession of all the unworldly assets.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm subscribed to Second Life, and I see this whole issue as being very simple. I tend to have balanced views on most things, and this is no exception.
Bragg clearly perpetrated a simple scam. He knows that Linden Labs never intended to sell $1000 sims for $1, so he obtained the land inappropriately. There can be no denying this. How US law might view this is completely irrelevant to whether it was actually right or wrong, because ethically it was 100% wrong.
But Linden Labs have created a world where customers (not LL) own their personal content, and by implication they have independent lives and livelihoods and businesses etc etc. To cut off Bragg from his possessions, his virtual life, his livelihood and businesses was not only inappropriate, it was totally underhand and almost evil. They unilaterally executed this virtual person (I'm serious), without due process in-world nor any opportunity for defense. How US law might view this is completely irrelevant to whether it was actually right or wrong, because ethically it was 100% wrong. LL's Terms of Service are immaterial to the rights or wrongs of it in-world.
So there you have it. Neither side holds the moral high ground, and they both made mistakes. They should settle halfway and put it down to experience.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Virtual Court would be so much cooler
'Your Honor, I accuse the defendant of being a 1337 h4x0r, on the night of April 10th he pwn3d my b0x3n and then LOL'ed'
'Your Honor, I object on the grounds of O RLY'
Not that I think there is a case but that is because he committed fraud.
At least in europe all those agreements got a line that effectively says, this agreement is binding unless the law says otherwise. It is basically what they hope they can get away with until someone has the balls to take them to court.
Don't believe EULA's.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
heh..it was a hot coffee mod and her kid in the back seat might have seen it.
Analogy: If I managed to convince Amazon's server that all goods in my shopping basket cost only a cent each and then go through the automated checkout you can be sure Amazon wouldn't ship me the stuff (unless manual surveillance takes too long to catch it). Furthermore, because I manipulated the server into doing something it wasn't intended to do I have committed computer trespassing. If the goods had already been sent out I'd be required to return them because I defrauded Amazon. I don't see how this is different.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Perhaps in a perfect world Linden could subtract the possessions and property that he obtained through this bug and still allow him to withdraw his legitimate holdings.
But he knew what he was doing, and he knew he was taking a risk. Anyone who plays any online game knows that account termination is always on the table as an ultimate form of punishment. He accepted the risk and went ahead anyway. If he had legit holdings, he could have liquidated them before starting this scam.
And what Internatial agreements has this Virtual Country Signed. that prevent it from executing its virtual people. ... :)
--meh--
At a guess their TOS and/or EULA claims about not being responsible for continued access are going to last in court about as long as a snowball in hell. Because it can be directly shown that the in game assets have a real world value, and they are acting as a broker for such assets, they are probably about to be introduced to all of the laws pertaining to being an asset broker. This is one of the reasons MMOG's are trying really hard to prevent virtual items from becomming property, it would essentially transform the MMOG companies into banks, and they would get saddled with all of the laws which go with them.
Now, in this particular instance, the guy is probably going to lose (or I damn well hope so). He manipulated a computer system to profit. Yes, the system should have been secured better, still insted of reporting the flaw he exploited it for financial gain. In most states that's called fraud. Just because you discover a security weakness, does not mean you can exploit said weakness. Better yet, by the time the trial is over, he will be on public record admitting that he did this. I expect that this will later be used at his criminal trial to show that he willfully exploted a system weakness to commit fraud. Not a smart choice.
The other thing I see comming out of this is that Second Life is either going to end up shut down or suddenly find that it has to start paying a lot of attention to banking laws. You cannot just setup shop as a company to hold someone's assets, and then expect to be able to disclaim responsibility. I expect that this is giong to make for some very interesting articles on slashdot over the next few years.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I am not an English teacher, but noone is not a word.
I personally don't see how he has a leg to stand on
Without going into the argument about the enforcibility of EULA's in general, this one specifically probably isn't going to last long. Whether the makes of Second Life like it or not they have essentially created a banking situation. All of the in-game items have a real world value, by design. The laws in the US regulate pretty heavily what a bank or financial institution can and can't do. One thing they are not allowed to do is just close an account and keep or discard what is currently contained in the account.
Along the same lines, the guy committed fraud. And he's probably going to end up nailed for it. But the SL makers will probably have to, at least, refund him the value of the assets they were holding for him.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
No an analogy would be you find a page on Amazon not linked form the main page, but accessable none the less that sells you something for cheap. You buy it, they ship it, then they demand it back and additonally demand everything you bought at a normal price back. Nope, sorry, too bad. You sold it, no going back on it. They can determine it's an error beforehand and refuse to sell to you, but they can't accept your money and make a sale, and then decide they didn't like it.
I dunno.
I am no lawyer, and I don't know the nitty-gritty of the
'hacker laws' but I take issue with the characterization
that he used a hack, cheat, exploit or anything else.
He used a Web browser. - Nothing exploitative.
He typed in a URL. - Here is the issue, this is how the
application is designed to work. I won't get into my
theory on how dumb it was to expose URLs to the user,
but I will keep this as reference for my future debates
on this. He didn't "exploit" anything. He used every
single app and tool precisely as it was designed. Now,
I understand the conceptual aspect that he cheated,
and with this I do not disagree. However, I think a
strong arguer (good lawyer) would be able to successfully
argue that he did everything EXACTLY as it was designed.
It is his responsibility to know that the characters he
entered in the address box are invalid? Is there a reasonble
assumption that he did know? Absolutely. However, I have
a hard time calling this an exploit. To me, an exploit
is taking advantage of a bug or flaw. He typed a URL.
Millions of URLs are typed every day and this is how the
browser was designed to work.
Data integrity checking is the responsiblity of the code,
not the user. And, he didn't enter some bizarro million
char string that over ran a buffer granting him access
to some forbidden zone or something crazy like that, he
entered a perfectly valid URL. It is not the user's scope
to verify the URL, it is the apps responsibility to verify
input.
I dunno, I guess I come down to the fact that I don't think
this is nearly as clear-cut as 98% of the people here seem
to believe.
They don't allow Adults onto the Teen server. They have a pretty tough policy on that.
She will be fine enough on the main grid, there are enough 'PG' places for her to visit and interact with where she won't have to deal with the alternative crowd.
Bad example. Are you really familiar with the details of case or just the strawman version popular among those in favor of tort reform? McDonald's sold the woman a beverage that, by their own admission is "not fit for consumption" when handed it to a customer. They sold their coffee far hotter than just about anyone else. They had been repeatedly warned about their coffee and serious burns had happened before. This wasn't a woman dangerously mixing drinking coffee and driving; she was a passenger in the vehicle in question. The woman originally contacted McDonald's and only asked for McDonald's to cover her medical expenses. Only when McDonald's refuse did she turn to a lawsuit. Even then she asked for a relatively small amount of money (on the order of $200,000; a reasonable amount considering she had many thousands of dollars of medical bills and now a lawyer's bills). The rest of the judgement was punitive damages assigned by the jury when they learned that how negligent McDonald's was. This wasn't someone greedily trying to get free money. This was a 79-year-old woman trying to cope with sudden large medical bills because McDonald's had sold her a dangerously hot beverage.
A good summary of the facts of the case.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Just because a tool can be used in a particular fashion, doesn't make that use legal. I do agree that a good lawyer may be able to argue along similar lines to yours to get him off. The problem is that could get expanded out to cover other, less questionable, situations. For example, if someone is on a broadband connection with a Windows 98 machine and file sharing enabled, I can technically connect to their system using standard Windows sharing. If they had made their whole C: drive available, intending it to be accessible on their home network, I could get to anything on the system. Technically, I am only using the tools as they were designed, but I am still using them to access a system I should not be accessing. That's where I see the breakdown in the argument, this area was not supposed to be accessed and the guy had to try to access it.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
And what Internatial agreements has this Virtual Country Signed. that prevent it from executing its virtual people. ... :)
:-) And it's not consistent with the claimed terms of ownership of virtual assets in Second Life either: personal ownership of the assets would be meaningless if your life could be terminated at any time so that you no longer have those assets.
The virtual people have not signed any agreement whatsoever with the virtual country, and thus certainly haven't agreed to being executed on a whim and without possibility of defence. And nor have there been any international agreements signed to grant the country such rights.
You seem to be suggesting that the taking of one party's life by another party might be acceptable by default. I really don't see on what basis that can be justified, under any circumstances. Certainly not by ethics!
I tend to have balanced views on most things, and this is no exception.
Being 'balanced' in saying something banal like "both sides were at fault" doesn't make your assertion correct.
If I create a virtual world and I give you permission use it, and - if you want to - to resell items created in it for real money and make it clear I can take it all away if I feel like it at any time, that's my right and I've done nothing wrong. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere and should not use the software. That is the stance LL take and it's made very clear.
How US law might view this is completely irrelevant to whether it was actually right or wrong, because ethically it was 100% wrong.
No it's not, LL can do this at any time they feel like it and customers are informed before they signup, in fact they are required to indicate they have specifically read and accepted the terms of service before they use the software. You did read Section 2.6 didn't you?
Sycraft-fu,
... they slipped.
Keep on with your opinion about this fiasco. I totally agree so far.
This kind of blurred distinction between commerce/fun was bound to happen. Gold-farmers, Everquest accounts, selling worthless WoW items on eBay, it's all interesting. As low-handed as this person may come across, the developers, the creators, of this situation took on the responsibility. They were revelling in the idea of selling virtual product for cash
IMO, if you're going to build a fortress and whip up products to sell outside of its doors, to the masses, you can't just go running around to the GODS and expect help when a thief finds a backdoor.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
No it's more like you had permission the use the files on that that system and you when into a hidden folder by typing it into address bar.
*nods*
But Linden Labs have created a world where customers (not LL) own their personal content, and by implication they have independent lives and livelihoods and businesses etc etc. To cut off Bragg from his possessions, his virtual life, his livelihood and businesses was not only inappropriate, it was totally underhand and almost evil. They unilaterally executed this virtual person (I'm serious), without due process in-world nor any opportunity for defense.
Nonsense. This guy made an attempt to contravene the system. The license says "if you attempt to contravene the system, you will be cut off." He's a lawyer. He knew perfectly well what that agreement meant when he signed up to it.
There is no point at which someone who falls into proscribed punishments they've already agreed to because of an attempt to defraud other customers can be considered "evil." They're protecting their other customers, plain and simple. If he got a slap on the wrist, he'd just try other scams, and they have a responsibility to display to their customers that the customers are being protected.
Over and over and over again the Linden Labs license goes into how none of the stuff they sell - not the Linden Dollars, not the land, nothing - has any real value. Period. It's in the license. It doesn't matter what people decide it's worth, what they'll pay one another for it, none of it. That's not a real economy, no matter how much it acts like one, and no matter how much people want to pretend that means it is one. There's a very specific meaning to real value. If there was real value, they'd have to protect it. Because there isn't real value, they can't sell it directly. There was a long and interesting talk on exactly this at E3 this year; if you'd like to actually understand how the industry works, you should join us.
There is no real value here, and he agreed to a license that says "if you try to steal from us or the other customers, you're shut off, period." Exactly where do you think Linden has crossed the line? Do you actually believe that a lawyer shouldn't be expected to be bound by a license they agreed to when being punished for an obvious scam?
StoneCypher is Full of BS
No an analogy would be you find a page on Amazon not linked form the main page, but accessable none the less that sells you something for cheap.
If cheap would mean "no price entered yet and left at a default of 1$", yes. However, to the courts it doesn't matter whether the field you changed in the browser's request was normally user accessible or not, if you manipulate your request in a way that makes the server respond in a way not intended by the owner and thereby cause financial damage to the owner (or in this case probably some other user) that's computer trespassing.
To the courts there's no difference between exploiting an URL and exploiting a text input that doesn't escape special characters before sending the text to the SQL. And quite frankly I don't see why there needs to be a distinction, it was clear that this was a faulty server behaviour and he agreed that he'd report such behaviour instead of exploiting it. He didn't and therefore lost his account. Any store that finds you stealing will forbid you to ever set foot into their store again, SL doesn't allow you to set foot on their server again.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
"Executing" a virtual character might sound emotional and all, but it happens every day in all games. E.g., join a CounterStrike game and you'll see more people "executed" per minute than in any dystopian SF setting. Or seeing the UT statistics, it had more kills in a week than the whole WW2, and I dare say it probably topped the whole Star Wars, including destruction of Alderaan by the Death Star over its life span.
So what? I'll go and say someone would have to be utterly clueless -- in fact Jack Thompson kinda clueless -- to really treat "executing" a virtual character the same as if someone executed a real human.
I thought I've heard it all in my brief days as a coder on a MUD. You could hear cheaters, griefers and other fucktards invoking the most idiotic rationalizations as to why they should be allowed to do that. Including
- "freedom of speech" (no, the constitution does not give any such rights other than in relation to the government), or
- "I can't properly role-play my evil concept character if I can't exploit that bug" (then get some imagination and find another concept), or
- "I was only intensively testing the bug (for 3 weeks, 8 hours a day) before I report it"
- "If it was technically possible, then I'm within my rights to do that." (guess we should remove the chat channels and "say" command too, or he's within his rights to verbally assault newbies. Plus, nice psychopathic attitude where caring about the other players doesn't even enter the equation.)
Etc. But going "waah, they executed a virtual character" tops any of those as bullshit goes. In fact, it pegs my bullshit meter. Even if they had given that character a virtual crucifixion, like in some other MMO I was reading about, so fucking what? It's just a bunch of bits, bytes and triangles that was never alive or sentient to start with. It's like getting upset about executing a Barbie doll.
What next, then? Forbid people from cancelling a MMO account too, because that's like executing their virtual characters? Forbid them from deleting older characters to make a new one? (After all, just because they're their own characters doesn't give one any more right to execute them, than it gives a mother to execute her own children, right? That was sarcasm, btw.)
As for legal proceedings and due process, that's a _means_ not an _end_ IRL. The fact is, IRL you're never sure that someone really did it. You found a corpse or a broken lock and built some shoddy deduction saying that "X looks like he'd have motive to do that". But you could be wrong. _That_ is why we have all those legal safeguards, not as a purpose in itself.
And even IRL the keywords are "beyond reasonable doubt". That's the point that all those legal safeguards are supposed to get you to: first prove your accusation beyond reasonable doubt. On the other hand, that's also the point where you can stop. If you've already proven something beyond reasonable doubt, that's it, you can take a break and let justice take its course.
On the other hand, in such a case there are plenty of logs saying he did it, and even he doesn't deny it, so wtf purpose would it serve. You can _know_ he did it. What idiotic purpose would it serve to put up a whole mockery of a justice courth there, when you already have the server logs saying he did it? We already _know_, beyond reasonable doubt, that he did it.
I'd have no need for the whole RL legal circus either if RL had logs proving that the buttler did it, in the dining room, with the poker. Then we could just execute the buttler, and rest assured that we won't be haunted later by discovering that it was someone else and we executed an innocent.
Again, here we already _know_ an innocent wasn't executed.
And again, that all is because IRL we're executing _real_ persons. "Executing" someone's virtual character was never covered by the constitution or whatever. That pixelated avatar never had any rights to start with.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Adults are not permitted on the Teen Grid in Second Life (other than Linden Lab employees, of course).
;)
SL has about the same porn/not-porn ratio as the rest of the intarwebs, I would estimate. Just watch out: us furries are taking the damn place over.
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
That's not a real economy, no matter how much it acts like one, and no matter how much people want to pretend that means it is one. There's a very specific meaning to real value.
And that my friend is where you're utterly mistaken. Because if it were so, then there would be no value in copyright, no value in honour, no value in accomplishment, no value in education, no value in theoretical sciences, and no value in a billion other non-tangible things which the human race has realized have immense or even immeasureable value to it.
You're so blinkered it belies belief. Or you're just a scummy lawyer who believes that the only thing that has value is what's written in the lawbooks. The latter probably, since you're so focussed on the Terms of Service which are of interest only to lawyers and immaterial to this argument.
You will never understand this, but a virtual world is in the making, and virtual values and virtual lives have value within it.
The advice you gave is legal device, not lawful advice. You are an active attorney, and have not referenced a prior contract or Writ by which someone has accepted your offer to hold a tournament for a counterfeit reality and counterfeit currency. Your reservation in this forum, to the conflict in your interests with His, is the titular reservation of "esquire" to your Slashdot person.
Sites for a foreign court deciding matters without assignment of the owner of the Intellectual Property:
The presumed Contractual agreement, often mis-titled as a "license", only confers Images and Private codified Law of Intellectual Property onto an owner; the interaction between that owner and a counterfeit and artificial person inducting of Him is a matter to be remedied by a psychiatrist.
Site:
Nothing for sale, and is rented. Even Slashdot is for rent, and is disputable for anyone reserving their rights to allow Slashdot to retain Intellectual Property (even false Intelect).
Site:
We both know that such craft is constructed on the premise of War; there is not one voluntary transaction in the entire theatre; all the artificial persons involved have pre-arrainged story and script that is devoid of law other than the verry substrate of semiconductor used to present the illusion of reality.
As the title of this post provides, there is no document of title or title itself conferred in a non-existant Bill of Lading; neither is there is an interested system of accounts, neither is their a presentable lien of the origin of said IP to move the IP to a steward with fee simple rights. It's all stuck in a sandbox, commercial speach and transmitting utilities, and for any man-made Court to hear such in such person as the artifice inquired then would evince that Court is artifice itself and I humbly present the signature of Gregory Thomas(tm) as to dba.
Next SLASHDOT dumpster!
without prejudice,
without prejudice
Wow, my mistake. I definitely got bad advice there, then.
So I change my advice to: If your wife has problems with the porn ads that appear when you go to shady sites, don't go to Second Life at all.
I haven't found any way to be reasonably sure the neighborhood you are about to enter will be porn-free. On the web, you can at least avoid sites that have questionable content (free illegal stuff, just sign up for our newsletter, etc!) and only have to worry about misspelled domain names.
If she's not squeemish, there'll be no problem though. She can just turn around walk away, because if you've found a little smut there, the whole rest of the area will be covered in it.
I sound totally negative on it, but that's not really true. There are some truly neat items there. I saw a jet-port with quite a few different models of jets you could buy or fly, and parachute jumps you could rent. There are bazaars with a TONS of a medieval/fantasy costumes and items. Most of them are actually fairly well done. (Enough so that they make the surroundings look like a high school science exhibit.)
I even stopped and made my own butterfly wings. I experimented for a while on making them flap, but that turned out to be too big a hassle.
I did all of this for free. Not a real penny spent.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Would it be any different if he used Telnet and typed his HTTP requests manually? Because Telnet can clearly be used to break into a computer system if you know of a working exploit. If there was a text entry field that could be exploited to insert arbitrary data into a database or the system RAM and he used a browser to exploit it that'd still be hacking.
Shooting someone is proper use of a gun but that's not legal either.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The virtual people have not signed any agreement whatsoever with the virtual country, and thus certainly haven't agreed to being executed on a whim and without possibility of defence. And nor have there been any international agreements signed to grant the country such rights.
By default everything is legal. Laws make stuff illegal. If there was no law against executing someone when the govt doesn't like their face that means the govt can execute people because it doesn't like their face. A country is by default not bound by any external laws (and even if it were, unless the country passed a law making international law enforceable by its own authorities it would take another country to invade it if it violated international laws).
If stuff could be illegal without being made so by the law that would be dangerous because anything could be arbitrarily declared illegal then. Like thinking badly of the govt.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
>SL has about the same porn/not-porn ratio as the rest of the intarwebs,
So, about 1000:1 then?
Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
First off, Whew! That is a long reply! (Not meant as an insult, just a note of respect for the amount of effort you put into it.) I think we do in fact agree on most points.
:-)
Firstly, sorry I used all caps frequently in my post. I am a lazy typist and just use the shift key when I probably should be slapping italics or underline tags around a word or two. I don't use all caps when it is longer than a word or two since that is indeed hard to read. (In this post, I will use plain italics for a direct quote of your most recent post, bold-italics for earlier posts of mine, and underline when I wish to emphasize something in a quote. I'll use italics to emphasize single words or short phrases.) I swear, with my right hand upon my most treasured copy of K&R, ANSI C Edition, that I did not mean to "shout".
And, as you might have expected, my legal background is somewhat limited. It consists of two law classes in college (one in general law, the other in business law), which I took as some of my humanities electives during my engineering degree program at a decent mid-atlantic university. (I did receive an "A" in both and totatally demolished the curve, but admittedly the competition wasn't exactly up to Harvard Law standards.) Those classes were seven years ago, and contract law doesn't come up very often when I am sitting in my cube going blind reading hexidecimal line traces.
First, if we are going to nitpick about who said what, a few corrections:
If you take the time to read what you said, you'll discover that in fact you made no such restraint on who could claim an invalidated sale, allcaps notwithstanding.
If you read the original post I wrote, it's right there (although I didn't use all-caps or any form of emphasis at the time):
there is no obligation for me to actually pay that much money for something clearly[emphasis added] worth much less.
Well, the problem is that you're neglecting issues of sentimentality, collectorship, scarcity, timed availability and so on.
If you read my most recent reply, you will see that I specifically said that: " we will ignore the special case of collector's items, out-of-print albums, etc. " I was trying to present an example of a good with easily determinable open-market value. I am sorry if the Billy Joel CD I purchased last weekend was an unclear example. I suppose matters of clarity are why these sorts of suits even make it to courts in the first place. In my original post, I was dashing off a quick one-paragraph reply, not trying to file a legal brief, so I didn't see any need to emphasize a "clear" error.
The timeline of payment for a contract does not determine whether or not it is valid.
Luckily, I never said that it did.
Actually, you did say that payment for a contract made it final (at least, that is how I read it):
If you offer to pay $1000 for a Billy Joel CD, and enter into a binding contract or exchange currency, that's just final, period.
Given that elsewhere in your latest post you mention that most contracts aren't binding (more on that later), I am interpreting that to say you were saying that once a contract is paid for, it cannot be reversed. (Or, if we want to use the legal term, "no longer subject to recission".) I suspect we are talking past each other here, since I am having trouble figuring out what your WotC example is supposed to be illustrating in regards to the timeline of payment. Could you explain what you are getting at? (This is a sincere request, not any indication that I am anything less then impressed of your discussion of value.)
That said, I wasn't aware Linden had a "BTW, everything we are selling you is worthless" clause in the contract". This is probably a standard term for such contracts, since it also protects them against such things as data loss due to a system crash, but I thought it was clever nonetheless.
What I actually said was
If you hold that attitude, you'll grow a little older every day; opposed to growing up, and having vigilant youth in the law.
There was nothing wrong with my surrounding Sites. Code is not authority; authority is inducted into the code by a body politic. Within context of the counterfeit reality, or "virtual land", then would avail a landing derived without law; hence the different use between Site and a site, Cite from a cite. To buy "virtual land" as advertised, would be to accept a fiction derived of a code (fiction). And same, the corporation that was conferred the code by an Authority, is not politic to move about and Grant from specification that were neither a charter for it to grant and neither an office inherint but by the politic that chartered the corporation. Corporations are to provide no other service, but what it holds in deed on behalf of a party vested with a security interest (usually known as a Secured Party, or Creditor) and for limited liability.
Compare Site (as I intended) with Cite (as you intended); further, when the Law in the united States of America was parallel with the modern American english dictionary at the time, then it is standard to apply English Common Law known and evinced in the private patent "Uniform Commercial Code"; therefore, quote Webster's 1828 Dictionary because it is not private, and good standing in public domain...
Site, n. [L. silus];
Cite, v.t.;
without prejudice
It's also possible to click a box that excludes all places in a Mature region; theoretically, the remaining areas will be PG. Clothing styles can be a little wild, but -really- graphic stuff sticks to mature areas or skyboxes.
Now, if she hates casinos and giant billboards, she might be in a bit more trouble...
(I kid. Second Life is awesome. It's creative potential is truly amazing.)