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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."
The guy exploits a bug, gets his account shut out, and is expecting money?
"Without merit" indeed.
In short, dude doesn't have a case. But he does have a great deal of free publicity.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
If you notice the outdoors, slashdot isn't the site for you.
Use an exploit in the real world and they don't shut down any accounts, they shut down your LIFE. You don't have the right to sue for damages or loses while you're in prison either. He should consider himself lucky he isn't being criminally prosecuted for electronic fraud or something like that.
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.
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.
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It takes two to tango, in this case the seller agreed to the selling price. They have a responsibility to refuse transactions that they don't want to accept. Saying that the sale was automated and thus not subjected to sanity checks ought not be a sufficient defense.
Nope. Linden Labs can take the property back, no problem, or at least have the virtual "contract" voided. This is because there was no "meeting of the minds" when the contract was executed. If I, by mistake, offer to pay $1000 for a Billy Joel CD, when really I left out the decimal point and meant to offer $10.00, there is no obligation for me to actually pay that much money for something clearly worth much less.
They go over this in Business Law 101.
In this case, Linden Labs didn't mean to have the land up for sale at all, so no contract to buy it can possibly be valid, even if it was possible to trick Linden's computer systems into thinking it was up for sale. Now, if Linden Labs had taken some affirmative step to place the land up for sale, there might be an argument, since the value of the "land" is so difficult to determine.
If we want to torture the "Home Depot" analogy some more: The guy grabbed $3000 worth of lumber, got a cashier drunk, and then convinced him to ring it all up for $30. That's theft, no matter how you slice it.
SirWired
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice.
In this case, there pretty clearly isn't a contract with offer and acceptance. The offer is made when the land is actually put up for auction *by the seller*.
The case is a clear enough loser (and a good example of the "fool for a client" principle) that the only way that a lawyer *could* take it would be in a "good faith effort to *change* the law."
hawk, esq.