Location: Burning Semi-Truck at the Site of SL’s 4th Birthday Party

The lawyers have discovered Second Life.  After the World’s-Fair-like Birthday party, I’m back to troubles in Lindenland’s magic kingdom.

In the past week, I have read of two court cases:

As reported in the Linden Lab blog, a French court ruled in favor of the company:

Today the Paris court (Tribunal de Grande Instance) dismissed the complaint filed by the French association Familles de France against Linden Lab, holding that the evidence brought by the association was unduly biased and should be thrown out.

Linden Lab is pleased with the result, which confirms that evidence in Internet cases must be gathered in an objective fashion. The case also confirms that French law, and in particular the law of Confidence in the Digital Economy, should be applied to Second Life.

This is heartening to me. Not that I want to be confronted by sex every time I log on, but because Second Life must retain its creative freedom.  Age verification and other measures the Lindens put into their virtual world should address these issues partly. In the end, however, I remain a “cyberlibertarian”: it’s up to parents to know what their children do online.  We cannot legislate morality online or in real life.

While I disagree with the French association that filed this case, I can at least respect its misguided intentions.  Of a much less savory nature is the case filed against Linden Labs by Marc Bragg, an attorney who claims that Linden Lab has withheld money that legally belongs to him.  Here I also tend to side with the Lindens, if they are correct that:

“Bragg – who is a licensed attorney – and his confederates, knowingly and with intent to defraud, without Linden’s permission, obtained, used and altered data and computer software in a deliberate exploit to gain unauthorized access to Linden’s server software in order to manipulate and subvert Linden’s standard system for making so-called “virtual land” available to its users through its land auction system.”

I have complaints with Second Life and how Linden Lab appears to be catering to high-end customers (I mean residents).  That said, my own investement (about $25 annually plus about $20 I have purchased in Liden Dollars this year) is a small stake. If it vanishes tomorrow, I’ll consider the movie over and will have had a good time.

Meanwhile, the parents fret and the sharpers rub their hands together, seeing if they can either protect us from ourselves or, worse still, make a fast buck.

this is soooo tight, i want to something like it to.

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