Tilia takes over

[Kyrah Abattoir]

I think i've been gradually losing brain cells reading this topic. The level of ignorance is absolutely staggering.

Linden Lab is a company established in the united states, which means they have to abid to US federal law, plus whatever laws the state they are in requires.

If their state requires them to have documentation on hand about anyone they transfer funds to? They have to abid to those laws.

To the people claiming that this or that is illegal in their country, it doesn't matter! If Linden Lab does not follow US tax requirements Linden Lab cannot do business with you!

[Vick Forcella]

23 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

what Vick and Ventura will have to work out for themselves is: How are they going to show their government-issued ID to a company in another country ?. The dutch law doesn't forbid a company from asking a person to show their ID, passport or drivers license. What it says is that the company can't keep a copy of it without the permission of the person who owns the ID

there are 2 different things involved with this, when dealing remotely with a company

all the remote company has to do is ask for a facsimile of the ID to aid them in identifying the person in the real world, the person can either agree or not. If the person agrees and does so then once identity is confirmed to the satisfaction of the company, then the person under the GDPR can require the company to delete their copy of the facsimile

the two things involved are identification of a person, and the subsequent storage and use of that documentation after identification has been established

with a non-remote company, like a hotel for example. the person is asked to produce identification. The person does this by showing the hotelier their passport

a thing that the person has to understand, if they will not show their identification papers then the hotel does not have to take them in as a guest

Good analysis.
LL has to reasonably prove that a person is who they say they are.
I have handed the way to do that for the Dutch, and I assume the same goes for other people in the EU that have an ID.

Name, Address, DOB, Scanned passport number. In doubt they, or higher authorities, can ask the Dutch authorities if it matches. That way they fit within GDPR rules AFAIK.

[Vick Forcella]

4 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

I think i've been gradually losing brain cells reading this topic. The level of ignorance is absolutely staggering.

Linden Lab is a company established in the united states, which means they have to abid to US federal law, plus whatever laws the state they are in requires.

If their state requires them to have documentation on hand about anyone they transfer funds to? They have to abid to those laws.

To the people claiming that this or that is illegal in their country, it doesn't matter! If Linden Lab does not follow US tax requirements Linden Lab cannot do business with you!

If LL doesn't follow the rules of my country then they can not do business with me and the rest of the EU.
It's not that complicated. Many businesses know how to do business. Ask PayPal.

[Ceka Cianci]

3 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

there is no need for them to either.  All that LL has to do is attest to the regulator that they are satisfied that the person they are giving money too  has been correctly identified, and that they LL have a process for determining their attested satisfaction, and that the process conforms with the regulatory requirements

It really doesn't sound much different from what from what U.S. citizens have to do when it comes to their SSN and other documents..

There are some places we have to use them,and other places that can ask for them and we have the option to say no and just go without the service or part of the service..

I know some people that just show their SSN like they are showing off a favorite selfie.. Me,I really don't bother with selfies..hehehe

[Kyrah Abattoir]

4 minutes ago, Vick Forcella said:

If LL doesn't follow the rules of my country then they can not do business with me and the rest of the EU.
It's not that complicated. Many businesses know how to do business. Ask PayPal.

Exactly! Which is why US/Euro laws are typically designed to still allow international transactions to be possible.

Edited July 4, 2019 by Kyrah Abattoir

[Mollymews]

4 minutes ago, Vick Forcella said:

Name, Address, DOB, Scanned passport number. In doubt they, or higher authorities, can ask the Dutch authorities if it matches. That way they fit within GDPR rules AFAIK.

the question then is: How long is a person prepared to wait to cash out while a remote company does this, if ever ?

there is no requirement for the company to validate with a foreign government, information given to the company, from someone as yet unknown to them, who claims to own this information

 

[West Twine]

On 7/1/2019 at 2:40 PM, animats said:

I've been reading the terms for "Tilia". Some notes:

• There's mention of some Tilia "token", as a store of value that doesn't have value. Is this the Linden Dollar? Or is LL getting into the cryptocurrency business, like some other virtual worlds. (That didn't end well.) It looks like they mean Linden Dollars, but it's not clearly specified.
• "Should either you or Tilia elect to resolve the Dispute by way of binding arbitration, the arbitration shall proceed in accordance with the then-current Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association ("AAA"), except that in no event shall the arbitration proceed as a class or representative action."   The fee for a commercial arbitration starts at $925.
• "NO VALUE, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IS GUARANTEED OR WARRANTED WITH RESPECT TO ANY CONTENT, INCLUDING VIRTUAL TOKENS OR STORED VALUE BALANCES." "The Tilia Service is subject to scheduled and unscheduled service interruptions and loss of server data, which you do not own and for which you will not hold us liable."
• "Unless Tilia elects to refund the balance of your Stored Value Account, you shall not be entitled to any compensation or other payment, remedy, recourse or refund upon terminating your Account."
• "If you accumulate more value in your Stored Value Account than you need to pay amounts associated with the use of the Provider’s Platform, Tilia may, in its discretion and subject to its agreement with the relevant Provider, allow you to request a refund from the Stored Value Balance. Subject to your compliance with Tilia’s Terms, you may be permitted to request that Tilia process a credit from your Stored Value Balance, in an amount equal to all or a portion of the available funds associated with your Stored Value Balance, to your PayPal account or other account permitted by Tilia. Tilia, in its sole discretion, will approve or deny your request. "
• "Virtual Tokens may not be purchased or sold outside of any In-Platform Exchange. Any purchase of Virtual Tokens from anywhere other than the In-Platform Exchange is not permitted and is considered a violation of these Terms which may result in suspension or termination of your Account."

These are terrible terms for a financial service. It looks like they can take your assets whenever they want to. What this seems to add up to is that withdrawing money from SL is going to become much harder and much riskier. Anyone getting significant revenue from SL needs to talk to a lawyer. Now.

Everything I have read so far is pretty standard fair among all financially based institutions in the US.  I have seen nothing in their terms of service that is outside of similar terms you already live under with your bank or your credit union or any currency exchange already operating in the US.  If i could make one suggestion to everyone is relax.  There is nothing I see here that is sinister.

[Zeta Vandyke]

It would be so nice if they would open an official Q&A thread for this, so people do not have to repeatedly post the same questions and answers over and over again.

Oh, wait!

[Vick Forcella]

3 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

who claims to own this information

It comes back to the question, how reliable is the given information? That goes for EU citizens and for US citizens. In the end there is only one way, and that is to ask authorities. That comes into action is illegal stuffs is suspected.
All LL has to do, can do, is gather ID information to identify an individual in such a way authorities can work with it. LL isn't the one going after drug gangs, terrorists or tax evaders. The authorities do.

[Mollymews]

14 minutes ago, Vick Forcella said:

 PayPal.

i don't have a PayPal. I do tho have an account with a foreign money transmitter

when I opened the account, they wanted my RL phone number as well as my RL details. Then they called me on my phone in person, and I had to tell them exactly what was on all the documents I had sent them

i think that by the time LL(Tilia) work all the feedback thru, then they will end up with a process that can establish identification, and be compliant in all the different countries

[Vick Forcella]

5 minutes ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

It would be so nice if they would open an official Q&A thread for this, so people do not have to repeatedly post the same questions and answers over and over again.

Oh, wait!

yeah! They removed the privacy related posts for yet unexplained reasons.

[Mollymews]

5 minutes ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

It would be so nice if they would open an official Q&A thread for this, so people do not have to repeatedly post the same questions and answers over and over again.

Oh, wait!

the Q & A is for straight out answers

in here we are into nuances, which is far more interesting to chat about :😺

[Elvina Ewing]

there are many big time creators from NL and DE etc. (Maitreya being one of them) who have apparently already provided their ID scans to LL years ago. If they want to continue doing business in SL (which i assume they did/do) they will have to provide the info LL requires.

[Ventura Magic]

20 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Exactly! Which is why US/Euro laws are typically designed to still allow international transactions to be possible.

I _never_ had to sent a copy of my ID card for that ever. Paypal for example uses a safe procedure instead of this 1990s oldschool-id-card-copy-thing.

34 minutes ago, Vick Forcella said:

LL has to reasonably prove that a person is who they say they are.

Paypal is (not only) providing a flag if the account is verified at them or not. That's more worth than any id-card-copy ever will be.

37 minutes ago, Vick Forcella said:

... and I assume the same goes for other people in the EU that have an ID.

It was allowed here at me from 2017 until 06/2019. Since then scan/photography of id-card is very restricted again. So, no i can't for that case.

oh...

44 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

To the people claiming that this or that is illegal in their country, it doesn't matter! If Linden Lab does not follow US tax requirements Linden Lab cannot do business with you!

ok, genius: why other US companies don't have to do it THAT way then? and why most are accepting Paypal verification status? who's level of ignorance is more staggering?

but i'm out here, i found a good solution / plan B, just in case it's needed.

have fun all.

 

[Vick Forcella]

20 minutes ago, Elvina Ewing said:

already provided their ID scans to LL years ago

Hence LL is already fully subject to GDPR.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

17 minutes ago, Ventura Magic said:

Paypal is (not only) providing a flag if the account is verified at them or not. That's more worth than any id-card-copy ever will be.

So because the paypal account is verified means the SL account sending money to it is? *shakes her head*

19 minutes ago, Ventura Magic said:

why other US companies don't have to do it THAT way then?

How many companies are paying you money that was acquired from other users? SL is a pretty special case where Linden Lab is not so much paying you as it is shifting money between SL users, that's a pretty specific case that raises a lot of alarms in the money laundering department.

21 minutes ago, Ventura Magic said:

who's level of ignorance is more staggering?

Don't shoot the messenger.

24 minutes ago, Ventura Magic said:

i found a good solution / plan B, just in case it's needed

Fraud is never a solution.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Linden Lab is a company established in the united states, which means they have to abid to US federal law, plus whatever laws the state they are in requires.

If their state requires them to have documentation on hand about anyone they transfer funds to? They have to abid to those laws.

To the people claiming that this or that is illegal in their country, it doesn't matter! If Linden Lab does not follow US tax requirements Linden Lab cannot do business with you!

This is commonsense, and correct insofar as it goes, I think. It does, I think, overlook two important things.

The first is that tech companies, and ones much larger and with greater resources than LL, have been, and are, being sued in the EU for not abiding by privacy laws there. I don't think it's enough to say "don't do business with LL if you think this is illegal in your country." The onus actually seems not to be on the user; it's on the company.

That said, I'm reasonably confident that LL will find acceptable and legal workarounds for these problems (although I don't share Theresa's confidence that they already know what they're doing).

The second complication is that LL doesn't want, and probably can't afford, to lose users in EU who feel that they can't agree to the Tilia TOS.

The EU contribution to SL's population and economy is huge and vitally important. Someone has already noted that Maitreya is Dutch, I think. Shrugging your shoulders and saying, "Well, don't sign on then" isn't going to cut it from LL's perspective, or from ours either, because unless a way is found or devised to accommodate EU residents, the SL economy, not to mention its rather more nebulously-defined "culture," is going to take a very big hit indeed, possibly more than it can sustain.

And that, in turn, is why it doesn't matter, in one sense, whether or not LL knows what it's doing. The problem is that they don't look like they know what they are doing right now, and that is inducing a small-scale panic at the moment that, unless this is handled correctly at the time of the rollout, has every potential to become a major one.

2 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

I think i've been gradually losing brain cells reading this topic. The level of ignorance is absolutely staggering.

Yes, I too have been reading these threads and rolling my eyes constantly over the sheer amount of misinformation about the most basic stuff relating to Tilia -- things that LL has already made clear in their FAQs and elsewhere, such as the most important salient fact, that only people cashing out USD to external entities like PayPal need to worry about verification.

But . . . again, it's not good enough to dismiss the people who aren't reading the posts, or are not reading them very competently, because people like that almost certainly represent a pretty sizable chunk of the SL community. Reading anything longer than a FB post with care and critical understanding is a learned skill, and not everyone possesses it. Yes, it's annoying to keep answering the same dumb question over and over and over again. But someone (preferably a Linden employee) needs to be doing precisely that because, again, LL can't afford to lose everyone who refuses to, or is incapable of, dragging themselves through a 17-page thread or a 2000 word TOS couched in legalese.

Edited July 4, 2019 by Scylla Rhiadra
A wanton apostrophe squashed

[Zeta Vandyke]

7 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

But . . . again, it's not good enough to dismiss the people who aren't reading the posts, or are not reading them very competently, because people like that almost certainly represent a pretty sizable chunk of the SL community. Reading anything longer than a FB post with care and critical understanding is a learned skill, and not everyone possesses it. Yes, it's annoying to keep answering the same dumb question over and over and over again. But someone (preferably a Linden employee) needs to be doing precisely that because, again, LL can't afford to lose everyone who refuses to, or is incapable of, dragging themselves through a 17-page thread or a 2000 word TOS couched in legalese.

Well to be honest, since only the ones cashing out real US dollars are the ones that will be asked verification, that takes the majority of SL users out of the equation anyway. And I do assume people crafty enough to setup an SL business and pulling their money from it into their real bank accounts, would be capable enough to decide if they want to use verification or not. And those that can not be bothered to actually read all the terms (like myself probably) can just click agree and go on with the second life like we do with hundreds of agreements in our digital lives.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Vick Forcella said:

Good analysis.
LL has to reasonably prove that a person is who they say they are.
I have handed the way to do that for the Dutch, and I assume the same goes for other people in the EU that have an ID.

Name, Address, DOB, Scanned passport number. In doubt they, or higher authorities, can ask the Dutch authorities if it matches. That way they fit within GDPR rules AFAIK.

This sounds like a very basic difference in philosophy. If Linden Lab was a European company trying to get the equivalent information on a United States citizen, I doubt that they could legally get that sort of information from United States authorities; in fact, the United States central government may not have that sort of information to give out at all.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Ventura Magic said:

ok, genius: why other US companies don't have to do it THAT way then? and why most are accepting Paypal verification status? who's level of ignorance is more staggering?

Maybe because they're not sending out dollars to individuals in amounts that would require them to have that type of information? 

[Ventura Magic]

36 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

So because the paypal account is verified means the SL account sending money to it is? *shakes her head*

No clue, but a lot of opinion, eh? Linden Lab did exactly that since years after verified over Paypal. Same at other companies.

38 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

How many companies are paying you money that was acquired from other users?

Steam, Google and much more - Users are buying games, apps, mods etc., creators made. Well, digital goods.

40 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Fraud is never a solution.

No, no fraud at all. But you're so vain that you can't see other options and assume fraud directly. No comment.

Whatever. As i said, i'm out here. Have fun.

[Zeta Vandyke]

11 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

This sounds like a very basic difference in philosophy. If Linden Lab was a European company trying to get the equivalent information on a United States citizen, I doubt that they could legally get that sort of information from United States authorities; in fact, the United States central government may not have that sort of information to give out at all.

 

From the Dutch authority on GDPR

Een organisatie mag uitsluitend een volledige kopie of scan, dat wil zeggen waarbij alle persoonsgegevens zichtbaar zijn, van iemands identiteitsbewijs maken als de organisatie daartoe wettelijk verplicht is. Dit geldt ook voor het scannen van het identiteitsbewijs waarbij een organisatie persoonsgegevens van iemands identiteitsbewijs ‘inleest’. Een organisatie mag dit alleen doen als zij daartoe wettelijk verplicht is.

Ill translate (well, Google did it):

An organization may only make a complete copy or scan, that is to say where all personal data is visible, of someone's identity document if the organization is legally obliged to do so. This also applies to the scanning of proof of identity where an organization "reads in" personal data from someone's proof of identity. An organization may only do this if it is legally obliged to do so.

So if LL is legally obliged to do so by US law, they are allowed to ask for a fully visible copy of our ID

Also mentioned on the government information site they mention that financial and insurance organisations are commonly allowed to ask for full identification.

And if in any doubts, you can just call either of these two linked above to provide you with the information and they will inform you about it.

Edited July 4, 2019 by Zeta Vandyke

[Ventura Magic]

6 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Maybe because they're not sending out dollars to individuals in amounts that would require them to have that type of information? 

A friend is earning ~700-800 each month. He's verified by his bank and from same country like me.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

13 minutes ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

Well to be honest, since only the ones cashing out real US dollars are the ones that will be asked verification, that takes the majority of SL users out of the equation anyway. And I do assume people crafty enough to setup an SL business and pulling their money from it into their real bank accounts, would be capable enough to decide if they want to use verification or not. And those that can not be bothered to actually read all the terms (like myself probably) can just click agree and go on with the second life like we do with hundreds of agreements in our digital lives.

Yes, absolutely. But that outcome depends upon those whom this does not affect being savvy or sufficiently well-informed that they know that they are not impacted. And I'm seeing an awful lot of people -- including even some reasonably active forum users -- who clearly do not understand this.

And that's why I think it's so important that LL ramp up its communications efforts on this front. And equally why I am sort of flabbergasted that they are going to let this ride until Monday at least. Right now, the faulty information about this -- "LL is going to take your money if you don't use it!" "LL wants everyone to submit their Social Security Number!" -- is slowly disseminating not merely through the forums but, by word of mouth, in-world.

[Vick Forcella]

8 minutes ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

So if LL is legally obliged to do so by US law, they are allowed to ask for a fully visible copy of our ID

Also mentioned on the government information site they mention that financial and insurance organisations are commonly allowed to ask for full identification.

Tilia is not registered as a bank, I checked (see above). They have no business asking and storing this type of information.