CasperTech Acquisition Discussion

[Fnordian Link]

On 9/14/2022 at 12:33 PM, Keiko Kiyori said:

Will someone still be able to rent out land without using the casper systym?

I still use my old Hippo rental boxes.    (Never really bothered with the web side of them anyway.)

[Duvel Dakota]

I am using the services of MD Labs at the moment. This move from SL make me frown and I wonder if it's a good idea to swap or at least buy the vendors... How do other not Casper users look at this?

Edited September 17, 2022 by Duvel Dakota

[Sphynx Soleil]

On 9/15/2022 at 10:19 PM, Arielle Popstar said:

I didn't use the same password to register as my LL one. I simply forgot that I had previously registered there and when presented with the request for a password, assumed that due to the purchase, the site now belongs to LL and was looking for my normal S/L login info.

Not trying to cast any shade here, I just want to explain so you know for the future: 

Changes like that are NEVER overnight changes that happen at the flick of a switch.  Never EVER. Doesn't matter whether it's anything to do with SL or with an RL website/system.

It *always* takes time - and testing - to make sure you don't, for example, lock users OUT of a system that they need to get into, to make sure everything is integrated properly, and that access rights are properly granted or restricted.

This is why I'm always so patient with a lot of the grid's issues in  general - SL is, while not unique anymore, still a very uncommon "use case" for a lot of technical things and setups.

[Innula Zenovka]

7 hours ago, Asadora Summers said:

Regarding the US Government, yes if taxes are not paid then fines and or prison can happen. But I just want to remind you that in LL's original release of this announcement is embedded below.

Notice the wording of: '...we have done our best to shield our residents from these taxes as long as possible, but we are no longer able to absorb them.'

It's understandable to question as to why to the above. And also it's understanding as to why the recent reactions to the LL + Caspertech announcement have been so loud on this forum.

It is absurd to have said 'LL cannot just thumb their noses at the US gov.' - clearly they did not.

Either I have misunderstood what you're saying or you're mistaken about something.

LL is responsible for collecting and paying various US sales taxes and, in some other jurisdictions, VAT, on certain transactions with residents and has to provide the various governments with an accounting of the relevant sales.

Whether it collects the monies it forwards directly from the individuals concerned at the point of sale,. or indirectly as an element of its income from all sources, is a matter for LL.

What LL can't do, and hasn't ever done, is "thumb its nose" at the government, say "We're not paying your stinking taxes" and refuse to send them the taxes it owes.

[Qinelenlea Watanabe]

On 9/16/2022 at 6:29 AM, Gordon Nadezda said:

Wasn't CasperTech already taking a percentage of in-world sales? If so, wouldn't it be OK for SecondLife's creator to receive that percentage? 

Caspervend only took a percentage of 5% for their free versions.  If Casper's full versions were purchased then no additional fees were added.

[Qinelenlea Watanabe]

4 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Either I have misunderstood what you're saying or you're mistaken about something.

LL is responsible for collecting and paying various US sales taxes and, in some other jurisdictions, VAT, on certain transactions with residents and has to provide the various governments with an accounting of the relevant sales.

Whether it collects the monies it forwards directly from the individuals concerned at the point of sale,. or indirectly as an element of its income from all sources, is a matter for LL.

What LL can't do, and hasn't ever done, is "thumb its nose" at the government, say "We're not paying your stinking taxes" and refuse to send them the taxes it owes.

Yes, you are missing the fact that "Tillia" handles all the tax issues, fees, etc., and is a separate entity than LL because LL had to outsource on the reason of the time involved in putting too many resources to tallying all of this up.  Also what you are missing is the fees before hitting Tillia, such as the MP fee (10%), cost of exchanging L's to RL cash......THEN it goes to Tillia to tabulate what goes to member's government, fees,  etc before it goes to paypal.  Caspervend did not charge any % fee if the full versions were purchased from Casper's store.  Only a 5% fee was assessed on the free products.

Edited September 17, 2022 by Qinelenlea Watanabe
Correction

[Qinelenlea Watanabe]

First major change I noticed...I no longer receive email notifications on sales.....

[Qinelenlea Watanabe]

23 hours ago, Mikal Brinner said:

I'm a high end seller.  Certainly not 10K per unit but 2K per unit and for me, we do pretty well..for us.  A rate is an income tax.  A fee is a transaction fee.  The transaction  cost of utilizing any vendor service is impacted by the arbirtrary process of setting a price.  You're right about volume and in the end perhaps there is balance but that is not a principled argument.   

If we are talking about transaction costs, those using a service more frequently than others cost more to the owner of the system than those who use the system less frequently.  Those with lower volume, pay the same but yes, less than those with higher transaction volumes.  When rates are applied as a means of LL recouping or paying for expenses, those rates become income taxes calculated on the arbitrary process of a vendor setting a price.

For customers, will added transaction costs increase what you pay.  Maybe.  Unlike RL where commodities and items people need can be priced to include fluctuations in costs, SL has not worked that way very well.  For me, I'll end up eating the cost but then again, I have seen some vendors in SL who are were fairly mercenary with pricing.

Again, my position is that LL should consult with all vendor types (high end price/lower volume and low end price/high volume) and find where there is common ground if LL choose to collect some form of transaction income. Allow vendors and LL to come to terms and find a solution which is fair.  There are other vendor systems and certainly other ways to transact business in and out of world though as a vendor, CV is easier for customers to access and for vendors to place products on the market.

A solution is transaction pricing scales for Premium Plus, Premium and "nonmember" avatars.  LL has already eliminated transaction fees for uploads for Premium Plus as an incentive to pay more. It can be an incentive to increase membership level.

Final point, LL has not opened the door to transaction pricing.  In a year, they may.  I just hope LL has the presence of mind to engage community members (specifically vendors) when discussing pricing.

I'm not going to mince words about "rates and fee's" concerning taxes, fees, etc., simply because that discussion involves two separate entitles... Linden Labs and Tillia.

As for the differences between high versus low volume and lower cost versus higher cost the effect is the same in world and the MP....all of us have to pay the same no matter what the MP and our vendors charge.  Equally, we ALL have to pay for rental fees in sim space (unless a friend offers a free space on their sim) and we all have to pay the LL/Tillia pipers.  Your claim of wanting "fair treatment" really sounds more like wanting special treatment simply because you sell higher priced items.  LL has created an equal playing field based on how much money each member is making.  Besides last time I checked, the more money made in real life equates to higher taxes the government takes.  And last time I checked....corporations and other companies also will voice their having to pay more and want special treatment in tax loopholes etc which only angers the populace because of unfair treatment in taxation.

....or am I wrong in seeing someone feeling more entitled than the rest of the members selling their wares?

[Maitimo]

7 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

What LL can't do, and hasn't ever done, is "thumb its nose" at the government, say "We're not paying your stinking taxes" and refuse to send them the taxes it owes.

Correct. At the time when LL wasn't charging us for VAT or sales taxes, it was still paying them out of its own pocket. Understandably, this generosity cannot last for ever, otherwise SL would simply close down completely due to insufficient funds.

[itoibo]

57 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

Correct. At the time when LL wasn't charging us for VAT or sales taxes, it was still paying them out of its own pocket. Understandably, this generosity cannot last for ever, otherwise SL would simply close down completely due to insufficient funds.

IDK if it is fair to say they were paying it out of their pocket, or that it was generous. All of the money comes from revenues they get from us or investors.

The difference is, they later added this on top of other fees, so basically they raised the prices.

The language is... tricky. Me absorbing the price just means I took it out of what I was charging you. Now I want to charge you the same, and also add that on top of it. If I raise it again, tomorrow, was I being generous today? Maybe, maybe not. There is no way to know, unless your definition of generous means charging us less that we were willing to pay, seeing as how we did in fact pay it, and we would pay more if they charged more, until the pain was too much to bear, and then we would fold and go under.

[itoibo]

2 minutes ago, itoibo said:

IDK if it is fair to say they were paying it out of their pocket, or that it was generous. All of the money comes from revenues they get from us or investors.

The difference is, they later added this on top of other fees, so basically they raised the prices.

The language is... tricky. Me absorbing the price just means I took it out of what I was charging you. Now I want to charge you the same, and also add that on top of it. If I raise it again, tomorrow, was I being generous today? Maybe, maybe not. There is no way to know, unless your definition of generous means charging us less that we were willing to pay, seeing as how we did in fact pay it, and we would pay more if they charged more, until the pain was too much to bear, and then we would fold and go under.

Compared to Sansar, who was and still might be charging up to 70% on all transactions, LL seems relatively "generous", or rather, more affordable.

[DimitriLaFourmi]

Before we had choice to optin CasperTech services (probably to add some cool[citation needed] features to our sale process).

Now we dont.

.

[Norsk Himmel]

7 hours ago, Qinelenlea Watanabe said:

First major change I noticed...I no longer receive email notifications on sales.....

That is nothing to do with CasperVend.

CasperVend does not use email at all.

The email notifications are the object IM if you are offline, and have set up offline -> email forwarding,  which is a setting on your Second Life account page

[rasterscan]

"Second Life will not be with us in the long term. Every day is a gift."

Oooer missus. After 18 years SL is still going strong. Dont know of any other online 'game' that's lasted as long. I demand the game sees me out, and that'll only be a few more years. Carry on.

[Arielle Popstar]

18 hours ago, Sphynx Soleil said:

Not trying to cast any shade here, I just want to explain so you know for the future: 

At the expense of beating a dead horse here but perhaps increasing your and Caspar's knowledge for future, I'll point out that part of the problem was that though I had previously registered for the Caspar site, when I was at the login page, the Chrome Password Manager did not auto fill the saved password for some reason, which is what led me to not realize that I had one for it. After Caspar mentioned I would only have received a notification if I had of registered, I went to my password manager and found the saved username and password for his site but left with the mystery of why it isn't auto filling the password like at every other site I am registered at.

Quote

 

Changes like that are NEVER overnight changes that happen at the flick of a switch.  Never EVER. Doesn't matter whether it's anything to do with SL or with an RL website/system.

It *always* takes time - and testing - to make sure you don't, for example, lock users OUT of a system that they need to get into, to make sure everything is integrated properly, and that access rights are properly granted or restricted.

This is why I'm always so patient with a lot of the grid's issues in  general - SL is, while not unique anymore, still a very uncommon "use case" for a lot of technical things and setups.

 

We musn't be thinking of the same S/L. The one I am referring to almost always does things at the flick of a switch and deals (or not) with the fallout and bug reports after.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

At the expense of beating a dead horse here but perhaps increasing your and Caspar's knowledge for future, I'll point out that part of the problem was that though I had previously registered for the Caspar site, when I was at the login page, the Chrome Password Manager did not auto fill the saved password for some reason, which is what led me to not realize that I had one for it. After Caspar mentioned I would only have received a notification if I had of registered, I went to my password manager and found the saved username and password for his site but left with the mystery of why it isn't auto filling the password like at every other site I am registered at.

So, it was your fault. Got it, had to read all the relevant posts to make sure you weren't trying to blame or accuse Casper or LL for anything with your latest update.

Glad you figured it out.

[Sphynx Soleil]

19 hours ago, Qinelenlea Watanabe said:

First major change I noticed...I no longer receive email notifications on sales.....

Check your email settings on the SL dashboard to see whether you have offline messages of that type set to go to your email.

CasperVend doesn't email the notifications directly, that's based on your dashboard settings.

[Sphynx Soleil]

6 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

...the Chrome Password Manager did not auto fill the saved password for some reason, which is what led me to not realize that I had one for it. After Caspar mentioned I would only have received a notification if I had of registered, I went to my password manager and found the saved username and password for his site but left with the mystery of why it isn't auto filling the password like at every other site I am registered at....

Oh, that's a different wrinkle.

I don't actually SAVE any username/passwords/cookies in my browser at all, so I don't see issues like this - I'm always manually logging in.

(Coincidentally, my process also makes it easy to tell when a phishing site is trying to spoof my login...)

 

6 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

We musn't be thinking of the same S/L. The one I am referring to almost always does things at the flick of a switch and deals (or not) with the fallout and bug reports after.

In general (not just SL), the behind-the-scenes prep work for single-signon methods is not always visible to the public - only when it's announced or the changes go live. You may not KNOW about the prep work, but it's definitely going on before any changes are made.

I've noticed the last few years, the Lab in general HAS made more of an effort to go *more carefully* with changes/updates on the grid - often putting in code to monitor the prep work and see how it runs on test region(s) before rolling it out further. Most of the bugs (not all, but MOST) on the grid are a lot less dramatic and show-stopping than when I started back in 2006.

 

[Sammy Huntsman]

On 9/17/2022 at 1:37 AM, Asadora Summers said:

Regarding the US Government, yes if taxes are not paid then fines and or prison can happen. But I just want to remind you that in LL's original release of this announcement is embedded below.

Notice the wording of: '...we have done our best to shield our residents from these taxes as long as possible, but we are no longer able to absorb them.'

It's understandable to question as to why to the above. And also it's understanding as to why the recent reactions to the LL + Caspertech announcement have been so loud on this forum.

It is absurd to have said 'LL cannot just thumb their noses at the US gov.' - clearly they did not.

 

I mean LL does have to abide by the tax laws, set out by each country. 

[Sammy Huntsman]

@Patch Linden and @Casper Warden will you be able to finally use gift cards on MP? I would love the ability to do that, especially if you are integrating CT with MP.

[Casper Warden]

7 hours ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

@Patch Linden and @Casper Warden will you be able to finally use gift cards on MP? I would love the ability to do that, especially if you are integrating CT with MP.

That's a really cool idea. It's this kind of thing that is really exciting about this move - the possibilities are endless!

[Theresa Tennyson]

On 9/17/2022 at 1:49 PM, Qinelenlea Watanabe said:

Yes, you are missing the fact that "Tillia" handles all the tax issues, fees, etc., and is a separate entity than LL because LL had to outsource on the reason of the time involved in putting too many resources to tallying all of this up.

No it isn't. Technically, it's separate from Second Life but "LL" created and owns both of them and the things that "Tilia" does are exactly the same things that "Second Life" was doing previously.

[Sammy Huntsman]

13 hours ago, Casper Warden said:

That's a really cool idea. It's this kind of thing that is really exciting about this move - the possibilities are endless!

I honestly can't wait, until you can use gift cards and credits on MP. Then to top it off, when and if you add pre-orders. That will make it an amazing sytem. 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

I honestly can't wait, until you can use gift cards and credits on MP. Then to top it off, when and if you add pre-orders. That will make it an amazing sytem. 

Hopefully, the change will greatly reduce the number of merchants who require you to buy their "store credits" for purchase!

[Zidaya Zenovka]

On 9/15/2022 at 6:57 PM, Cate Foulsbane said:

I've tried reading as much as possible but it's overwhelming. Bottom line for me, how does this affect the average shopper, the average NON-business person?

 

Short-term? It doesn't. Business goes on as usual. 

In the long-term there are any number of things that could happen. None of which are really worth us average shoppers worrying about for now. The people who have the most to lose from this in the long-term are vendors who might see any number of negative outcomes due to this sale.

The best thing we consumers can do is continue supporting individuals and businesses we feel deserve our money and hope for the best (while trying not to stress too much about potential worst case scenarios). It's sort of like Amazon buying smaller companies. For the majority of consumers even if one or two multi-billion-dollar deals go south the most you see is fees go up a few dollars here and there. 

Things start affecting us when issues become cumulative. If LL were to make a number of bad deals in rapid succession we might have to worry but Casper's done a pretty good job of running things so unless LL royally ***** things up and fubar their handling of things (which I really doubt they will) this deal should work out the way they're intending it to meaning it will help provide both vendors and consumers with a more secure retail environment.  

Edited September 22, 2022 by Zidaya Zenovka