DRD Facing Unfair TOS Enforcement

[Spooky Shadow]

1 minute ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

@Tommy Linden

Please can you point to the TOS section that prohibts account sharing?
I can't find it.
 

Same. I'm seeing both the TOS and the Wiki saying we can share and up to us to accept the risk which is the legal way to go so it is all very correct for a ToS, legally speaking... what happened to DnD is not correct. 

[Tenaar Feiri]

19 minutes ago, Tommy Linden said:

I hear you guys on the wiki page being out of date. It is on my list now to ensure that it gets reviewed, and we will make any neccessary updates.

I have to voice my protest with LL's TOS enforcement in general. Besides TOS and other policies being out of date, support giving contradicting information, and inconsistent moderation (seriously just search stuff like "NBA" on the marketplace, which is one of the 'forbidden sequences'), the fact is that

1) not only is it near impossible to communicate with the support team (even with the tickets);

2) the support team are, themselves, unable to provide assistance beyond general troubleshooting steps (whether by permission or inability);

and 3) LL's apparent desire to be taken seriously as an economical platform is contradicted by abject refusal to give us the means, let alone permission, to manage economical organisations efficiently.

Creators and storefronts are often legitimate businesses who have employees and structure, and manage their storefronts through a smurf account that represents an entire store (see Meshbody, for example).
For them to be able to operate properly and in accordance with expectations (and, in some countries, labour laws), being able to structure the business in a sustainable manner is critical to the integrity of the business.
You cannot expect to be taken seriously as a platform, if you are unwilling to allow businesses to conduct their business in Second Life.

We are aware of the dangers of account sharing. Let us hoist ourselves on our own petards, if we so must.

Edited June 13 by Tenaar Feiri

[loriloveslore]

Yeah, this smells shady as hell. 

A lot of people share accounts- from business owners to people who do blogging and photography. Hell, on some RP servers it's common for folks to hop into trusted friends accounts for 'group pictures' where the person can't make it due to IRL obligations. 

LL's response and stance on this so far is bullheaded- oddly so. Honestly, it sounds like someone made a mistake and instead of just admitting it- they're doubling down. We can tell. 

[DJ Setzer]

I was first alerted to this post from the BB group a little while ago.  I've taken the time to read the replies and so forth on this topic.  That said, and hoping I didn't miss something, the following:

I too, like some others here have a background in IT security, so sure, I can see the potential pitfalls of sharing an account.  I would agree that an immediate shutter of an MP store would seem to be an extreme immediate response, unless what was reported was so egregious that LL felt they had no other choice but to do so.  Now, keeping in context that this issue seems to revolve largely around the issue of managing a business on the grid, namely the MP.  With that in mind, and clearly being sensitive to the idea that one cannot simply be glued to their desk 24 hours a day (unless your some sort of terrestrial being), why not;

 

1.  If you have content creators working with/for you creating content, have them (by way of cloud storage) share the created content and business owner upload items to the grid and then just create the listings to then;

2.  Assign managers to the MP store who can then add images, descriptions and set pricing and other administrative functions.

 

In this way, business store owner focuses only on uploading the content to the grid and the creation of MP listing while offloading the remainder of the work to staff, thus maintaining all control and security of the account.  Would this not be a better methodology than worrying over the unknown timing of the LL wrath if they should feel a certain way about this type of activity?  This question and thought process is not intended to start a fuss or place blame anywhere.  It is a genuine question to the issue.  I imagine that LL had something of this process in mind with what they have already established.  Sure, I read the part where the TOS outlines that you might be able to petition them for such shared access, but in lieu of that, would the above again...not be a better alternative?

[Feorie Frimon]

1 hour ago, Jaimy Hancroft said:

I have asked them : "

I would like to know the process for obtaining written consent for sharing an avatar for business purposes, as per Section 4.1 of the TOS.

Best regards,"

they answered in short

Unfortunately, as I stated in my previous response, Support is unable to provide this permission you've requested and there is not currently a way to obtain this consent. 

Please note that if we receive notification of this or other accounts being shared/transferred in the future, they may be subject to future action up to, and including, termination.

 

This is terrifying for anyone trying to do any group anything in SL. Content creators, business owners, machinima makers…

The termination without warning is a huge red flag. I’m so sorry you lost all of your marketplace listings - I would have cried.

That was a reckless decision that doesn’t feel very well thought out. 

I stand with you DRD.

I hope they fix this and apologize to you for the $$ you are literally loosing right now because someone went on a weird power trip.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

I was waiting for a Linden to pop on here and defend this by saying "BBUT it's for YOUR protection!" and I wasn't disappointed. The ToS says to do it at our own risk, now we are being told we cant do it in any way shape or form except if you are on the super secret list of merchants that have sacrificed small children to LL to be exempt from the rules. I dont trust anyone that says they are doing something for my own good. 

[Feorie Frimon]

17 minutes ago, loriloveslore said:

Yeah, this smells shady as hell. 

A lot of people share accounts- from business owners to people who do blogging and photography. Hell, on some RP servers it's common for folks to hop into trusted friends accounts for 'group pictures' where the person can't make it due to IRL obligations. 

LL's response and stance on this so far is bullheaded- oddly so. Honestly, it sounds like someone made a mistake and instead of just admitting it- they're doubling down. We can tell. 

Veeeeeeery familiar. 

[Ecko Soulstar]

Showing up to show the support for DRD. Shame on LL for singling out DRD, and being petulant about it . I'd obtain an attorney. You wouldn't be the first, unfortunately.
This exact biased conduct by the Labs, is why they've been in court before.  LL are either arbitrary in, or directly target WHO they enforce against, for whatever reason they can find and maybe try to justify to save face.

LL management feels like a petty elitist FB group more and more these days. It's Gross.
I'm sorry this is happening to you Jaimy. You have my support, because I've never seen you be unfair, or unprofessional. I trust your *ethics*, and desperately wish I could claim the same confidence in LL. I can't tho, even after 15 yrs here. I'm appalled at this action against you!

[SERAFICHESKIY]

I seriously question the priorities of LL and the Marketplace.

The Marketplace has been steadily decreasing in quality, with more and more stores that sell ripped/stolen mesh (that the average user CANNOT flag, because according to the flag options only the copyright holder can. Nothing ever seems to be done about these stores, and new ones keep popping up all the time. There are also stores that, as far as I can tell, sell completely fake items. There is one "store" in particular that sells AOs advertised only with out-of-SL 3D renders, 2D drawn art, or AI generated images, that are usually priced at several thousand lindens, it's very obviously a scam. There are also AOs being sold with stolen animations, that people have PROVEN in the reviews & known about for years - that are still up. Or, how about the rise of stores that sell only AI-generated slop and flood tag(s) with their "unique full perm textures"? Or having your search suddenly bombed with ***** content and whatever else because for some reason that's apparently TOS compliant?

My point is; there's a lot of MP stores that are clearly outright scams or at the very least "bad faith", which the average user can't flag because we don't have the option to. So these stores stay up, and it makes the Marketplace experience increasingly unpleasant. 

Why go after legitimate stores for such a non-issue as sharing an account when there are countless TOS-breaking or shady stores that seem to be immune?

At the very least there should be an option for "business accounts." Even in-world vendor systems such as MD labs allow multiple avatars to be credited/work on the same store/brand and as far as I know that's TOS-compliant... or else these vendors systems would be getting in trouble for it, right?

 

[Feorie Frimon]

@Jaimy Hancroft It sounds like someone reported you when I went back and read their response.

Is that what happened? You randomly received word out of no where? 

[Spooky Shadow]

If you are threatened with termination for playing by the rules and it just takes one mean spirited report to have yourself undone so quickly - that is very frightening for us who use SL and interact with any person with the know-how to submit an abuse report. It is turning avi against avi and giving any avi the ultimate power to effect someones time AND in this case INCOME. Frightening that this is now the SL reality we are in. 

 

[Feorie Frimon]

1 minute ago, Spooky Shadow said:

If you are threatened with termination for playing by the rules and it just takes one mean spirited report to have yourself undone so quickly - that is very frightening for us who use SL and interact with any person with the know-how to submit an abuse report. It is turning avi against avi and giving any avi the ultimate power to effect someones time AND in this case INCOME. Frightening that this is now the SL reality we are in. 

 

It’s feels like the ‘child avatar reporting threat’ - but with creators? 

[Spooky Shadow]

1 minute ago, Feorie Frimon said:

It’s feels like the ‘child avatar reporting threat’ - but with creators? 

Not the way to promote community which has kept SL afloat. Quite the opposite.

[Jaimy Hancroft]

6 minutes ago, Feorie Frimon said:

@Jaimy Hancroft It sounds like someone reported you when I went back and read their response.

Is that what happened? You randomly received word out of no where? 

Without warning.
this is no way to conduct bussiness

[Tommy Linden]

There seems to be some confusion regarding not only the Terms of Service, but also our process for dealing with account sharing.

I am not going to debate the policy itself, or the process for addressing it. However I would like to point everyone to Section 4.1 https://lindenlab.com/tos and more specifically, call to attention this portion of the Terms of Service.

"You may not sell, transfer or assign your Account or its contractual rights, licenses and obligations, to any third party (including, for the avoidance of doubt, permitting another individual to access your Account) without the prior written consent of Linden Lab. Linden Lab reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to manage and control the number of Accounts that you may establish and maintain."

Now for the issue of our process for dealing with account sharing. Termination is not the first step taken when it comes to someone found to be sharing their account. We place a temporary hold on the account for the security of the account owner. Once we have been in contact with the account owner, we discuss the above policy to ensure they understand before the account is released.

I understand business owners and content creators have concerns regarding this policy. The original poster has created a feedback post that everyone can participate in here: https://feedback.secondlife.com/feature-requests/p/allow-business-accounts-to-share-access-responsibly. I can not stress enough how this is the best way to get assistance with more tools and options for business owners to be able to better manage their business, without putting the security of their account at risk.

Since we are not going to continue to debate our Terms of Service, or the process for which we enforce it, I am going to close this thread, but I do strongly encourage you to participate in the feedback discussion at the link I provided.