rayharris

Marit Huet wrote: This new TOS is again showing the residents and business owners that developing business in SL is a risky business. [...] Well, merchants and landlords won't like to hear this, but nobody in their right mind could possibly base any actual RL business on SL alone. LL can switch off the whole grid (and with it all SL businesses) from one day to another and there's sod all anybody can do about it. The "economy" is very much not an actual economy. Yes you can trade, yes they do have a currency exchange. But no, it's absolutely not a free market in normal economical terms. You can see that every time they change their ToS or add new land (or whole continents). Surely it's sad that they cut off all Third Party Exchanges so hastily by shutting down the Risk API and rendering the TPEs inoperable over night. But if law requires them to do so, they can't allow a grace period, because this would only spark a massive amount of equally hasty transactions, which would make it even more difficult for all parties involved to find and track the fraudulent ones (which seems to be the concern). But at this point it seems to be speculation as to whether the new regulations even affect LL. Maybe they do. Maybe they just offered a good opportunity to claim monopoly, while speculation about the actual reasons continues. Seeing that LL has EA employees on board now, I expect more restrictions to follow soon. (They have a "reputation") Anyhow, running solely SL-based businesses is a risky affair, bordering denial. That said, I do feel sorry for the merchants and especially creators, who spent countless man-hours creating wonderful things, and who will now get less money as Lindex always had worse currency exchange rates than TPEs, and Paypal rips off customers with their currency exchange fees and rates once more. For a European creator, a couple of parties cash in and delay on their sales: L$ -> paypal (several days + fees) US$ -> paypal currency exchange to local currency (instant but sometimes outlandish rates + fees) -> bank account (few days) It's easy to see how this discourages many people to create/sell stuff in SL, notwithstanding the bitter taste overnight ToS changes like this create. Unless they really are forced to do this by US law, I think LL are shooting themselves into their own feet with this.