Female Winslet

Just thought it would be fun to post photos of us doing various community service tasks. Here is me washing the runway at the air strip in Coral Waters sim.

It probably also explains a lot about why Linden Lab has a C+ rating with the BBB. I just checked today. A C+ rating is not good.

With respect to your point about contract breach being alleged and described in writing, this is a point Linden Lab needs to improve on for all members. Not too long ago, someone said something that got me curious so I took a look at the specific BBB complaints against Linden Lab in San Francisco. The most common complaint is that the Lab took action against someone's account but never explained what they had done wrong. The Lab's response is typically to say they reviewed the incident and determined TOS was violated but not to say how. I personally have received one warning in my nearly 13 years in SL. It did not explain what I did wrong. I took a look at the TOS and all other relevant docs incorporated by reference and still could not figure out what I did wrong. And I'm a lawyer in RL whose expertise is contracts, so if I can't figure it out, I can't imagine how people without the background in studying contracts like the TOS can possibly figure it out. My best guess is that the Lab sent me a warning about violating a non-existent rule. Improving on this regard would be to the Lab's advantage as well as the users. Telling people "you violated the TOS" without explaining how makes it difficult for the user to improve their behavior because the user doesn't know what they did wrong. Since they don't know what they did wrong, the user cannot avoid similar conduct in the future. This leads to accounts being closed or other actions taken that ultimately lead to less money being spent on Second Life and put into the Lab's pocket.

So, as promised, I sat down and read the Tilia TOS. Here are a few observations. Not legal advice, of course. If you have any legal questions about your specific situation, you should consult with an appropriately licensed attorney, not a person posting on the forums. That said, my overall impression is that LL has badly handled the PR around a change that is, itself, not very scary. Linden Lab could have said the following: "Starting August 1, 2019, our subsidiary, Tilia, will take over processing US Dollar accounts. You will see a popup when you login on or after that date requiring you to agree to the Tilia TOS, which are available (link) here. Some persons redeeming Linden dollars for real life currency may be required to provide identifying information about themselves, which is already the case for many who redeem Lindens for real life currency, and may also be subject to an inactivity fee charged to U.S. Dollar amounts stored in their accounts and not redeemed. We do not envision any major changes that will affect the majority of users." That probably would have avoided a lot of the fuss. The scariest part is probably the second paragraph of section 1.1, which provides, in relevant part as "To create a Tilia Account and/or [do other stuff not relevant to my point] we may require you to provide us with your name, address, date of birth, telephone number, street address or zip code, and other information that will allow us to identify you." If all SL users are creating Tilia accounts, then this means that Tilia could require all SL users to provide this information. The fact that they could, of course, does not mean that they will. And personally, it doesn't bother me if Linden Lab knows who I am. They already do. The inactivity fee is going affect few people. The Tilia TOS envisions a two step process of converting Lindens to real life dollars. Step 1 is to convert the Linden balance on your account to a US Dollar account. Step 2 is to "cash out" that US Dollar balance and receive an actual real world payment. The inactivity fee is charged to the US Dollar balance if you take step 1, but don't take step 2, and then you leave that U.S. Dollar balance sitting in your account. There's an interesting potential loophole. The Tilia TOS provides for people to be able to close their accounts once opened. But nothing in the SL or Tilia TOS requires users to maintain an active Tilia account to maintain an account in SL. Much of what people are panicking about is stuff they already agreed to in the SL TOS that is fairly standard stuff. For example, the arbitration clause, class action waiver, and so on. This is all common corporate contract stuff that you can find in ever increasing numbers. Whether it should be standard or not--I happen to think it shouldn't be--is another matter and would involve changes to the Federal Arbitration Act, it's state law equivalents, and the law concerning class action waivers. As it is, the law is setup in a way that really encourages corporations to do this. Having said that, there are some problems, but they seem to affect Linden Labs. No fee schedule. You can't really form a contract without agreement and you can't have agreement if the material terms are not disclosed. It is not clear to me that the agreement to pay fees is enforceable without any disclosure of what those fees are. At least some of this information has since been provided, but initially it was not. Piercing the corporate veil. This will take a little explaining. A big part of why people form corporations is because the corporation assumes liability for its wrongdoing and the corporation's owners generally don't. You don't sue the shareholders of Ford for making a bad car, for example; you sue Ford, Inc. instead. This protection against liability is sometimes called the corporate veil. It works the same way whether the corporation is owned by human shareholders or another corporation. In fact, this liability protection is why corporations setup subsidiaries and it is probably why Tilia is a subsidiary instead of simply being a division of Linden Lab. But there are exceptions to this general rule. Dramatically oversimplifying this, if a corporation is used in a way that it's clear that it is simply an instrumentality or an alter ego of the owner, then the corporation's owners have potential to be held liable for the corporation's actions. This is called "piercing the corporate veil." We haven't seen how this is actually going to look, but I wonder if LL might be putting itself in a situation where Tilia's veil could be pierced and LL could be held liable for Tilia's actions given the close integration between LL and its subsidiary, the requirement for all users to have an account in both to have an account in SL, etc. Other unknown facts could raise or lower the risk. This contract has typos and editing errors and the like. Missing words and the like. My "favorite" appears in section 3.3.5 where the TOS discussed what happens "if we terminate your Account pursuant to Section 3.6 below[.]" The document contains no section 3.6. All things considered, I found this to be a bit sloppy, but not too alarming for my personal situation. I always recommend consulting an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction for advice about your personal situation. For the record, I am not available.

Well, in real life, I'm a lawyer whose focus area happens to be . . . contracts. I'm no longer active, but I daresay I can still figure out a contract. I'm going to try and sit down with the contract sometime this week and figure it out. My initial reaction to this news is to sell my land, downgrade to basic membership, insist very strongly on a full refund for the 3 premium accounts I re-upped for a year and a pro rata refund for those that are premium now, and delete my credit card info from Linden Lab servers. But I'll wait and make a final decision once I have sat down and really studied the new TOS. Linden Labs, I am very disappointed in you. I have been defending you quite a bit lately. I won't defend you over this. Some have accused you of a bait and switch over the Linden Homes and they were wrong. But inducing people to re-up for another year and then springing a change in the terms of service a week later is a true bait and switch.

Agreed. Will refunds be made available for unused premium membership fees?

Bellisseria seems to be becoming everything the mainland was meant to be. That’s both good news and bad news.

Some have wondered what happens if, in the future, Linden Lab loses interest in looking after Bellisseria and covenant violations and other such things become commonplace and go unaddressed. I guess now we know what happens in that case . . . nuke the whole thing! 🙂

Big, big, big thanks to Lindens and Moles. Y’all have brought something back to SL that has been missing for a long, long time and it has been missed. Of course, being a cat, I may be able to find other ways to appreciate Moles too. Roasted, for example. (Hiding from the invariable appearance of the dreaded spray bottle)

My personal rule is that all skyboxes/build platforms/other sky structures on my land is that nothing is built lower than 2000m. I think that's also the rule on many private estates and in Bellisseria. It works well to keep things out of view even from mountain tops. It's an easy round number to remember. It allows space for flying. It seems to work well.

Spotted in the time tapestry exhibit of SL16B: Any idea what the planned update that "launches today" is? Or when "today" is given that SL16B is a multi-day event? Surely this doesn't just mean the preview display of the new trailors.

"Thou shalt beget privacy walls, screens, and shrubbery around thy land which please the eye of thy neighbor as they do theyself." I'm not the person who rezzes the most of these obelisks around the mainland by a large margin, but I do put them up on everyone of my parcels. And I own roughly a dozen small ad parcels where I rez them. I don't find them ugly (sorry to those who do) and they sure do look a lot better than the average advertisement. But their purpose is not to beautify their neighborhood. Their purpose is to protest against people who use their land to be bad neighbors and disrupt the use of mainland by doing a variety of things including blocking land, security orbs, ban lines, and leaving junk lying around because they don't use autoreturn. Generally speaking, I find that the people who have problems with these obelisks are the same people who like to scream that it's their land so they get to do whatever they want no matter how it affects anyone else. So their solution is to tell me what I should do with my land (not put up obelisks) even though it affects no one. If someone wants to come up with a prettier object that sends the same sort of message, I would be willing to consider using it instead of the obelisk. But the point of protest is always to encourage change. The message is directed at Linden Lab (at least in my case) but it is a message that users could heat as well. I would suggest that being better neighbors and playing a part in a community is a better way to respond than by trying to get a perfectly TOS compliant, non-obnoxious object removed.

Not to worry. I own a fuel depot. The Town Clerk is hereby directed to record the names of Mount Molly and Lia's Airstrip in the official town records. (Signed) The Cat Supreme Ruler of Bellisseria

Uhhhhh . . . did you notice my photo? I'm a cat. A snow leopard, to be exact. So fishing being dinner is not exactly demotivating for me. How far is Mount Molly from Lia's Airstrip? Lia's Airstrip is, of course, the air strip in Costner Bay region. Lia's landing there in an H-92 during the construction of the rainbow statue was the first ever recorded landing at Lia's Airstrip. As the first pilot tp land there, Lia gained the right to name it after herself. This claim is further reinforced by the fact that Lia is me (my display name!) and, as pointed out above, I am a cat. Therefore I hold ultimate authority over Lia's Airstrip and all else. By the power invested in me as a cat, I hereby recognize the name Mount Molly until I decide to name it something else. When and if I feel like it.

I am a licensed, professional snow leopard so I hide too. But then I pounce. 🙂

. . . or improvements in other places in Second Life.

Beg to differ. If you were to upgrade now, you’d get a $300L stipend, you’$ get more groups, priority entrance to full sims, and access to a Linden home, even if not immediate access to a new one. That may not be the main reason for a given individual to go premium. (I’m premium mainly for stipend and land ownership and care a lot less about other benefits, for example) but it is not nothing.

At risk of stating the obvious, selling out of a product is not fraud. The elements of fraud are (1) a false statement of fact, (2) whoever said it knew it was false, (3) that person intended to deceive, (4) reasonable reliance on the statement by the party to whom it was made, and (5) actual damages suffered. If all five elements are not met then, from a legal standpoint, there is no fraud. LL didn’t make a false statement. They said the new continent and Linden homes were available to claim. They are. Since it wasn’t false, they obviously did not know it was false. Since it wasn’t false, they obviously did not intend to deceive. They never said anything about guaranteeing everyone who wanted a LH home could get one immediately. They did say they plan to keep building until a sufficient supply is constructed. Since no guarantee of the type the OP seems upset about was made, the OP could not reasonably rely on it. In fact, given the large user base of SL, it seems like the OP should have reasonably known there was a high probability of the homes selling out. Actual damages are a bit harder to evaluate. Sounds like the truthful, non-fraudulent statements by the Lab induced the OP to buy into premium membership. So the OP may have been damaged by his own unreasonable interpretation of what was said, but he was not damaged by any fraudulent statements by the Lab. I actually agree with you. I have two premium alts that I use mainly for generating stipend and for building up land tier. And I’ve been tempted to go try and get a Linden home with one of them because I have a traditional home now and I’d live to get a house boat but I hate to give up my hard won traditional home. I don’t do it because I know there are a lot of people out there who paid up like I did and haven’t gotten one. Seems selfish of me as the person behind the screen to go try and get more than one when others cannot even get one. When they are no longer so scarce, I may go get a second one, but right now that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. On the flip side, there are people who have opened up their homes as a spot for people who do not have one. I cannot comment on how many those people may own. But letting others use them like that seems pretty generous, no? I feel I should mention that if your words are a nuclear bomb, using them would risk running afoul of the prohibition against the use of weapons of mass destruction in 18 USC § 2332a or it’s equivalents in other countries of the world. I also could mention that there are a ton of news updates on the Linden homes in this very forum. For example: . . . and scattered throughout other threads in the forums. Not all news about Bellisseria comes from Lindens or Moles and not all news from Lindens or Moles comes in threads they started. I certainly understand the desire to hear more detailed news like a certain date when release is planned. And I do think LL could do a better job of letting people know at least a very rough time frame. But I also understand that LL doesn’t want to be put in a situation where if they miss the planned date, people go ballistic and start accusing them of fraud.

Hmmmm. Well, surely it must have a temporary location, right? Can you send me an SLUrl for it? Sounds like it needs 11 tons of water dumps on it. 🙂 Dare I say they also contribute to that feeling of community and friendship that comes from when people get together and have fun together? 🙂 It’s things like this that make me happy/sad. Happy because people are getting together, having fun together, making friends, and building community. Sad because it seems like this is what the mainland was supposed to be except mainland could be even more so because you’re not limited there to building and working with only what the Lindens can build. But instead it became this walled off area full of bunkers where people are taking the most connected areas of the grid that are setup for travel and mixing and meeting and trying to turn them into walled off camps. 😞 Plus we’re not supposed to be making things that look commercial, right? That looks clearly commercial to me. A town center like this could be pretty cool! Plus I don’t know many people who would want to live near a fire station in rl. Too much annoyance from all the fires they have to go to. But please bear in mind that the idea here is simply to take the Rez zones that are being created anyway and make them look like that. I can understand that it may not be exactly what some people want next door. I can also understand others might not care or would even love it. But the idea, at root, is simply that make rez zones that fit in better.

Well, I’m trying to be mindful that this is meant to be a Linden homes continent. LL is trying hard to make it look like a community. And they have responded to the need for rez zones by making best efforts to add some. Basically all I’m proposing is making those rez zones look like a fire station/police station/hospital/whatever else. That’s not very major, it’s not a change to what LL is trying to do. It’s nothing more than a facelift for what they are already doing. I’m not quite sure how a Chunnel would fit in. It’s a big addition that would certainly be fun. But it seems like it kinda side tracks from what they are trying to accomplish here. Shops are kinda the same, especially since this is supposed to be a non commercial area. Maybe some small kiosks like already exist? The Squishy Pickle, for example? While we could all list lots of fun things to add, these seem very different from my suggestion to take what’s already done and just make it look a certain way. Please feel free to pounce and correct me if I am wrong. Afterward, I did the math on how much water I dropped. This was a Shergood CH-47 helicopter with the Kimbi bucket. The Kimbi bucket holds 2600 gallons of water and I filled it to capacity. A gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds (with slight variation depending on temperature). So that means I dropped 21,684 pounds of water, or just shy of 11 tons on that poor house fire. So I put out the fire. Refilled the swimming pool. Probably flooded the whole region. And if any neighbors are wondering where their yards or gardens went . . . I have no idea where they ended up. The fact that the house survive having a nearly 11 ton weight of water dropped on it is a miracle of second life engineering. P.S. For those wondering, I am the OP. Just forgot which account I was logged in with when I wrote the original posting.

I can add to my post that LL actually does take action on these zero warning orbs. Although they have not been responsive about it the last month or so.

The super duper obvious and easy way to do this would be to join them into a single parcel. Is that not desirable for some reason?

Cute!

The SL Newser published an editorial today that reflects my main concern about the premium rate hike. Basically, the concern, which the newser put better than me, is "Why raise prices if the number of subscriptions, and therefore income, is going up anyway?" http://slnewser.blogspot.com/2019/06/commentary-linden-labs-surprise-price.html

I would argue that the restriction on orbs and elimination of banlines and restriction of security orbs is *the* contributor. Once you take down the barriers that keep people apart, that sense of community can start to form. People start to meet, to talk, and to make friends. People even discover that their fears about everyone being a griefer do not reflect reality. It works. I think we can expect similar constraints on mainland. Linden Lab says they want the mainland to be social too. It's not just Bellessaria that is supposed to be a social community environment. It's all of SL. If they want to have that happen, they need to get involved in putting some constraints on mainland. The Blake Sea estates make a great example because they are actually the opposite of how you describe them. Most, if not all, of the Blake Sea estates *do* force tenants to curb their orbs. I run sailing races for one of the big yacht clubs and the particular ones I run take place in the Blake Sea estates. If they didn't restrain the orbs, we couldn't have those races there. Take a look at the estate covenants. You will find that they often use the term "sailing first estate" to describe themselves. And they tend to contain restrictions that prohibit things like security orbs that reach into water, including water within the parcel boundary, and minimum time durations that often exceed those on Bellissaria. Of course, a few left. But I have to wonder . . . if LL wants to build community, then are the people who stand in the way of that really a loss? Aren't we possibly better off without them? Especially if it is that sense of community that offers the opportunity of a second wind for SL? And we've even seen some of the people who screamed bloody murder about the restrictions turn around and express thanks now that they've seen how they operate and it was not some catastrophe. And we've seen demand dramatically increase sense the restrictions were put in place. Really? I'm not aware of any put up by the moles. Would love to see some if you have any LMs to share! The object was originally created by Abnor Mole. There are some residents who put these up to encourage people to be better neighbors and as a way to voice objection to the mess that mainland has become. To me it makes the message far more compelling that these are proliferating among residents. Sad to say I've seen some really over the top hateful reactions from some residents to those of us who like to rez those obelisks. Usually it comes from people who say they don't want to be told what to do with their land, so they respond by telling others what to do with their land. Sigh. I agree at least as far as the banlines eliminated and orbs restricted. Subject to the provision that accomplishing the same thing as is done on Bellissaria would require more than a 15 second minimum time. I disagree strongly. The mainland is rather obviously meant to be traveled over. That's why there are roads, water channels, etc. Yes, building within a larger context is an advantage. But I would argue that space to travel is even a bigger issue. But if someone wants to be isolated without people coming in, then single unconnected regions are perfect. And for those who want their private space with no one coming in, the private estates are a perfect solution. Allowing them to disrupt mainland use via security orb abuse and other such problems, on the other hand, is catastrophic for the mainland. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned how someone with a 1024 could mess up business use for a whole sim. That's essentially what is happening now. A small number of antisocial selfish people setup orbs and ban lines to interfere with innocent use and travel around the mainland for everyone. That is not acceptable.