The TOS for SL is about to change, next time you log in you will be asked (Bragg and his court case might mean we should say forced) to agree to them. The change, as detailed here, is to allow an easier, and cheaper, small claims (up to US$10,000.00) between residents and SL to be settled out of court.It's never mattered to me to date, and there is quite a bit of fine print as you might imagine - my cursory read suggests that it will let you get overpayments back, but not claim damages for example, so LL won't be "to blame" if things go wrong (IANAL remember, so that might not be quite right), but it is probably more than most of us will ever need to claim.
1. This was inevitable. You cannot run a complex economy without rules. The right to be sued sounds like a joke, but it's a bigger advantage for any business to be able to make agreements that stick. Without the right to be sued, you cannot do that.
The alternative, a flight of fancy into ADR controlled by professional arbitrators was never going to work. At the Alhambra presentation last week, the idea was you use escrow to enforce arbitration so everything's wonderful. Question, how do you enforce an escrow? Answer, you got to court. QED: no courts, no escrows.
This decision will also protect Linden Lab, at least to some extent, from cross-party actions alleging they've enabled fraud by refusing to set up a court system. Privative clauses, both those made by legislatures trying to oust the courts from jurisdiction, and those made by private parties trying to contract their way out the courts, have an interesting and horribly complex history.
I think this step is good. I seriously doubt that Linden Lab can enforce a privative clause by a contract of adhesion. LL really, really need a new lawyer.
The quality of the arbitration LL offers is going to be crucial to the success of this effort. The new courts had better go a long way beyond LL's past record of customer service and be genuinely independent or LL's governance team or they will be laughed out of the first real world court that hears about them.
Posted at 5:06AM on Sep 19th 2007 by Alberik Rotaru