Okay, let's pause a bit and take a look at the Bragg vs Linden Lab/Rosedale case. Let's look at where it started and what's gone on since.

Our Dramatis Personae are Marc Bragg (a Pennsylvania Attorney and former Second Life land developer known then as Marc Woebegone) and Linden Lab (who should need little introduction at this point).

Marc Bragg allegedly gained unfair advantage by accessing the land auction pages for property that had not yet been released for auction, enabling him to acquire land in Second Life below Linden Lab's cost for that land (Marc paid only $300USD for an entire region). Some of that property may have been subdivided and sold to other residents before Linden Lab suspended Marc Bragg's account for investigation, and then closed the account for violation of the Terms of Service -- dissolving his virtual assets (Linden Lab's usual procedure for closed accounts). Bragg declares that his actual losses were between $4000 USD and $6000 USD.

Continuing our walkthrough of the Bragg vs Linden Lab filings, we have three new filings to play with. The first is dated 9 January 2007, and is Linden Lab's motion to admit Scott Baker, Esquire pro hac vice.

Granted, that sounds like something you do in golf, but it means we can look forward to a little more personality, going forward.

Continuing our walkthrough of the Bragg vs Linden Lab filings, we get to the 11 November filings in support of Bragg's motion to remand back to the state court.

The filings consist of one affidavit, and a supporting brief. Let's see what Bragg has to say ...

Well, there's been a lot of talk about Marc Bragg and his lawsuit against Linden Lab. Urizenus Sklar, editor emeritus of the Second Life Herald had an excellent interview with Jason Archinaco, Bragg's attorney in this matter. I'll be referring to that, but really, if you're interested in this topic, you should go read it.

Marc Bragg, you may know, found a way to fool the system into letting him bid on property that was not available for auction in the usual way. With nobody to bid against him, he scored quite some amount of land for very little money, and then resold it. His account was banned and his Second Life assets dissolved, as Linden Lab considered this a violation of the Terms of Service -- an exploit.

Jason A. Archinaco, Esquire himself is a partner in the Commercial Litigation group of White & Williams, LLP. An avid gamer, he is also a technology law specialist, and wrote this very pertinent and interesting paper on the topic of virtual property. Having read it, I get the impression that Archinaco is very keen to see some of his ideas tried out in a court of law. However, having read both the paper and the interview -- even though I'm no lawyer or legal professional -- a number of other things seem to be going on here.