Colwyn
05-18-2006, 12:12 PM
Second Life Land Deal Goes Sour (http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,70909-0.html?tw=rss.index)
Bragg says Linden Lab created the online auction pages that allowed him to buy land at the abnormally low prices, and that any responsibility for problems with the system rests with the company. But the hacker-like method he used to exploit the auction system may hurt his case. Bragg copied the URL for a legitimate auction, then swapped in the ID number for land not yet up for sale publicly, so there would be no minimum bid and few, if any, competing bidders.
...
"This case is not the case that (people interested in virtual property have) been waiting for," said Joshua Fairfield, a professor at Indiana University Law School and a specialist on the law and economics of virtual property. "As I understand how Second Life is set up, land is (the equivalent of) bandwidth. They're selling bandwidth, no different than AT&T selling the bandwidth that allows me to talk to you."
Fairfield thinks the case that everyone is waiting for "is the one about whether or not these things are real property. This (suit) is more like airline mistake cases, where people snap up cheap tickets and try to keep the tickets."
Source: Blue's News (http://www.bluesnews.com/)
Bragg says Linden Lab created the online auction pages that allowed him to buy land at the abnormally low prices, and that any responsibility for problems with the system rests with the company. But the hacker-like method he used to exploit the auction system may hurt his case. Bragg copied the URL for a legitimate auction, then swapped in the ID number for land not yet up for sale publicly, so there would be no minimum bid and few, if any, competing bidders.
...
"This case is not the case that (people interested in virtual property have) been waiting for," said Joshua Fairfield, a professor at Indiana University Law School and a specialist on the law and economics of virtual property. "As I understand how Second Life is set up, land is (the equivalent of) bandwidth. They're selling bandwidth, no different than AT&T selling the bandwidth that allows me to talk to you."
Fairfield thinks the case that everyone is waiting for "is the one about whether or not these things are real property. This (suit) is more like airline mistake cases, where people snap up cheap tickets and try to keep the tickets."
Source: Blue's News (http://www.bluesnews.com/)