A dispute has settled between a Second Life user who made the most of a weakness in the virtual world's land auction system and Linden Labs, owners of Second Life, reports Technollama. The user had used the weakness to buy land in Second Life at below-market rates, leading to Second Life terminating the user's account and taking his virtual world assets. As part of the settlement, the user gets his account back, although the rest of the terms of settlement are confidential.
The settlement means that, aside from the unlawfulness of an arbitration clause in Second Life's terms & conditions, which was decided earlier in the dispute by the Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, there will remain no precedents on the legal position of a number of issues, including the status of virtual land. Overall, these look to be relatively minor issues for most users of Second Life, and the lack of legal precedents certainly doesn't seem to have held back businesses from establishing a presence there. See for example the latest Reuters report on the activities of businesses in Second Life.
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