Second Life, First World Economics and the Third Degree

Dastardly Dealings in 2nd Life - our man Dark Harlequin reports:.

Back in May real life contract law started to impact Second Life (see Wired article for example) as sharp practitioners and sharp practices (allegedly) moved in.

However, seems like 2nd Life now has a few sharp practices of its own too...clearly they now also want a cut of the real world asset price bubble and last Sunday they sharply raised their own land prices with one days notice but shut off the sales system except for a quick auction of 150 lots.

This has caused a hullabaloo, not just because of the short notice, but it would seem the shadowy Friends of Second Life (those Land Barons who are alleged by The Rest to always get an inside track on all land deals) did not get an inside track - and are thus doubly miffed, as the 2nd Life Herald reports. Anyway, the deadline is now 15th November, and the Linden CEO is defending the 35% uplift basically by arguing that too much tacky development is going on in 2nd Life and this price hike will stop land flippers profiteering.

This highlights the fact that no one owns land in 2nd life. It is in fact a prefectly Feudal system, there are chains of sub rentals, so when prices go up to the main tenant, the subtenants do...what exactly? How does such a contract work if I have contracted to pay you as my landlord X and then you try to up it? What happens when someone in the chain defects? I await the first lawsuit from sub sub sub tenants with some interest.

And next up, the Taxman cometh...it would seem the Australian Tax Office is the first tax authority to take an interest.

And I wonder when eBay will start to have to look at all the arbitraging of Linden dollars in various currencies? And how long till the first money laundering schemes on 2nd Life are found I wonder? As the GigaOm article referenced above points out, it will get interesting when the Men in Black start investigating the tax scams et al, and want to look at Linden's records in triplicate.

Don't say we didnt warn you, see point viii in this post.

With all the Corporate wannabegroovies setting up in 2nd Life now, I think its only right and proper that all the Tax Offices should set up there too - in fact, I have a nice piece of land they can use, lovely views, buy now...