It seems to me to be “fighting fire with fire”. It’s just…a bit tacky, to me.

It’s all my honest opinion, though. I could be wrong!

The flow of money via Non-Members I find could actually be and often IS more than those of us who pay yearly membership fees ect… We get something for those fees, a 512 tier discount, maybe an “allowence” to supliment our budgets but then nothing more.. maybe there should be MORE incentive to pay the premium fee… but nothing BLOCKING people who are not paying anything.

It shouldn’t be an exclusive thing, it should be a sensible buisness plan.. I believe this wouldn’t disrupt the order of things and I believe that it would make things cheaper for the rest of us, and the people who shop a little more active.

In SL, I dance, laugh, play, and love and fly (oh! I soooo love to fly) and any number of things I can’t do in RL. And, yes, I cry and ache because I can’t separate my emotions from my “human.” It may seem sad to some, but I put as much of me into SL as I can for in many ways it is my life. I can imagine what shut-ins like me did before virtual worlds and it doesn’t seem pretty.

While I’d love to have more in-world civil rights or features like property insurance for when my inventory disappears (again), I realize that we residents/customers/users are not far ahead of the cutting edge. Life on the internet moves at a blazing speed compared to life off the grid but even electronic evolution takes time.

Thanks to all of you that have steadier nerves to push the evolution along. I hope that in doing so everyone looks at all the potential consequences. What would we lose compared to what we could gain? One’s innocence can be lost but once.

::::reaches for the fruit of the Tree and prepares to leave paradise::::

Again, there are agreements in place, in which LL had agreed to behave in a certain manner, to provide certain services, at certain prices. This does not give anyone a right to anything though.

If LL wanted to, they could remove the copy/mod/xfer restrictions on items. They don’t because it benefits them (financially) to have them there. If you believe that LL would not remove those restrictions, if it meant they would get more money by doing so…I don’t know what to tell you, I believe you are wrong. They are capitalists, in a capitalist country (not that there’s anything wrong with that). If you somehow think they are maintaining SL for the common good, instead of hoping to turn a good profit, I think you’re mistaken.

And DagnyT, with the service they provide of ‘hosting land’, they do have obligations. Uptime, functionality, … . Then, they sell the “land” with “to start your own business” in Second Life. Which means they have an obligation to make sure payments actually work, transfers work, … . They promise DRM tools (transfer, mod, copy), so they have the obligation to make sure those work. (And are not easily bypassed.) Etc?

Just as those who run around in child avatars, as well as Goreans, and the BDSM crowd, somehow thought maybe they had a ‘right’ to participate in that birthday celebration a few months back. They found out they were wrong. Along the lines with the Open Spaces people, who somehow thought they had a ‘right’ to cheap land found out they were wrong.

LL can take your objects, take your lindens, ban you and even delete you, for whatever reasons they see fit. They don’t really *have* to justify it, they try to most of the time I think, because they want people to populate their world, but they really don’t have to.

I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying we don’t deserve better. I’m saying, this is how I see it. It is LL’s property, everything in SL is, regardless of how they try to convince us otherwise. I create something, they say it’s mine, but if they can delete it from their databases in the blink of an eye…how is it really mine then?

And so, yes, they do provide a service, one they have every right to deny to us at their whim. I’m really not trying to argue with anyone here, but as I see it, we ‘reside’ in a (mostly) benign dictatorship. Where one group holds power supreme over all that is, and can be, in their universe. They want people to stay there, the want their economy to thrive, so try to make things as painless as possible. But they also have overlords (different world governments, with their own rules, laws and regulations) whom they must keep happy as well.

I don’t envy their position, not even a little bit. Kind of between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they have to deal with varying levels of laws in various countries. In some countries, a picture might be illegal, while in others, it isn’t. All the while, the ‘residents’ who like the pictures, think they have a right to have and display them. While those that don’t like the pictures, think they have a right to have them removed, and the owners/creators of said pictures executed (banned).