Long Time Merchant DRD Suspended Over Account Sharing

[Monica Dream]

Long time ago I once was in one of the citizen's meetings Philipp Linden held on short notice. I still remember how his avatar first appeared, and then said to us this: "This is Philipp's Assistant typing. He's stuck somewhere and will be with you in a few minutes."

I am pretty sure the ToS in terms of account sharing back then was not much different then it is today. So even LL is not about account sharing.

Governor Linden is an openly shared account, isn't it?

 

[Cristiano]

Apparently DRD has their account and Marketplace back, but the incident does show the need for broader solutions for merchants if LL is going to arbitrarily enforce the account sharing provisions.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Governor Linden is an openly shared account, isn't it?

Yup, but it was not Governor Linden who showed up, but Philipp Linden in this meeting.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I've posted about this in the Official Forums, but my takeaway from the Governance office hours last week is that,

• Governance don't go out looking for shared accounts -- something has to happen to attract their attention (a report or something, and I believe large and unexpected L$ transfers automatically get flagged anyway).
• When they receive a report a report of a login by an unexpected third party, the account is automatically placed on hold, along with associated Marketplace accounts, and notify the account owner, while the Lab satisfies itself the account hasn't been hijacked by some malefactor.
• Once they've satisfied themselves that the account hasn't been stolen, they restore the owner's access to it.

That seems to me a sensible precaution, and what appears to have happened in this case.

I agree that it would be desirable to formalise some method of account sharing for business partners, though I worry a bit -- because I don't know the answer and I suspect we'd need to ask a very expensive expert in US IP law to discover it -- about how that squares with the licences that content creators grant when they sell their products in-world or via the MP.

At the moment, the assumption is that when Innula buys something on the marketplace, the vendor is granting a licence to the owner of the account "Innula Zenovka".

If LL formalise a system whereby I can share Innula with someone else, does this retrospectively mean that licences on all the items in Innula's inventory are, in effect, unilaterally granted to any third party with whom I choose to share the account, assuming I comply with the Lab's published procedures, without reference to the original content creators?

 

[Monica Dream]

Yup, but it was not Governor Linden who showed up, but Philipp Linden in this meeting.

My point was that Governor Linden is an example of a sanction group-used account; of password sharing.

 

[Free]

My point was that Governor Linden is an example of a sanction group-used account; of password sharing.

But is anyone actually running anything important with that account?

/me runs from Second Life!

 

[Cristiano]

I've posted about this in the Official Forums, but my takeaway from the Governance office hours last week is that,

• Governance don't go out looking for shared accounts -- something has to happen to attract their attention (a report or something, and I believe large and unexpected L$ transfers automatically get flagged anyway).
• When they receive a report a report of a login by an unexpected third party, the account is automatically placed on hold, along with associated Marketplace accounts, and notify the account owner, while the Lab satisfies itself the account hasn't been hijacked by some malefactor.
• Once they've satisfied themselves that the account hasn't been stolen, they restore the owner's access to it.

That seems to me a sensible precaution, and what appears to have happened in this case.

I agree that it would be desirable to formalise some method of account sharing for business partners, though I worry a bit -- because I don't know the answer and I suspect we'd need to ask a very expensive expert in US IP law to discover it -- about how that squares with the licences that content creators grant when they sell their products in-world or via the MP.

At the moment, the assumption is that when Innula buys something on the marketplace, the vendor is granting a licence to the owner of the account "Innula Zenovka".

If LL formalise a system whereby I can share Innula with someone else, does this retrospectively mean that licences on all the items in Innula's inventory are, in effect, unilaterally granted to any third party with whom I choose to share the account, assuming I comply with the Lab's published procedures, without reference to the original content creators?

I suspected that there was more to the story than just LL suddenly deciding to harass a long time vendor.

As far as your license question, unless they are granting access to said inventory from another separate account, then the content is licensed to the account itself. It is not like an extra copy is being granted because someone else logged into that account. I don't see any issue there. If they implement some form of inventory sharing then yes, that can of worms is opened.

 

[Puretone]

Account sharing is allowing more than one person to access an SL account. It's banned because LL says it's banned (it's in the TOS as forbidden).

DRD's account was used by the creator and his sister who lives above him. He trusts that she isn't going to run off with all his $L. The part he was chuffed about was that the ToS and the SL Wiki maintained by the Lab basically also says to the effect that if you share your account, all responsibility for anything bad that happens is on the account holder. But then it also says no account sharing without permission from LL..

Apparently he tried to get to the process of getting permission and was told they aren't giving out permission because they had no authority to grant permission. Since there's no way to escalate the issue to someone (or anyone for that matter) that can grant permission, this can be seen as a(nother) major customer service fail by LL.

 

[Madi Perth]

I don't know all the details on this issue but I know if someone suspended one of the biggest creators on the platform for something trivial as I think this is, they would be fired on the spot and I would have security escort them out the door. You don't stay in business by pissing off your users and your biggest creators.

I know that technically by sharing accounts they were violating the TOS, but some cases you have to made different rules for different circumstances. Everyone gets a TOS but different people get different TOS. You want to share an account for business, sure but here is the rules for that.

I can't imagine that LL doesn't have something like this in place. You think they are going to closes a Cheung accounts for something as silly as a TOS violation.