SOS Bets Linden Labs Will Crack

Following SOS IPO's latest kick-off, with promises of gathering a budget of 10 million USD to take Linden Labs(LL) to court of law alleging illegal tiers raises on Open Space sims, an interview to Hermit Barber and IntLibber Bnt, two of the most visible faces in the SOS Grid Representation Foundation, was in order to check out how far this was really going to go and the answer was very clear: it is going through, there's no coming back. SOS is so confident on their arguments they even assured LL will back off and try to reach an agreement on tier raises before it goes to a court of law. Also, SOS believes the budget will be available by December...

Alessandra Narayan (AN) - You really believe this is action is going to court of law or LL will re-think the raise of tiers?

IntLibber BnT (IB) - At some point their risk insurers will tell them to settle and compromise. We think that will happen, at some point along the line. It could be when we finish the IPO and LL sees were putting our money where our mouths are. It could be when we file for an injunction to stop them from implementing the policy. They may drag it out to the very end.

Hermit Barber (HB) - I think that LL management is entrenched in their decision. They leapt to some faulty conclusions, made statements that cannot easily retract and have been falling over themselves to defend ever since. I think that there are numerous grounds on which this set of actions should be taken to court if LL doesn't back down, and I think that LL management will feel that they can't back down. So I think it's entirely probable that we are headed in that direction. The good news is that when it happens they will have to discuss the situation with their insurers. And I am fairly confident that that will result in their insurers telling them to settle before it gets worse.

AN - Has someone from LL contacted you inworld?

IB - Well LL generally doesn't contact me directly.

AN - But?

IB - I can say that I have talked to lindens unofficially who disagree with their policy. There is significant opposition inside the lab.

AN - And what about you, Hermit?

HB - LL has not formally approached me. They may be shy as I still have a trouble ticket "In Progress" from my censored and banned exhibit from Burning Life to which they have been rather quiet. I think that this is not atypical of LL and is one reason why I formed the Grid Representation Foundation. After this case is dealt with, I hope we continue to represent the interests of users across all grids.

AN - Someone explained you the reason behind raising tiers?

IB - It's purely anti-competitive action. Zee admitted this essentially in the SL forum, though he is trying to make it out like they're trying to stabilize the estate market, the timing of the policy with the introduction of the Nautilus sims is too coincidental to be accident. LL has always looked at resellers of their 3d web hosting services with a bit of a jaundiced eye. I believe LL has been taking action it believes help it monopolize more of the SL economy.

HB - Every indication is that LL was and is having difficulty maintaining the value of mainland in competition with open space sales - as well as rentals of open space by land barons. There are no grounds for imagining that their technical troubles are restricted to Open Space sims, indeed the more we look, the more we see issues of scalability of the entire platform. Meanwhile, all of the alleged issues could have been resolved by simply reverting to ensuring that all 4 open sims on CPU core were owned by the same owner. So their purely financial responses to the alleged technical issues speak volumes to anyone with a functioning brain.

AN - Last question: when will you think your budget will be gathered?

IB - We have sold almost 300,000 shares in less than 3 days. At this rate we should be completed in early December, enough time to have our attorney file for a preliminary injunction against the lab implementing the policy. Also, we're encouraging users to boycott Lindex, buy and sell their $L through third party exchanges as LL earns 500k US a month off lindex trading fees. This is the easiest way to hit LL hard without punishing inworld resident businesses. Also, ACE is donating half of their currency trading fees to SOS's Legal Fund and we are encouraging other exchanges to do likewise. There's also about 1000 sims having been returned to LL since the announcement of their policy. Look at the economic stats on secondlife.com. For the first time in history the grid has shrunk.

HB - And that is before addressing large land owners individually, and open sim owners particularly; or even the vast numbers of users Vryl evicted from -SOS-. We think that there is a lot more anger and annoyance out there, and that this will be translated into subscriptions to our dedicated legal fund, and in direct contributions to The Grid Representation Foundation. Both are important. The former for the reasons already discussed. The latter because people currently being forced to surrender Open Space sims may be losing in excess of $US 5000 per sim surrendered if they do not issue a letter demanding LL live up to what they were sold, and reserving their rights before surrendering their sims. We need to get that letter drafted and made available to all OS sim owners and residents ASAP to minimize these losses.