If you're wondering about this blog post title, it's meant to represent both the clock accompanying us to January 22, when the new LL policy on inworld gambling will have effect and the tic-tac-toe game that apparently SL financial institutions have been playing with our beloved San Francisco company, in an attempt to get those 3 Xs on a straight row.
We've seen a lot of drama, the run on banks, all kinds of creative minds coming up with more or less viable ideas. One of the best I've seen around is the application inworld of the contractum trinius (which is not really a new idea, but proves that some issues can bite at us over the centuries). So far so good, but I've seen people cheering because the new policy was bypassed this way.
That's not right, for a simple reason. The company controlling the Second Life Grid could ban red hats and whatever, and for every workaround new policies can come up and they can be expanded, in a almost endless armfight.
Let's get back to the contractum trinius. At that time the Catholic Church prohibited usury and that's why our creative ancestors came up with a solution. Now, Linden Lab started from a completely different premise. Some think that they wanted to ease the work for RL banks and their future appearance in full force in our metaverse. Personally, I don't think this is true.
I'll make a long story short: too many frauds related to inworld banking. No need to provide links here, most likely you know of at least one. Those scandals got Linden Lab too much unwanted attention and bad press.
It's about time for the SL financial institutions still operating to do something in order to make things so Linden Lab won't have again to take a stance like the recent one. Over the last days almost everyone has been "flying solo" and with the only intent to keep operating past January 22. Period. At least that's what I gathered from the web. If I have missed something, my apologies. It's not been easy to surf through all the posts, blogs, websites and comments.
This may be the right time for the SLEC (Second Life Exchange Commission) to get its acts together and do something meaningful. This may be the right time for the Second Life Exchanges (as you may know I am the Communication and Public Relations Director for the VSTEX, virtual stock exchange in Second Life) to enforce their rules (which sometimes are unattended by the listed companies, with no consequences) and maybe expand them, so that listed companies are required to meet higher requirements and standards. Here I'm not talking about going "full GAAP", but looking at the companies on the VSTEX exchange, the situation can be disheartening.
Recently I started a simple audit of our companies. The first I started with failed to update the company prospectus for the last month cycle and most important they were reporting substantial profits that had not been distributed as per their dividends policy. Do I think that they did not distribute dividends as promised? No, I think that the numbers on their company prospectus were made up to make the company look good. Maybe those numbers were "hopes about profits", that they just forgot in the company prospectus. Whatever the reason, this is no good.
I can see why the exchanges can be "soft" when enforcing their rules, or why they requirements are pretty loose. They fear to lose ground to their competitors, to lose companies to other exchanges. This tactic is not gonna pay in the long run, 'cause it's just screaming "Linden Lab, do something about me".
We've seen a lot of drama, the run on banks, all kinds of creative minds coming up with more or less viable ideas. One of the best I've seen around is the application inworld of the contractum trinius (which is not really a new idea, but proves that some issues can bite at us over the centuries). So far so good, but I've seen people cheering because the new policy was bypassed this way.
That's not right, for a simple reason. The company controlling the Second Life Grid could ban red hats and whatever, and for every workaround new policies can come up and they can be expanded, in a almost endless armfight.
Let's get back to the contractum trinius. At that time the Catholic Church prohibited usury and that's why our creative ancestors came up with a solution. Now, Linden Lab started from a completely different premise. Some think that they wanted to ease the work for RL banks and their future appearance in full force in our metaverse. Personally, I don't think this is true.
I'll make a long story short: too many frauds related to inworld banking. No need to provide links here, most likely you know of at least one. Those scandals got Linden Lab too much unwanted attention and bad press.
It's about time for the SL financial institutions still operating to do something in order to make things so Linden Lab won't have again to take a stance like the recent one. Over the last days almost everyone has been "flying solo" and with the only intent to keep operating past January 22. Period. At least that's what I gathered from the web. If I have missed something, my apologies. It's not been easy to surf through all the posts, blogs, websites and comments.
This may be the right time for the SLEC (Second Life Exchange Commission) to get its acts together and do something meaningful. This may be the right time for the Second Life Exchanges (as you may know I am the Communication and Public Relations Director for the VSTEX, virtual stock exchange in Second Life) to enforce their rules (which sometimes are unattended by the listed companies, with no consequences) and maybe expand them, so that listed companies are required to meet higher requirements and standards. Here I'm not talking about going "full GAAP", but looking at the companies on the VSTEX exchange, the situation can be disheartening.
Recently I started a simple audit of our companies. The first I started with failed to update the company prospectus for the last month cycle and most important they were reporting substantial profits that had not been distributed as per their dividends policy. Do I think that they did not distribute dividends as promised? No, I think that the numbers on their company prospectus were made up to make the company look good. Maybe those numbers were "hopes about profits", that they just forgot in the company prospectus. Whatever the reason, this is no good.
I can see why the exchanges can be "soft" when enforcing their rules, or why they requirements are pretty loose. They fear to lose ground to their competitors, to lose companies to other exchanges. This tactic is not gonna pay in the long run, 'cause it's just screaming "Linden Lab, do something about me".
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