Lovely Lindens - $$

After a comment from Mac I decide to see if I could get more info on the misty area of using Lindens for Openlife purchases. I am still waiting on a chat window with Frontier Linden :D It's been about a half an hour now and when I went to try and get another operator in another chat window, I again get Frontier so that wasn't too helpful.

Meanwhile I started reading the headlines of all the support entries under "legal" and "linden dollars" and did find this, which seems to imply that it is OK to use Lindens.

So I thought I would post it here as I doubt I will hang around this support portal much longer (yawn) and since we have lots ofpermissions issues to deal with before it is safe to sell anything (this from Sakai yesterday) it is sort of a moot point.

Anyway, here is some info from the Support Center at LL.

I want to sell real-life items through Second Life.

Consider the following scenario:

Bob Avatar encounters, inworld, a store called CompuBuyPlace selling computer equipment. He finds a kiosk with a picture, taken from real life, of a nice wireless optical mouse, which he decides to buy. The Kiosk asks him to pay L$1,000,000 and supply his real-life address. Bob Avatar pays the million Linden Dollars and enters his address. Sure enough, two weeks later, a box arrives at Bob Avatar's real-life apartment from CompuBuyPlace containing the nice wireless optical mouse.

Can this actually happen?

Nothing in the Terms of Service prohibits this, but you should be aware that Second Life generally isn't designed to be a platform for "real world" business transactions, as Linden Dollars aren't designed as a "currency" or currency substitute. You therefore take these steps at your own peril, including potentially subjecting yourself to potential fraud (such as fraudulent L$ exchange), and subject to any relevant tax, licensing or other laws. Further, Linden Lab doesn't own, operate, or insure third parties like the one described above, and therefore will be unlikely to be able to resolve any disputes that arise. If you have any other questions, you may wish to consult an attorney.