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And I'm not blaming the victims/participants in such activities.

I think there's a logical flaw here. Just how does one meaningfully and reliably assess risk anywhere, let alone in Second Life?

While I assume that the guy who calls me from an undisclosed phone number, claiming to be collecting contributions for the local Police Benevolent Association is most probably working out of a boiler room, I might in fact be wrong. For all I really know he's legit. But the fact that I pay for Caller ID, and he fails to reveal any traceable information to me leaves me in an information vacuum.

Now if I were using my feelings, I'd give him my credit card information anyway, because, after all, Police are GOOD, and Benevolent Police are all that much betterer. The fact that he says he is one, or working for one, should be enough for me. Right.

But I doubt he would still be calling me, despite the fact that I'm on the national Do Not Call database, if that line weren't working with some substantial fraction of those he manages to get to answer the phone. Linden Lab and Mr. Phil are not my mommy. Mommy would never wear a bejeweled jock strap. I do not want Mr. Phil to pretend to be my mommy, and if he does I might even decide to sue his freaky little butt for engaging in unwanted behavior that, to me, seems "broadly offensive."

But that's just me.

As for my "owning" land, yes, I really believe that line. I'm guessing there are about a dozen places in the TOS that broadly contradict that sloppy comment, intended (I must assume) for press purposes only. I suppose it might help me if I were suing Linden Lab for fraud, but I don't really expect a court to affirm my "absolute" right to Linden Lab. If it did, I would think that at the very least I could insist that the Lab wrap up my roughly 4 regions on 2 servers and send me the physical servers as compensation for my "investment" in land at auction that is now "worth," at going market rates, roughly 70 percent of what I paid for it. In fact, there ought to be a button for that somewhere on the secure account interface. "Send me my land."

I'm not blaming victims -- after all, in this case I'm probably going to wind up being among the top 10 percent or better when it comes to real money damages incurred from this "game." What I am saying here boils down to the same maxim that applies in the rest of life, caveat emptor.

I'm pretty sure if I were to take any of this into court I would hear that phrase from both opposing counsel and from the judge.

If you choose to spend money blindly, the law tends to be clear that doing so is largely your own problem.

On the other hand, there are fraud statutes, and a criminal case on those grounds might bring some limited remedies to this situation, once fraud is proven. The problem here is at least partially the presumption of innocence that's encoded into common law. Linden Lab might be at serious risk if it were to go around assuming that ALL contracts that entail a degree of financial trust are de facto illegal. It's a briar patch even Phil Linden (or the LL lawyers) are smart enough to stay away from.

What does irk me are the repeated statements from Linden Lab that are based on a false assumption that Second Life is "safe." Such naivete (or is it something darker?) is just astounding to me. I'm not saying you can't be safe in SL. If I were starting over, I would have never put a dime of non-Linden loot into the "game" in the first place. That would have be "safe." But I accept that my unwise choices here WERE my choices to make, and for the most part the signs that those choices were unwise were present at the time I made them. They weren't being widely publicized, but they weren't a state secret either.