I reject the latter because the government can never understand better what is happening “on the ground” at these providers than the users and the service provider themselves. Instead, various loud voices push and direct government response, resulting in laws which may or, more likely, may not improve things (the “may not” is usually the result of the unintended consequences of laws that prevent behavior that is benign).

From your posting is appears that you recognize that Twitter and Second Life are both services provided by businesses. Just because they are used widely and their users derive personal and group benefit from these services do not transform them into “rights”. As a customer of these services, you can choose to use them or not, as you indicated in your posting (saying you would move to a better provider if there were one). Yes, you have invested a lot of time and cash in how you use one of these services, and you have every right to expect fair dealing from the company providing it. But it doesn’t sound as though you are complaining about the lack of fair dealing, but rather that there are issues and concerns that have developed in their service that they haven’t thought to address, or are currently addressing in a less than satisfactory way.

With the complex social and technical environment that is Second Life, I am not surprise that there are issues like this. My surprise is that there are not more of these.

The companies behind these services have an interest in surviving and attracting customers who like its services and will pay them money. My first question when I read your posting was, had you filed a bug with the Second Life service requesting this technical and procedural change to how they manage land auctions? This is one of the better means for service users to communicate with service providers. Filing a bug doesn’t mean that the provider will resolve the issue or fix it in the way you like, but it does give you a means to rally support for the issue by other customers and to develop a louder voice which can rise above the background noise of issues that the provider is constantly hearing about. The squeaky wheel, and all that.

If the provider chooses to ignore requests like this that are supported by a large number of customers, it risks losing them as customers. If, however, despite the goodness of the idea (I like your proposal for land auctions, by the way) there isn’t wide support for it, yet the company spends resources fixing it and as a result many of its customers are NOT pleased with the result, the company again risks losing its business.

And this provides the clear view on why these providers should be allowed to make decisions on how their service operates. They are constantly faced with a set of life (of the company) or death decisions — if they decide wrongly they are out of business. If Second Life were to go out of business tomorrow as a result of service decisions that reduced its revenue below that which is sustainable for its corporate operations, you wouldn’t just have a bunch of empty land in Second Life, you’d have nothing.

This is in contrast with RL government, which can regularly make poor decisions (as a result of the inefficiency of the political process) and yet stays in business (as a result of the persistence of government structures). With businesses you vote every day on whether the company is worthy of your support. With governments, you may vote (and many citizens don’t vote at all) once every four years for your representative, who has little understanding of who you are and what your concerns are. Wouldn’t you agree that the power of the dollar has a greater and more focused impact on the behavior of a company than the shotgun force of government lawmaking?

Speak up using the means that the company provides for you to register your concerns and suggestions, then observe how they respond (making sure you are heard and understood). If all this fails, then the company is likely not worth your continued commerce and it would be time to vote with your dollars and either go to another provider, stop using the service altogether (if there isn’t another equivalent service available) or invest in the development of a new business that will provide the type of service you can support.

Well that would reduce Linden Labs income. I don’t think they’re interested in reducing their income.

Can SL landowners sell land to each other too? If so, that plan would also allow those in a region to collude to buy the land at a low price, and then resell it themselves at market price to an external person.