tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5214403369439216687.post-77961739919693390902008-01-13T10:25:00.000-08:002008-01-13T07:26:52.601-08:00The recent ban on unregulated banking is indicative of a general problem in Second Life: the lack of choices in services providers. LL has full control over Second Life and they do not have to give us choices but choices is what we want.<br /><br />Second Life has a single currency and a single method of payment in-world, the Linden dollar. And Linden Lab acts in fact as a bank. A bank with limited services and, more importantly, now the only bank. Yes, a bank. We all have an account where we deposit money that we can withdraw later and Linden dollars are issued only as more RL money comes in than goes out. Therefore, all the Linden money that sits in our accounts represents real US dollars in the (RL) coffers of the LL company and LL can invest that money in any way they want. And that is what banks do.<br /><br />The services of a regular, RL, bank are more extensive. They offer loans, credit, and also pay interest on deposits. LL doesn't offer such services. LL has also been doing very <span style="font-style: italic;">poorly</span> (no pun intended) in handling financial transactions with customers from across the world. Local banks do a much better job at that. In other words, LL is not a very good bank and we shouldn't expect them to be. We should just get those services from other providers.<br /><br />I am not arguing with the present ban on unregulated in-world banks, I am all for having only regulated banks. But right now we are left with no other choices but the "LL Bank". The way I see it, there should be different providers for the service of an in-world Linden dollar account. I should have the choice of using an institution from my own country. I should have the choice of paying on credit or otherwise to receive interest on the balance in my account. And LL should just be the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_%28interbank_network%29">Cirrus</a> of Second Life.<br /><br />Similarly, the lack of choices in server locations is at the root of many of the networking problems. The lack of choices has been also at the root of much of the discontent with the implementation of ID verification. There may not be many global choices for that type of service but, whatever they are, LL should have opened the door for different providers instead of choosing one themselves and closing the door behind them.<br /><br />Yes, the vision of open source servers and especially an open source architecture and open, standardized, protocols holds the promise of enabling all those choices. However, that vision is distant and is not well presented and we cannot see what Second Life will be like in that rosy future. In the meantime, we get more and more restrictions instead of more choices. We can just keep our fingers crossed for the future.Lem Skallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12087927660368783590noreply@blogger.com