Bragg v. Linden Lab: Discovery Heats Up, Linden Documents Posted on Bragg’s Web Site
August 31st, 2007 by Benjamin Duranske
Discovery is heating up in the Bragg v. Linden Lab case, and Marc Bragg has posted a number of related documents on his web site.
First, we now have Bragg’s initial set of responses to interrogatories (.pdf). His primary arguments (which you’re probably already familiar with from his recent motion to dismiss) are laid out fairly concisely in this document. There’s not much new material here, but a few statements related to damages are new; I’ll excerpt them below.
As usual, keep in mind that these passages advocate Marc Bragg’s position, and haven’t been proven yet.
Plaintiff currently approximates that he provided $13,900 U.S. dollars and one million Lindens to Defendant Linden for tier payments, land purchases, account credit, lindens in account, and purchases from third party vendors.
Plaintiff’s attorneys fees exceed $100,000 and are growing on a daily basis Plaintiff is also entitled to treble damages, punitive damages and statutory damages, as more fully documented in the Complaint, in addition to injunctive and equitable relief.
Every dollar paid to Defendant Linden has been lost. Every dollar paid to any third party for virtual items and/or land has been lost. Plaintiff’s U.S. Currency was also stolen by Defendant Linden.
Plaintiff’s ongoing rentals, firework shows, and projects under construction were generating approximately $50.00 U.S. monthly; and purchase and sale of land was generating approximately $1,200.00 U.S. monthly.
Second, you can look at Linden Lab’s formal responses to Bragg’s first set of document requests (.pdf) and Bragg’s responses to Linden Lab’s requests (.pdf), but I’d not bother with these; formal document request responses are essentially procedural, and are not all that interesting.
What is interesting is that Bragg has also made three sets of actual documents provided by Linden Lab in response to his document requests available on his site. I would like to see Bragg make the documents he has provided to Linden Lab available too if he’s going to put Linden Lab’s documents up, but I’ll link to these anyway since they’re newsworthy (and because there is nothing preventing Linden Lab from posting Bragg’s documents as well).
You can find these documents here, here, and here (all three are .zip files that unzip to .pdfs). The first link will take you to Linden Lab’s documents labeled 1-100, and the second will take you to 101-200, and the third set contains documents 201-300.
Ironically, the link to the third set on Bragg’s site was actually linked to the first set when I visted, but I was able to find the third set zip file by backwards browsing (I typed a “3″ where there had been a “1″ in the URL). That, of course, is precisely what Bragg says he did when he bought underpriced land. Given the obvious parallel, I have to wonder if the link snafu is intentional, and if they’re tracking Linden Lab downloads.
The documents appear to consist of old versions of the Terms of Service, old forum posts, and complete chat logs, some of which were attached to the earlier motion. It looks like there is a lot of interesting stuff in there if you’re inclined to spend some time digging into it, and I’d love to see what readers can find in these documents.
Finally, Bragg has noticed Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale for a personal deposition on September 21. These things typically do not take place when initially scheduled, but this gets the ball rolling. There’s nothing substantive in the notice, but for the record, you can view it here (.pdf).
Related Posts on Virtually Blind
- Bragg v. Linden Lab Update: Bragg Serves Two Sets of Document Requests on Linden Lab: "Discovery proceeds in the Bragg v. Linden Lab case. Bragg recently..." (7 comments)
- Mock Trial of “Bragg v. Linden”: "Harvard Law School's three-week "Evidence 2007" course (which was..." (1 comments)
- Bragg v. Linden Lab Update: Linden Lab Serves Discovery, Amends Counterclaim with Chat Logs: "In the Bragg v. Linden Lab case (see VB's previous coverage for..." (12 comments)
3 Responses to “Bragg v. Linden Lab: Discovery Heats Up, Linden Documents Posted on Bragg’s Web Site”
Leave a Reply
Notes on Comments: Your first comment must be manually approved, but after it is you'll be able to post freely with the same name and email. You can use some HTML (<a> <b> <i> <blockquote> etc.) but know that VB's spam blocker holds posts with five or more <a> links. VB supports gravatars. Got a gravatar? Use the associated email and it'll show with your comment. Need one? Set it up for free here.
[...] Bragg v. Linden Lab: Discovery Heats Up, Linden Documents Posted on Bragg’s Web Site Plaintiff currently approximates that he provided $13,900 U.S. dollars and one million Lindens to Defendant Linden for tier payments, land purchases, account credit, lindens in account, and purchases from third party vendors. [...]
Hmm. Dunno if this is relevant, but I do recall there being changes to the terms of Service which I wrote about on KnowProSE.com… When the Terms of Service changed (November 11th, 2006), I grabbed the old Terms of Service from Google Cache and compared it to the new version. The separate texts as well as a summary of the comparison is here:
http://www.knowprose.com/node/16729
And my little bit of analysis here:
http://www.knowprose.com/node/16730
I think changes to sections 2.5 and 3.3 may be of interest here… what got me started looking back on that was the reference to the ‘Old ToS’. Kind of glad I captured that.
[...] Bragg v. Linden Lab: Discovery Heats Up, Linden Documents Posted on Bragg’s Web Site Plaintiff currently approximates that he provided $13,900 U.S. dollars and one million Lindens to Defendant Linden for tier payments, land purchases, account credit, lindens in account, and purchases from third party vendors. [...]