By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor
It's always good to print someone's response/rebuttal to your post about them, although in this case, there's a glaring omission.
For all his self-justification, Casper Warden doesn't even mention at all the issue of his putting me as a "sample griefer" in all his teleporter products for a time.
He doesn't apologize for it here; he doesn't pledge to make sure it is gone when the Lindens take it over; he doesn't even mention it. That says it all!
He claims that there is nothing about his sale to the Lab because it's "in Second Life". What does that mean? The sale was for Linden dollars? That he didn't cash out?
But surely the UK tax authorities are like the US. If you cashed out to PayPal, that sum is like any other income -- payment for a translation or editing or something sold on Amazon or even my book. It all has to be reported, even if a 1099 or other tax form wasn't generated from the payment -- and PayPal itself is now going to issue 1099s. That promises to be a problem if someone paid you who already issued their own 1099. It means you will use PayPal less, especially as their fees now rival bank transfers.
But it's not my problem. My complaints to RL authorities are more along the lines of calling 311 about the terribly cracked sidewalk near my house which Hunter College, which is responsible for it, has not fixed in 10 years. Or about the war in Ukraine. Somebody else can worry about what UK businesses do -- seems to me the UK is over-active, if anything, on policing Facebook and Google.
The Lindens, desperate for cash, probably approached him because down the line, they plan to tax purchases and rentals -- any transactions -- inworld. They say they aren't doing that yet, but of course they don't rule it out and it will be sooner rather than later, as with the purchase of X-Street which led to taxation on the Marketplace eventually.
Perhaps some software plan was going to cause something about this system to go out of order but that seems doubtful, as it's not the only pipeline of its kind. No, more likely it was an administrative chore and expense for Casper, even if it made a profit, and given that the population has flattened -- as even Daniel the Since-Teen-Grid Fanboy has reported, there isn't any future in it for him.
Yes there are always new people. Yes, there is always attrition. And it wears you away finally.
I'll remind everyone that my concern, as you can see in my previous post of our conversation, isn't about "privacy," the classic nerd concern that big companies take your information and sell you and spam you and exploit you -- you are the product even if you pay for it. No, I mentioned a completely different concern: that knowledge gained about the market from that huge firehose of purchase and rentals data would transfer into an unfair advantage in the virtual market. Of course, the "unfair advantage" was mainly gained merely by providing a service that worked well and broke down rarely, and didn't seem to have odd things happening in it or a crank for a owner as Hippo did. Still, I think my concern was valid. Casper's answer was basically "but making a profit in a market is such a complex thing you can't possibly gain an advantage just for this complex information".
I disagree. SL is a small world. Trends show up even just looking at your own purchases or "last 5 things bought inworld". While there isn't any evidence that Casper moonlighted on an alt as a land baron or breedables baron, he could have easily -- one things of BellaTech, which runs the ugly domes-in-the-view sky rentals and also owns events like NEXT to hustle the gatcha replacements. Therefore I think it is right to ask him about this problem -- and his answer is obfuscation.
And duh, I already said in my previous post that the Lindens already possess all this data. Except in Casper's system, it's arranged neatly and managed, and as we know, the Lindens are overwhelmed with their own game, and we can't assume they have expert, efficient analysis of their data. Just look at your own Casper page to understand what I mean -- you see the trends of what you bought, when you bought, why you bought, and that multiplied by whatever percent of the daily concurrency of 50,000 people yields valuable information about what OTHER waterfronts besides Blake are hot, or what OTHER heads besides Lelutka are gaining attention.
Notice the Lindens' purchase of Casper was then followed by the publication of a new privacy policy as they are mindful of everyone's query on this score. And again, the issue isn't that Casper or Linden are going to spam my email with ads about Persian rugs because I bought a virtual Persian rug using their system; the issue is what advantage this gives to a player in the market, and now, the government, as they can perfect their favouritism system even more.
I will comment more when I have the time. He does answer the query some on the forums had as to whether he sold the business because it was failing. I doubt that, given its near monopoly status.
XXX
Notecard 9/21/2022
Hi Prokofy
A few people have pointed out some of your posts on twitter and the like, and I just wanted to answer some of the questions that you've raised.
Firstly, my real-world company is not being sold, only my SL-related technologies and assets. That's why you won't see any reflection of this sale at companies house.
CasperTech (and specifically, our in-world operations) have always been profitable, and there was no sign of that changing. We achieved this by keeping costs to a minimum, with highly efficient back-end code able to handle millions of in-world devices without spending a fortune on hardware. In addition, this market sector sees a constant influx of new users, as well as high attrition. This consistent flow effectively funded the service and more than covered costs.
If there was ever a sign that we wouldn't cover costs, my first instinct would have been to switch to a subscription model rather than selling up. The sale has nothing to do with the profitability of the business.
Despite your suspicions, I am (and have always been) a friend of privacy. As an example, I'm currently working on writing a standard specification for code signing in web applications, to help to secure end-to-end encrypted web applications against malicious javascript injection from the server (many users are not even aware that this
vulnerability exists with supposed end-to-end encrypted web services). Privacy is important to me.
The data which CasperTech stores has always been kept secure and confidential, never abused, and never sold until the LL acquisition. Over the years many people have made (sometimes, very attractive) offers to buy either parts or the entirety of the business. I rejected them all, primarily because I was not convinced in their ability to continue providing the service effectively while also respecting the rights and privacy of our users.
With the LL acquisition, I am confident that they will continue the service (because it's in their interest to do so), and they were already privy to the vast majority of data that we hold, because all transactions flow through their servers as a natural result of us operating in Second Life. They were already a data processor for us.
If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to get in touch. I'm open to discussion with you or anyone else, let's not proliferate rumour and speculation.
(Oh, and about the "covid" mask - I'm afraid I'm just really lazy at changing my outfits, I've been wearing this
since pre-covid https://gyazo.com/969d76bc26619231e9c4fb6f52149e87 )
Kind regards
Casper
