A new Terms Of Service popped up today when people logged into Second Life. Of course, you had to click "I Accept" or risk losing access to your account, thus bringing up the same issues we've addressed before. Most will scroll past the mass of legalese unable to interpret any of it, but fortunately Virtually Blind has summarized the main points.
The first big change is to make it more difficult to bring claims over US$10,000 against Linden Lab. Simply put, if you file against the company in any state other than California (where Judges are more prone to favor a tech company), your case will probably be thrown out and Linden Lab can come after you for up to US$1,000 in attorney fees.
The second change addresses claims under US$10,000, and states that for amounts of that size they'll go to arbitration. This means that smaller claims don't ever have to go through expensive court proceedings. They refer in the official FAQ to the National Arbitration Forum who generally charge less than US$185.
I didn't scroll past it and I'm not at all certain that this move "favours the little guy". We'll only start to see this if hundreds of people whose counts have been arbitrarily frozen, and LL has resisted solving their "billing problems" are finally able to get some relief through this procedure -- or if other kinds of disputes of double billing, etc. begin to get resolved adequately.
If LL also removed the retaliatory "any reason or no reason" clause that enables them to eject people from the service at any time, this gesture of mediation would have a lot more credibility.
And while $10,000 may seem like some huge amount and some extraordinary wealth to you as an individual Caleb, try to see it from the perspective of a small business -- which is what's at stake in SL in addition to individuals.
Someone with, say, only a 4 islands worth $1695 each, with a very small business by real life or second life standards, could find themselves unable to sue Linden Lab now, if Linden Lab suddenly confiscated their islands "for no reason or any reason". $10.000 as a threshold for a small business is absurdly low.
I believe it's the National Arbitration Forum that is in fact owned by credit card companies, isn't it?
They can still sue LL if they want. The TOS reads "he party requesting relief may elect to resolve the Claim in a cost-effective manner through binding non-appearance-based arbitration." which means that the "little guy" gets to choose to sue or settle with arbitration.
Nothing in the TOS is forcing anyone into arbitration (which I have seen in some other contracts where you have to agree to try arbitration before you are allowed to sue).