Second Life is a business type virtual word, with the primary intent being business, in contrast to entertainment or community typed virtual worlds. As we play with real money, all rules applying to real money also apply to new technologies usage with real money.

If the TOS would be legal in this case, why should banks give you the same security (insurance) on online banking, that systems crashed do not have more effect on your bank account than if you would use only “real life” banking (ATM, banking clerks).

New technologies and new ways to use old technologies should not generate real life financial “exploits”.

The future will become more interesting though, as Second Life now starts to get bashed by media, and as we all know, virtual worlds do have a final death state, where they just stop to exist, I’m asking myself, if all those people investing their money into Second Life are consious of the fact, that even a judge cannot give them their money back, if the world just stops to exist because it is not attractive anymore.

That sounds extremely fishy. This kind of TOS might be acceptable where the game provide emphasizes that the virtual values are not only not linked to real value but specifically prohibits the exchange (e.g. WoW).

In my opinion, this is a decision that makes sense and was necessary. If you encourage people to invest, they will expect rights to that investment. This is true for Second Life, Project Entropia and maybe even for Everquest 2 Exchange Servers.

I highly doubt this will have any impact on typical MMOs that forbid trading of virtual for real currency. I also doubt that this has a significant impact on TOS for MMOs in general.