Second Life Article

I found this article on the Legal problems of Second Life to be very interesting. I recently logged onto Second Life a few months ago and I was just blown away by this virtual world. People had businesses, casinos, stock exchanges, land for sale, and manners for interacting with avatars. The strangest part to me was that everyone was taking everything so seriously. I felt really lost in the whole thing and decided to research it further online to get an outside perspective. What I found was that people were looking at the virtual worlds as the “Next Big Thing” for entrepreneurs. A train that was leaving soon and you had better jump on before you need to pay premium price for a seat.

Although it still has a Social experiment type feel to it, Second life will eventually be riddled with rules and regulations. Just like in our current system, the richer Linden Capitalists will eventually want to protect their investments at all costs and will weed out the business practices that will only profit from short term gain. The ones that are taking advantage of any inconsistencies in law between the virtual world and their own real-world laws(which will vary from region to region obviously) will soon be shoved into a corner with their backs against the wall. As the Second Life economy evolves at a faster rate than our own, we will be able to foresee the shortcomings and the areas in which we can improve our own society and it’s economy.