Ha ha ha ha....so I'm reading the second instalment of the three part epic in New Scientist on Second Life and this part covers that downside, right...snigger, snigger and I know that this is really puerile but there is the photo of US presidential candidate John Edwards island and right in the middle is this crazy spiky brown starfish.  And I'm reading away and New Scientist have written that "the second life headquarters of...John Edwards was attacked by... the Patriotic Nigras, who plastered the building with objects including faeces."  And the thing that was getting me was that second lifers really do have trouble with Spiky Poo.  This thing looked barbaric with its needle sharp ends spread across the front of this building and all I could think was Avatar or not, giving birth to that would have to ranking right up there on the pain threshold with slamming your finger in the car door.

So I push on thinking that having your island defaced ain't fantastic but its hardly the end of your virtual world and having already heard about the Tall Europeans with the rubber appendages, I was thinking that things can't be that bad and then you start reading the quotes from the lawyers, experts now in Virtual Law - well to be fair Internet Law, but I reckon virtual law is already a vibrate sub category.  And these lawyer are being wheeled in to sue for this that or the other, mainly it seems to me to be related to sex toys in virtual land, and the one graph that seems to sum it up for me is the Average annual revenues per company in second life.  November 06, $65k but by June 07 it was up to $100k and then it twigs, even these paltry sums are worth defending as this could be the tip of the iceberg and people want to mark out their virtual earning domains.  So, ok "industrialisation and commercialisation" are now sighted as the drivers behind the inclusion of lawyers and lawyer are seen not only as the passion killers of the freedom to express in Second Life, but the bringers of the constraints that will make Second life ...well dull.

So there it is.  The down side to second life is that if people make money, they want to protect their golden eggs and therefore everything gets a bit dull because of very real lawyers.

Is that so bad?  Actually I think so.  For now at least I feel that my sympathies are inclined to support those who feel motivated to stop people from taking Second Life too seriously.  But serious it is.  You can feel the inevitability of it in the article.  So market forces will prevail and legislation is only around the corner....

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