Even Rosedale got in on the act: He conjured a pair of sunglasses that he superimposed on a video image of a Sun representative talking on a screen behind the stage (in virtual-world lingo, such high jinks are known as "griefing").
Some corporate events have been met with protests by placard-waving avatars. And there is even a group called the Second Life Liberation Army ((SLLA) that has staged faux "attacks" on Reebok and American Apparel stores (the SLLA says it is fighting for voting rights for avatars -- as well as stock in Linden Labs).
Companies in this new environment have to get used to the idea that they may never know exactly who they are dealing with. Most of those in Second Life have chosen their names from a whimsical menu of supplied surnames, resulting in monikers like Snoopybrown Zamboni and Bitmason Pimpernel; males posing as female avatars and vice versa are not uncommon.
Another issue companies have to contend with is that their brands may already be in these virtual worlds, but illegally. Henry Jenkins, a professor at MIT Media Lab, said one Second Life habitue created a virtual reproduction of the Ikea catalog to help people decorate their digital pads.
Verbeck said copyright infringe-ment was rampant. His company runs an online boutique where Second Life residents sell each other pixelized creations of everything from body parts to home furnishings to roller skates -- a good number of them unauthorized knockoffs.
So far, Second Life has not had many requests to stop selling fake products.
But "we did have a request from the Salvador Dali Museum -- which was great," Verbeck said. "Second Life is so surreal that it was perfect."
RSS