Second Life Crime Scene

Year 2007. The popularity of Second Life grows. The virtual world is not only the place for social interaction and mean of entertainment; it becomes serious platform for e-commerce, e-learning and e-governments. World wide known companies like Apple, Reebok or ABN Amro open their services in this 3D environment. Second Life becomes main source of income for many freelancers. The tax free economy is blooming giving birth to first millionaires. Being part of the digital environment also Second Life is not free of cyber crime. After short close down caused by a worm attack called “grey goo” (which installs spinning objects in the virtual world that slows the servers as users try to interact with them) Linden Labs is faced with CopyBot. This new program enables users to quickly copy characters, objects, and buildings, potentially eroding the value of people's virtual property. First trials concerning copy rights and property ownership issues follow. As a respond Linden Lab publishes the blacklist and several users are banned from virtual world. In the meanwhile, a group calling themselves the “Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA,) stages the first online terrorist attack. Linden Lab receives several complains about the growing menace of mafias and gangs that are forcing members out of public areas. Users become more and more annoyed by the Linden Lab reluctance to take any legal action against cyber criminals or involve in dispute resolution.

Year 2008. Linden Lab comes with new services to attract younger people to join the virtual reality. New schools, playgrounds, game centers are open. The age range of Second Life residents’ gradually shifts from 25-45 to 16-45. Also e-government and e-commerce services slowly expand. Whole cities are “copied” to the virtual world. The residents are given the opportunity to travel, attend courses at the universities, visit museums or use the e-lockets for the district administration. The opportunities seem to be endless. Linden Lab looses first law trails against the residents concerning the copy rights and property ownership. At the same time the gangs are getting more powerful distracting several public events and a still more cases of illegal mafia’s activities come to the day light. Linden Lab bounds the possibility of multiple personalities within the Second Life and starts IP blocking of the users involved in any kind of cyber crime. This method thou is still not effective enough mostly because of the use of zombie networks that make the correct identification much more complex.

Year 2009. First public demonstration is held in Great Britain after the death of 16 years old Kelly. She met her killer, 46 years old Thomas B. in one of the Second’s Life youth club. She was sexually abused and killed. Several more demonstrations against Linden Lab are held in France, Germany and Canada. This incident together with the growth of other online crimes within virtual world makes the Government of US to put high sanctions on Linden Lab and force them to monitor all the chat dialogs and voice conversations which take place in Second Life. From now on all the new residents are required to give the true personal data even when applying for the free account. Rising criminality has a very negative influence on Second Life’s economy. After careful investigation on child pornography and sexual abuse several youth centers are close down. Also the forbiddance of anonymity and dialog monitoring seriously cuts down the number of new users and even several hundreds of active residents start selling the properties and cancel their accounts. The influence of Governments comes also from the economical side. In many countries the new tax law is introduced. Second’s Life business holders are faced with high income taxes over their virtual possessions. Several different regulations concerning heritage and property laws are established. They differ a lot from one country to another which makes them very difficult to enforce.

Year 2010 Growing number of attacks of SLLA and their followers together with massive strikes of the online business holders makes Linden Lab to come up with the first Virtual World Constitution. Rosedale becomes the first official decision making authority. Soon first sanctions and “real life” arrests on the Second Life’s criminals take place. The newly organized investigation group discloses and shuts down several mafia networks in Mexico and Russia. Extra founds are put into increasing the security; the latest technology anty-virus applications, firewalls are deployed. Still the damage seems to be done. Lost trust caused by security problems and high income taxes have a great impact on Second’s Life economy. The number of well prospering businesses continuously decreases. Some of the big companies start with closing their less successful branches. At the same time social life seems to blossom. The voice and video communication, already implemented to high, bug-free standards combined with virtual reality replaces chat-rooms, blogs and newsgroups.

Year 2011. Global economy goes through the serious crisis. Intervention of US government in conflicts in Middle East is met with strong disapproval from European Union and NATO. The course of Dollar stays dramatically low for long period of time which influences the position on Linden Dollar. As a result, also the Second’s Life economy goes severely down. International governments fail to agree about an unified law and economical regulations for the virtual world. The one that are already specified seem to be very difficult to put into effect. Companies like Adidas and Nike remove their virtual businesses. They are followed by more and more medium and small class businesses. Also e-government segment is looking for different solutions for its services. The efforts of implementing virtual e-locket didn’t bring expected results.

Year 2012. The business objectives of Second Life evolved from being the environment for international trade to becoming a powerful communication and socializing tool. With still unsolved security problems and difficulties of low enforcing, economical and service oriented activities went to the second plan. Linden Lab still makes it’s money from advertisement and monthly usage fees. The technologies like video/voice chat and voip incorporated into virtual reality become every day way of the communication. The Second Life becomes virtual Google equivalent as a 3D search engine.