SECOND LIFE: Pros & Cons- Group 4: Toni Gatapia, Aaron Kilgallon, William Sauve, Jessica Yip

Second life is a massive multiplayer online role playing game created by “Linden Lab”. Linden Lab was founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale alongside internet veterans such as former employees from world renowned companies like Electronic Arts, Midway, Disney, Hasbro, and Apple. With offices all over the world, and its main headquarters in San Francisco, Linden Lab currently has around 250 employees worldwide.

Introduction
The Game

Second Life Launched on June 23 2003, and as of May 2008, has just over half a million active players. Players of Second Life can create an avatar, known in the virtual world as a Resident. The avatar will move and act according to the players specifications, and can be fully customized thanks to Linden Labs own programming language, based off the popular programming language C. A major aspect to Second Life is the purchasing and using of “land”. Land in Second Life is how businesses create their online headquarters, and much like it would be in real life, land is purchased and has to be maintained via payments.

Payments in Second Life are done with Linden dollars. These Linden dollars can be earned through whatever activities are taken by the player in game, such as various entrepreneurial businesses. The exchange rate is roughly 250 Linden dollars to one U.S. dollar, however it can fluctuate to supply and demand.

Global Interaction
Second Life creates a gateway for global interaction between users all over the world. With the use of an internet connection, users are able to interact with other players.

Embassies The Second Life phenomenon has caught on to many countries around the world. With the growing trend, several countries have expanded their embassies in to the Second Life world. Examples of Embassies available on Second Life include:
 * Sweden
 * Maldives
 * Estonia

Marketplace
Second Life provides many opportunities for entrepreneurship. Users are able to buy and sell goods online with the use of Linden Currency. Many retailers have expanded into the Second Life world and have opened up several shops, including American Apparel, Armani , Sears , and more. The marketplace in Second Life has also introduced the use of a stock exchange. Retailers are able to buy, trade and sell shares. It is thought to believe that the stock exchanges were implemented due to the ban of gambling. 

Education
Second Life has been recognized by multiple educational institutes for use of educational purposes. Online classes are being offered starting from preK through to Post Secondary. Many post secondary institutes have also created private and public online campuses for their students to interact with each other. Educational institutions that use Second Life include Harvard, the Great Northern Way Campus of Vancouver, the University of Hamburg, Stanford, and the University of Hong Kong.

Religion
With the widespread of Second Life, it has become a common ground for religious communities to partake in religious rituals together. Users are able to create online churches, temples , synagogues , and mosques for the Christian, Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim communities.

Entertainment
There are many applications that provide various forms of entertainment for the user. Some features include:
 * Interactive Gaming
 * Voice Chat
 * Art
 * Live music
 * Theatre
 * Concerts

Child Pornography
A major issue within Second Life is the issue of Child Pornography. It occurs in game in multiple forms. One way is through in game theatres that allow for users to show streaming video. People can stream child porn into the game. As well, there is the issue of people role playing as children and engaging in cybersex. This practice is illegal in some countries such as the United Kingdom, who has a law against even simulated child pornography. However the United states has deemed such images as protected speech under the first amendment. Linden labs has a zero tolerence policy regarding child pornography and will ban anyone caught with such materials in the world, and this includes players engaging in cyber sex with a child like avatar. 

Harassment
Within the world of Second Life their are users who specifically go out of their way to harass other players. These users are known as "greifers". They will often target the avatars of people who are well known in real life, such as real estate millionaire Anshe Chung, or US democrat John Edwards. Griefing goes against the Second Life terms of service which bans "Content as determined by Linden Lab at its sole discretion that is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, causes tort, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable".

Another form of griefing that takes place is through the use of in game objects. One type of object used is known as a "Grey good worm". This is an object that will infinitely expand until it overloads and crashes the server. Another type of attack is known as a Denial of Service attack. This is when a user creates an object that can target another user and fill their screen with characters such as an "@" symbol. These attacks also go against the Terms of Service which forbids "...Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information..."

Vague Regulations
One of the main issues with Second Life is its changing regulations. The regulation that is operates under are at the sole discretion of Linden Labs. They are alterable at anytime and give little to no control to its users. A users account can be suspended or terminated without refund and with or without reason since it is owned by Linden Labs. As stated in the Linden Labs terms of service:

“Linden Lab has the right at any time for any reason or no reason to suspend or terminate your Account, terminate this Agreement, and/or refuse any and all current or future use of the Service without notice or liability to you. In the event that Linden Lab suspends or terminates your Account or this Agreement, you understand and agree that you shall receive no refund or exchange for any unused time on a subscription, any license or subscription fees, any content or data associated with your Account, or for anything else.”

Due to this, the game for the most part operates above regular law or modifies it regulations to accommodate the needs of its creators. One of Second Life’s virtual banks Ginko Financial has created commotion as to the need for quality assurance and accountability for virtual businesses.

Technical Issues
Another problem with such a large-scale system is its frequent instability. This volatility was generally caused by the continuous addition of new features and little repair to the old bugs in the program. Software limitations have also created planned and unplanned services outages. They are usually the result of congestion in an area in which users have added detailed graphics to their avitars. Currently, the solution to this problem is to reduce the graphics in these areas as the system cannot yet accommodate the volume of data. This is the only way to reduce lag time that often results from user ability to modify content continuously. Users are not given compensation for items lost in these outages. This creates much frustration as items are generally purchased with real money. 

Stolen Intellectual Property
By submitting content to Second Life a user is waiving all rights to any personal claims of the material. Linden Labs will not provide any compensation for creations by users. Only if the user has filed proper copyrights will their content possibly be protected. In an excerpt from the terms of service, it is stated that: "You also understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the Service, you automatically grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted) to Linden Lab and to all other users of the Service a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free and perpetual License, under any and all patent rights you may have or obtain with respect to your Content, to use your Content for all purposes within the Service. You further agree that you will not make any claims against Linden Lab or against other users of the Service based on any allegations that any activities by either of the foregoing within the Service infringe your (or anyone else's) patent rights.”

Fraud
Fraud mainly in financial transactions

Second Life is more than a game or a social-networking site; it’s also a venue for financial transactions. That’s why there have been many cases of fraud that happened within the game. Inside the game, gamers or avatars use the Linden currency, which if you convert is 270 Linden dollars to 1 US dollar. Second life is a place for opportunity for different kinds of people because there are no rules and regulations that are needed to be followed so they can build business and make transactions with different people without thinking about laws and protocols.

There are different kinds of fraud that happened within the game. Different businesses and financial transactions require banks, and so, one bank came to the virtual world’s need, Ginko Financial. Ginko Financial offered up to 60% interest rate on money deposited by second life users in their bank. The problem is that Ginko Financial recently, was unable to repay $L200,000,000 ($750,000 U.S.) in account holder money. Ginko–operated by an avatar called Nicholas Portocarrero, whose real identity is not clear–persuaded hundreds of people to deposit their Linden dollars. The reasons for what happened next are murky, but the results were clear enough: the “bank” vanished, and depositors say their money did, too. In July 2007, residents began clustering around machines to try to recover their money after Ginko began restricting withdrawal amounts. Then Ginko announced that deposits were now in “Ginko perpetual bonds” rather than Linden dollars. This happened after Ginko Financial closed down last August 8, 2007. 



Money laundering scenarios:

A launderer opens up numerous separate virtual accounts, all using fictitious id. The accounts are all funded with the proceeds of an organized crime sports betting operation. The launderer can make purchases in the virtual world to and from himself by using those accounts as if he were purchasing assets from other residents. Subsequently, he may direct all his proceeds to an account that he maintains. He can then withdraw those funds either from the bank or using an ATM. It would be nearly impossible to trace the source of those funds. 

Identity theft:

Second life is a virtual world so literally anyone can use someone’s name even without his/her permission. The real big problem here is that people can get their reputation ruined if someone uses their name for illegal activities. People engaging in online financial transactions are in huge risk of identity theft within the game because someone can hack their accounts and stole their money and identity. Identity theft can also be done by filling out online surveys that can be found in second life, if you fill out these surveys, it may contain viruses, malware or spyware wherein they can get your credit card information and other personal identification. 

Retail Fraud:

Second life is not just a simple game; it’s different from other games in the sense that in second life world you live like you do in real life. You need to buy food, clothing and shelter. Second life residents create objects that they can sell to other residents in return for the cash they pay for these objects. This is where fraud comes in. There are cases where in a person copy another object from another person and sell it off to second life residents. 

Linden Labs Actions against Fraud:

With regard to Linden Labs regulations within the game, they have stated in their terms of service that “Linden Lab is a service provider that may allow people to interact online regarding topics and content chosen by users of the service, and that users can alter the service environment on a real-time basis. Linden Lab generally does not regulate the content of communications between users or users' interactions with the Service. As a result, Linden Lab has very limited control, if any, over the quality, safety, morality, legality, truthfulness or accuracy of various aspects of the Service.” This statement proves that illegalities found within the game are out of their hands and they refuse, or they choose not to do something about it. Although recently, because of the different complaints received by the company from the residents itself, they made different actions. They have recently announced a new policy regarding virtual banks in the game. This policy issued by Linden Labs is essentially shutting down dozens of largely insolvent self-styled “banks” in Second Life. There are open questions regarding the impact on other institutions, and undoubtedly, one or two legitimate operations will be caught in this net. That is undeniably unfortunate, but the vast majority of “banks” in Second Life are nothing more than fraudulent ponzi schemes, and this is positive step that will save a lot of people a lot of unhappiness in the long run. It is a smart move from both a business and legal perspective, and it stands as further evidence that Linden Lab is growing up and focusing on the long-term health of the grid.  Another policy they made was about banning gambling in second life. No more games which require money are allowed in the game, and if there will be residents who will not follow this policy, they have the right to terminate or suspend their accounts or avatars in the game.

Addiction
Addiction comes in different ways. In Second life, the virtual reality world game, addiction comes in different variety too. Most of the users or ‘residents’ as what they are called spend more time on their second life rather than their real life. One of the factors that makes Second Life to be addictive is that a user has to be online at all times to play the game and interact with others. People tend to neglect the usual routines that they have been doing just because they need to be online to interact and made progress on their game. Some others sees second life as a place to regain social competence. Other aspects that would make Second Life problematic is explained by Davis et. al. (2002)’s individual factors such as social comfort and diminished impulse control. Social comfort is when one uses Internet as a tool to increase one’s social network. One of the features on Second Life that exhibits this is how you can have people over and play games with them. Furthermore, diminished impulse control can be seen when some people blow off their children and jobs to spend more time on this “fantasy life”.

Caplan (2004)’s model, “suggests that lonely and depressed individuals may develop a preference for online social interaction, which, in turn, leads to negative outcomes associated with their Internet use.” (pg 625) This does hold true for Second Life as it gives individuals chance to create their own characters, displaying greater control over self presentation, and through CMC chat they can have more anonymity. If one is depressed and lonely they will hold negative perception about their social competence and Second Life gives them a chance to present themselves in an anonymous way. Moreover, this interaction can lead to a viscous cycle and present a problematic internet usage which will affect their school, life and work environment. And by reading the blog examples given above we do know that interactions on Second Life do affect real life for some people.

All in all, Second Life is a very fun but addictive tool where one can get absorbed and forget their real life. A unique property of this space is how closely it resembles real life, since people can have jobs, houses and even friends on this space. 

Conclusion
In conclusion, though Second Life continues to gain in popularity, we find that Second Life does more bad than good. Second Life provides people with too much freedom with regards to potentially harmful activities, mainly due to the conversion aspect to linden dollars into real U.S. dollars. People can be scammed to the point where losses in the game translate to losses in real life. The absolute freedom to customize every aspect of the game also creates opportunity for people to spread various forms of pornography, even illegal pornography, across Second Life. Better accountability from Linden Labs would be required in order to forge better security, and more lenient rules to improve the quality of the game. Such actions could also be entirely possible without taking away from the other benefits current available in game.