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It seems that the Second Life client can be made to connect to open servers run by anyone. If that's the case, then what will maintain the Second Life market structure? A lot of their income came from land (which you had to pay a monthly fee to own), but if you can now go to an open server for your land where there's no charge (or run your own), what will Linden do?

Even worse, if the only thing keeping people from copying items is a terms of service agreement, what's to stop someone from doing it on a completely open server? This is also great news for those involved in virtual sexual deviance ("age-play" for example) who will now be able to do what they wish without interference.

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Someone has finally sued second life for "seizing" his assets. Linden shut down his account and removed the rights to his property.

Considering that Linden sells virtual property in online auctions for real money, this would seem like a fairly strong case on the part of the player… if it wasn't for the fact that the guy got the property through cheating the auction site.

Anyway, it should be interesting to see how this plays out. One thing's for sure, if this guy wins, virtual land will become solidly a real-world asset. I'm not looking forward to the IRS taxing game playing.