Second Life's stand on Intellectual Property

Phil Torrone writes in email:

this is an interesting story, someone made a game called "tringo" in second life (an online multiplayer game) - tringo is like bingo and tetris all in one. in the virtual world it was a huge hit, and now cell phone companies and gameboy game publishers are licensing it from the creator in the virtual world.

we might see the virtual worlds become a focus group of sorts for developers of games.

the "big" story here (i think) is second life allows players own everything they make and create. it's creating businesses.

"Linden Lab Preserves Real World Intellectual Property Rights of Users of its Second Life Online Service Linden Lab, creator of online world Second Life , today announced a significant breakthrough in digital property rights for its customers and for users of online worlds. Changes to Second Life's Terms of Service now recognize the ownership of in-world content by the subscribers who make it. The revised TOS allows subscribers to retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs."

if you look at all the other multiplayer games as well as other online sites where users create content, their approach is the opposite and you don't own anything.