As is often the case, Second Life has been in the news over the past week. The celebrated online community continues to gain traction with real-world businesses and advertisers, who are eager to cash in on the theoretical population of 7.2 million residents--many with deep (if virtual) pockets. In this piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, David Ranii runs down just a handful of these early adopters, including Reebok, Nissan, and Intel. He also quotes a 3-D Internet Champion (an actual job title) at IBM, who wants Big Blue to climb aboard the Second Life bandwagon as quickly as possible:


Where there's money, of course, there's eventually litigation. And according to Eric J. Sinrod's piece in Silicon.com, the ball has already gotten rolling. In a recent case, Bragg v. Linden, a plaintiff sued the website's proprietors--Linden Research and CEO Philip Rosedale--for confiscating a piece of virtual real estate he had bought, freezing his additional assets, and subsequently barring him from Second Life itself.