WikiPortallus: Second Life.html

Second Life (abbreviated as SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab which launched on June 23, 2003 and accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid. Second Life caters for users aged over eighteen, while its sister site Teen Second Life is restricted to users aged between thirteen and eighteen.

Built into the client is a simple primitive based three dimensional modeling tool that allows any resident to build virtual objects. This can be used in combination with a scripting language called Linden Scripting Language which can be used to add functionality to objects. More complex three dimensional Sculpted prims, colloquially known as sculpties, textures for clothing or other objects, and animations and gestures, can be created using external software. The Second Life Terms of Service ensure that users retain copyright for any content they create, and the server and client provide simple Digital rights management functions.

Second Life has an internal currency, the Linden dollar (L$). L$ can be used to trade goods, land and services with other users. Virtual goods include buildings, vehicles, devices of all kinds, animations, clothing, skin, hair, jewelry, flora and fauna, and works of art. Land in Second Life is a valuable and scarce commodity and can be bought, sold or rented. Users may also offer items or services to other users in exchange for L$; services include "camping", working in stores, business management, entertainment (which prominently includes adult entertainment), custom content creation, and other personal services. L$ is usually purchased from other users with real-world currency; Linden Lab and others offer a brokerage service for these transactions. The most popular usage for the exchange of L$ for US$ is in order to pay Second Life's subscription fees. In spite of attracting large volumes of press coverage, only a very small percentage of Residents derive a net income from the economy.

In 2008, Second Life was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for advancing the development of online sites with user-generated content. Philip Rosedale, President of Linden Lab, accepted the award.

History

Although many people have assumed that the inspiration for Second Life originated from Philip Rosedale's exposure to Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash, he has suggested that his vision of virtual worlds predates that book and that he conducted some early virtual world experiments during his college years at the University of California San Diego, where he studied physics.¹

Rosedale formed Linden Lab in 1999. His initial focus was on the development of hardware that would enable computer users to be fully immersed in a 360 degree virtual world experience. In its earliest form, the company struggled to produce a commercial version of "The Rig," which was realized in prototype form as a clunky steel contraption with several computer monitors that users could wear on their shoulders.² That vision soon morphed into the software-based application Linden World, where computer users could participate in task-based games and socialization in a 3D online environment. That effort would eventually transform into the better-known, user-centered Second Life.

During a 2001 meeting with investors, Rosedale noticed that the participants were particularly responsive to the collaborative, creative potential of Second Life. As a result, the initial objective-driven, gaming focus of Second Life was shifted to a more user-created, community-driven experience.³

At the beginning of September, 2008, just over 15 million accounts were registered, although there are no reliable figures for actual long term consistent usage. In January 2008, residents spent 28,274,505 hours "inworld", so on average about 38,000 residents were logged on at any particular moment.⁴ Despite its prominence, Second Life has notable competitors, including Entropia Universe, IMVU, There, Active Worlds, Kaneva, and the erotic-oriented Red Light Center.

Recent developments

Cory Ondrejka, who helped program Second Life, resigned as chief technology officer on December 11, 2007. On March 14, 2008, Philip Rosedale announced plans to step down from his position as Linden Lab CEO. He became chairman of Linden Lab board of directors.⁵ Rosedale announced Mark Kingdon as the new CEO effective May 15, 2008.

On July 8, 2008, Mitch Kapor, the chairman of the board of Linden Labs, sparked controversy with his keynote speech at the Second Life in-world 5th birthday celebration by apparently disparaging the current user base of Second Life:

Classification

Second Life's status as a virtual world, a computer game, or a talker, is frequently debated. Unlike a traditional computer game, Second Life does not contain a single objective, nor traditional game play mechanics, and arguably does not contain winners and losers (although some avatars are more successful than others). Likewise, unlike a traditional talker, Second Life contains an extensive world that can be explored and interacted with, and can be used purely as a creative toolset if the user chooses. However, the vast majority of users use Second Life primarily as an entertainment medium, and for most of them the ability to interact with other users is critical to that (meeting the definition of a talker); "clubs" where users engage in generic chat, and sexually themed areas, are consistently the most populated.

Residents and Avatars

Creating a Second Life account, and making use of the world for any period of time, is free. Linden Lab reserves the right to charge for the creation of large numbers of multiple accounts for a single person⁷ but at present does not do so. A Premium membership (US$9.95 per month) facilitates access to an increased level of technical support, and provides a stipend of L$300/week.

The basic avatar is human in appearance, but may be of either sex, have a wide range of physical attributes, and may be clothed or otherwise customized to produce a wide variety of humanoid and other forms. Avatars may be creative or can be made to resemble the person whom they represent.⁸ A single Resident account may have only one avatar at a time, although the appearance of this avatar can change between as many different forms as the Resident wishes. A single person may also have multiple accounts, and thus appear to be multiple Residents (a person's multiple accounts are referred to as alts).

A Resident's identity is generally less anonymous in Second Life than in other virtual worlds. Any avatar and any object in the world can establish whether or not real payment info is on file for his or her avatar,⁹ although they cannot access any personal details from this payment information; this was implemented to provide age verification and also to enable users to distinguish between established paid-for accounts and free alts which can be thrown away at any moment. Some in-world services also require the resident to disclose his or her real name or other personal data to different source, although this is voluntary and hence the resident can choose not to use the services which require such disclosures.

Avatars communicate via local chat, and global "instant messaging" (known as IM). Chatting is used for public localized conversations between two or more avatars; the range of avatars reached is determined by location in the world. IM is used for private conversations, either between two avatars, or among the members of a group, or even between objects and avatars. Unlike chatting, IM communication does not depend on the participants being within a certain distance of each other. As of version 1.18.1.2, voice chat, both local and IM, is also available on the main grid¹⁰ and teen grid using technology licensed by Vivox,¹¹ a provider of similar services to other MMO worlds. Only avatars can use voice chat.

Avatars and objects can send and receive email as well, although this functionality is rather limited and not widely used.¹² Instant Messages roll over to an avatar's "real life" email when he or she is logged off (if the avatar has opted into this service and has provided a valid email address.)

Localization

Although Second Life has a large American customer base (approximately thirty five percent of total users as of December 2008)^{citation needed}, it also has a wide variety of non-U.S. and non-English-speaking customers, and localized versions of the Second Life viewer are available for several languages. Sixty five percent of Second Life's active users (as measured by avatar count or active hours) are thus from outside the USA, with Germany, Japan, Australia, the UK, France, and Italy (and also Brazil when measured by avatar count only) being the origins of the next band of most active users with between 5% and 10% of total users and activity each.¹³ In 2007, Brazil became the first country to have its own independently run portal to Second Life, operated by an intermediary—although the actual Second Life grid accessed through the Brazilian portal is the same as that used by the rest of the worldwide customer base. The portal, called "Mainland Brazil", is run by Kaizen Games, making Kaizen the first partner in Linden's "Global Provider Program".¹⁴ In October 2007, Linden Lab signed second "Global Provider Program" with T-Entertainment Co., LTD., Seoul, Korea and T-Entertainment's portal called "SERA Korea" serves as gateway to Second Life Grid. Previously, starting in late 2005, Linden Lab had opened and run their own welcome area portals and regions for German, Korean and Japanese language speakers.¹⁵

Land Ownership

Premium membership allows the Resident to own land, with the first 512m² free of the usual monthly Land Use Fee (referred to by residents as Tier, because it is charged in tiers). There is no upper limit on tier; at the highest level, the user pays US$195 for their first 65536m², and then US$97.50 per each additional 32768m² of land.¹⁶ Any land must first be purchased from either Linden Lab or a private seller.

There are three types of land regions; Mainland, Private Region and Openspace. A region comprises an area of 65536m² (16.1943 acres) in area, being 256 meters on each side. Mainland regions form one continuous land mass, while Private regions are islands. Openspace regions may be either Mainland or Private, but have lower prim limits and traffic use levels than Mainland regions. The owners of a Private region enjoy access to some additional controls that are not available to mainland owners, for example they have a greater ability to alter the shape of the land. Residents must own a region (either Mainland or Private) to qualify for purchasing an Openspace region.

Linden Lab usually sells only complete 65536m² (16.1943 acres) regions at auction (although smaller parcels are auctioned on occasion, typically land parcels abandoned by users who have left). Once a Resident buys land they may resell it freely and use it for any purpose that it is not prohibited by the Second Life Terms of Service.

Residents may also choose to purchase, or rent, land from another Resident (a Resident landlord) rather than from Linden Lab. On a Private region, the built in land selling controls allow the landlord to to sell land in the region to another Resident while still retaining some control. Residents purchasing, or renting, land from any other party than Linden Lab are not required to hold a Premium membership nor to necessarily pay a Tier fee, although typically the landlord will require some form of upfront and/or monthly fee to compensate them for their liability to pay the Land Use Fee charged by Linden Lab. However Linden Lab acknowledges only the landlord as the owner of the land, and will not intervene in disputes between Residents. This means, for example, that a landlord can withdraw a Resident's land from availability, without refunding their money, and Linden Lab will not arbitrate in the dispute.

Second Life Fee Schedule

For Mainland fees, the fee determines only the area of land available; the number of prims available is determined by the land itself. The values shown above are the norm but some rare mainland regions offer more prims in the same land area. For non-mainland fees, the fee sets both the land area and the prim count.

Technology

Second Life comprises the viewer (also known as the client) executing on the user's personal computer, and several thousand servers operated by Linden Lab.

Client

Linden Lab provides official viewers for Microsoft Windows 2000 / XP, Mac OS X, and most distributions of Linux. A third-party version is available for Solaris and OpenSolaris. Since the viewer is open source,¹⁸¹⁹ users may recompile it to create their own custom viewers; modified viewer software is available from third parties. The most popular is the Nicholaz Edition;²⁰ this viewer, produced by Nicholaz Beresford, includes bug fixes developed outside Linden Lab that are not yet included in the Linden Lab code. The Electric Sheep Company has introduced the OnRez Viewer,²¹ which makes substantial changes to the design of the user interface. ShoopedLife is a Second Life client that generates randomized hardware details and sends them to the Second Life server as part of the login, rendering the user anonymous, save for their IP address.²²

An independent project, libsecondlife,²³ offers a function library for interacting with Second Life servers. libsecondlife has been used to create non-graphic third party viewers, including SLEEK,²⁴ a text browser using.NET, and Ajaxlife,²⁴ a text viewer that runs in a web browser.

In February 2008²⁵ a partnership between Linden Lab and Vollee was announced. In May,²⁶ Vollee launched an open Beta trial for a Second Life mobile application that lets Residents travel and communicate in-world by logging in from a handset using an existing account. The service, introduced for free, requires downloading a thin client to a 3G or Wi-Fi enabled handset.

A special beta client is available, which is updated very regularly, and is used for constant software testing by volunteers. The beta client connects to a "beta grid" which consists of a limited number of regions mirrored at regular intervals from the real grid. The mirroring process overwrites any changes made on the beta grid, and thus actions taken within it are not stored by the servers; it is for testing purposes only. Every few months, the standard software is replaced by the beta-grid software, intended as a big upgrade. The Second Life user-base is growing rapidly, and this has stimulated both social and technological changes to the world; the addition of new features also provides periodic boosts to the growth of the economy.

Server

Each region in the Second Life "grid" runs on a single core of a multi-core server, running proprietary software based on Debian. These servers run scripts in the region, as well as providing communication between avatars and objects present in the region.

Every item in the Second Life universe is referred to as an asset. This includes the shapes of the 3D objects known as primitives, the digital images referred to as textures that decorate primitives, digitized audio clips, avatar shape and appearance, avatar skin textures, LSL scripts, information written on notecards, and so on. Each asset is referenced with a universally unique identifier or UUID.²⁷

Assets are stored in their own dedicated MySQL server farm, comprising all data that has ever been created by anyone who has been in the SL world. As of December 2007, the total storage was estimated to consume 100 terabytes of server capacity.²⁸ The asset servers function independently of the region simulators, though the region simulators request object data from the asset servers when a new object loads into the simulator.^{citation needed}

Each server instance runs a physics simulation to manage the collisions and interactions of all objects in that region. Objects can be nonphysical and non moving, or actively physical and movable. Complex shapes may be linked together in groups of up to 255 separate primitives. Additionally, each player's avatar is treated as a physical object so that it may interact with physical objects in the world.²⁹ As of April 1, 2008, Second Life simulators use the Havok 4 physics engine for all in-world dynamics. This engine is capable of simulating thousands of physical objects at once.³⁰

Linden Lab pursues the use of open standards technologies, and uses free and open source software such as Apache, MySQL and Squid.³¹ The plan is to move everything to open standards by standardizing the Second Life protocol. Cory Ondrejka, former CTO³² of Second Life, has stated that a while after everything has been standardized, both the client and the server will be released as free and open source software.³³

OpenSimulator

In January 2007 OpenSimulator was founded as an open source simulator project. The aim of this project is to develop a full open source server software for Second Life clients. OpenSIM is BSD Licensed and it is written in C# and can run under Mono environment. The community is fast growing and there are some existing alternative Second Life grids³⁴ which are using OpenSimulator.

Criticism and controversy

Child pornography

There have been a handful of cases in which users in Second Life were found to have been creating or exchanging child pornography, which has led it to be a common target for media outlets.³⁵ This includes both real-life photographs and virtual recreations of pornographic scenes involving children, which are illegal in many countries.

Sexual activities and pornography

Linden Lab has taken action by disallowing sexual ageplay activities between avatars, amongst other rule changes to police the issue.³⁶ Banning the content directly is not possible, as such content can be created by having a child avatar run a sexual animation intended for adults; neither the avatar nor the animation is illegal (or against TOS) on its own, and their combination does not represent a separate asset. The ban on sexual ageplay has caused difficulty due to the full customizability of Second Life avatars; there is no prescribed way to set or determine the age of an avatar, and it is easy to create an avatar which has the height and stature of an adult but appears child-like with regard to body development (or vice versa), and a person's belief regarding the age their avatar appears to be may not match the belief of other people.

A further issue has arisen with the possibility of underage users accessing adult material on Second Life. Although the Terms of Service state that a user must be over 18 to register a Second Life (as opposed to Teen Second Life) account, they also state Linden Lab makes no legal guarantee that all users of the world are over 18. In response to the fears of residents that they or Linden Lab may be sued if an underage user entered any adult area they had been created,³⁷ an age-verification system was added enabling residents to further limit access to mature content.³⁸ Virtual landowners may flag their parcels as "adults only" and block those that have not completed this process. Participation in this program is currently voluntary, though there is no assurance that this feature will always be so,³⁸ and the program has raised further doubts concerning the need to disclose personal information to verify age³⁹ and the actual effectiveness of such age verification.⁴⁰³⁷ Finally, limiting access to a parcel only prevents the avatar entering the parcel; its content can still be viewed from outside by moving the camera.

A further greater concern is that, although the age verification process is voluntary, an account that has not been age verified can be instantly locked out of the world if another user files a report to Linden Lab that the owner of the account is underage. The user is then required to complete age verification or remain suspended from Second Life, losing all money and content they had in the world. Since the user cannot log in to Second Life, doing so requires them to contact Linden Lab by fax or postal mail or contacting the Support Portal at Secondlife.com.

Bragg v. Linden Lab

In 2006, attorney Marc Bragg initiated a lawsuit against Linden Lab, claiming that they had illegally deprived him of access to his account⁴¹ after he discovered a loophole in the online land auction system which allowed regions to be purchased at prices below reserve. Although most users and commentators believed that Bragg would have no chance of winning, a number of legal developments occurred as a result of the case, including a court ruling that parts of the Second Life Terms of Service were unenforceable, due to being an unconscionable contract of adhesion.⁴² The case eventually ended with Bragg's land and account being restored to him in a confidential out-of-court settlement.⁴³ As such, a settlement created no precedent and thus left users with confusion as to what legal rights they truly had with respect to their virtual land, items, and account. Many of Bragg's legal arguments rested on the claim—advertised on Linden Lab web site—that virtual land within Second Life could be "owned" by the purchasing user, which was removed shortly after the settlement,⁴⁴ leading to speculation that this was part of the reason for the settlement.⁴⁵

Regulation

In the past, large portions of the Second Life economy comprised businesses that are now regulated or banned. Changes to Second Life's Terms of Service in this regard have largely had the purpose of bringing activity within Second Life into compliance with various international laws, even though the person running the business may be in full compliance with the law in his own country. Typically, Linden Lab offer no compensation for businesses that are damaged or destroyed by these rule changes, which can render significant expenditure or effort worthless.

On July 26, 2007, Linden Lab announced a ban on in-world gambling, in fear that new regulations on internet gambling could affect Linden Lab if it was permitted to continue. The ban was immediately met with in-world protests.⁴⁶

In August 2007, a $750,000 in-world bank called Ginko Financial collapsed due to a bank run triggered by Linden Lab's ban on gambling, which halved the size of the Second Life economy. The aftershocks of this collapse caused severe liquidity problems for other virtual "banks," which critics^who? had long asserted were scams. On Tuesday, January 8, 2008 Linden Lab announced the upcoming prohibition of payment of fixed interest on cash deposits in unregulated banking activities in-world.⁴⁷ All banks without real-world charters closed or converted to virtual joint stock companies on January 22, 2008.⁴⁸ After the ban, a few companies continue to offer non-interest bearing deposit accounts to residents, such as the e-commerce site OnRez, and Ancapistan Capital Exchange, which had already adopted a zero-interest policy three months prior to the LL interest ban.

Technical issues

Due to Second Life's rapid growth rate, it has suffered from difficulties related to system instability. These include system lag, and intermittent client crashes. However, more disturbing faults are caused by the system's use of an "asset server" cluster, on which the actual data governing objects is stored separately from the areas of the world and the avatars that use those objects. The communication between the main servers and the asset cluster appears to constitute a bottleneck which frequently causes problems.⁴⁹⁵⁰⁵¹ Typically, when asset server downtime is announced, users are advised not to build, manipulate objects, or engage in business, leaving them with little to do but chat and generally reducing confidence in all businesses on the grid.

A more disturbing fault, believed to be caused by the same issue, is "inventory loss"⁵²⁵³⁵⁴ in which items in a user's inventory, including those which have been paid for, can disappear without warning or permanently enter a state where they will fail to appear in world when requested (giving an "object missing from database" error). Linden Lab offers no compensation for items that are lost in this way, and will not even record the data for debugging purposes if the user is not a Premium subscriber;⁵⁵ although many in-world businesses will attempt to compensate for this or restore items, they are under no obligation to do so and not all are able to do so.

Alternate accounts

The policy allowing the easy creation of multiple accounts by the same real person is alleged to have resulted in degraded system performance, and increased incidence of griefing. In addition, several users argued that the ability for single real individual to create an unlimited number of accounts for free had the effect of highly exaggerating the "residence" figures, pointing out that the actual activity of the board was roughly nine percent of the claimed residency figures, with paying membership below two percent. Blogs and forum posts regularly allege exaggerated membership and performance claims.⁵⁶⁵⁷

Fraud and intellectual property protection

Although Second Life's client and server incorporate Digital Rights Management technology, the visual data of an object must ultimately be sent to the client in order for it to be drawn; thus unofficial third-party clients can bypass them. One such program, CopyBot, was developed in 2006 as a debugging tool to enable objects to be backed up, but was immediately hijacked for use in copying objects; additionally, programs that generally attack client-side processing of data, such as GLIntercept, can copy certain pieces of data. Such use is prohibited under the Second Life TOS ⁵⁸ and may be prosecuted under the DMCA.

However, Linden Lab may ban a user who is observed using CopyBot or a similar client, but they will not ban a user simply for uploading or even selling copied content; in this case, Linden Lab's enforcement of intellectual property law is limited to that required by the "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which requires filing a real-life lawsuit. Although a few high-profile businesses in Second Life have filed such lawsuits,⁵⁹ the majority of businesses in Second Life do not make enough money for a lawsuit to be worthwhile, or due to real-life work commitments cannot devote enough time to complete one; thus, they are effectively unprotected.

There have also been issues with the use of false DMCA takedown notices.⁶⁰ Once a DMCA takedown notice is served, reversing it requires an individual to expose their personal information to the filer (filing a notice does not require this); for the penalty of perjury to be enacted, a lawsuit is required. In addition, the technical process of removal and re-instatement of content on Second Life is subject to failure which can result in content becoming unusable to its owner. This does not effectively prevent content theft; a thief who is subject to a DMCA takedown notice will not challenge it, but will simply create a new account and re-upload the content, often releasing it with all permissions available to maximize propagation "in revenge".

Most users in the world as paying, private individuals are, likewise, effectively unprotected. Common forms of fraud taking place in-world include bogus investment and pyramid schemes, fake or hacked vendors, and failure to honor land rental agreements. Some residents have claimed that there is also a high incidence of sales of content to users unaware of its value (for example, weapons which would require the buyer to own a private island, as firing them in any other area would violate the terms of service; or avatars which appear to represent advanced roles but which, in reality, are nothing more than party costumes due to the inability to support those roles in a world with free social behaviour).

OpenSpaces

Linden Lab, for a long period, offered OpenSpace regions to users: regions which were purchased in packs of 4, with all 4 running on a single CPU core, intended to be placed next to an existing region to create the effect of larger size. The fee for 4 OpenSpaces was identical to that for a single private region. However, in March 2008, this rule was modified to permit OpenSpaces to be bought individually and placed elsewhere, as well as increasing the prim load each one could handle. OpenSpaces were made available for a US$415 downpayment plus a US$75 monthly fee. (The equivalent monthly fee on Mainland would buy one quarter of a region, with the same number of prims, in less space.) This deal was so attractive that it quickly redefined land usage on the grid, with many resident land dealers purchasing or converting existing land to OpenSpaces; residents also began to use OpenSpaces for multiple purposes, including housing, for which they appeared to run well, but which were against the published guidelines for usage of the product.

In October 2008 Linden Lab announced that the OpenSpaces being used for this purpose were being misused; there was in fact no technical throttle limiting their usage, so the apparent "running well" had been achieved by taking resources from the OpenSpaces on the same CPU core. This was the first time that LL had commented on the issue. No apparent attempt had been made to resolve the technical problems being caused by the popularity of the product. Linden Lab raised the monthly fee per OpenSpace to US$125, the same cost as half a region; added an avatar limit of 20; and renamed it to Homestead. This reversed the perceived benefits of owning such a sim (the fee equivalent, half a region, would have double the space but twice as many prims, and no avatar or script limits).

A week after the initial announcement, and following a widespread revolt, Linden Labs also stated its intention to add technical limits, though these are yet to be announced. A revised Openspace product, with far fewer prims, a no-residency rule, and costing the same monthly amount, was announced; in the opinion of some owners, this reversed the previous value situation, offering four times the space of the mainland equivalent but with a significant prim reduction (the new OpenSpaces had only the prim allowance of 1/20 of a region) and a 10 avatar limit. The LL forums indicate that many regions are set to close in January 2009 and it is likely LL will see a considerable shrinkage in land, income, and avatar use over the coming quarter.

This new policy has resulted in many protests in welcome areas, help islands, and other official Linden regions, at Linden Lab staff 'office hours' events, and the formation of advocacy groups. Some users were banned by Linden Lab from SL for using the protests to block new avatars from logging into SL via the help islands. The primary protest group, +SOS+ (Save our OpenSpaces) has organized as a 501c3 Non-Profit in Iowa as The Grid Representation Foundation to operate as an advocate for avatar rights and to pursue possible legal remedies for what is seen by group members as illegal action in the Openspace policy.

Marketing

Second Life has been attacked for the use of various marketing techiques, which are frequently seen as dishonest. These include:

Applications

Education

Second Life is used as a platform for education by many institutions, such as colleges, universities, libraries and government entities. There are over one hundred regions used for educational purposes covering subjects such as chemistry⁶¹ and English.⁶² ⁶³ Instructors and researchers in Second Life favor it because it is more personal than traditional distance learning.⁶⁴ Research has uncovered development, teaching and/or learning activities which use Second Life in over 80 percent of UK Universities.⁶⁵ At least 300 universities around the world teach courses or conduct research in SL.⁶⁶New educational institutions have also emerged that operate exclusively within Second Life⁶⁷, taking advantage of the platform to deliver a high quality service to a world wide audience at low cost⁶⁸.

Info Islands uses library programming sponsored by the Illinois' Alliance Library System and OPAL currently offered online to librarians and library users within Second Life. Another virtual continent called SciLands is devoted to science and technology education. While initially centered around the International Spaceflight Museum, it now hosts a number of organizations including NASA, NOAA, NIH, JPL, NPR, NPL, and a host of other government agencies, universities, and museums. Second Life has also been adopted for foreign language training,⁶⁹the first to do so was Languagelab.com in 2005⁷⁰ with schools such as the British Council (focused on the Teen Grid), the Instituto Cervantes and the Goethe Institut. The annual conference SLanguages is dedicated to language learning in Second Life.

Second Life's usefulness as a platform for pre-k-12 education is limited due to the age restrictions on the main grid and the difficulties of collaborating among various educational projects on the teen grid. New approaches to fostering collaboration on the teen grid, such as the Virtual World Campus, offer some hope of overcoming some of these obstacles. For now, however, the primary utility of Second Life for pre-k-12 education is in the education and professional development of teachers and school librarians. Still, K-12 educators use Second Life to meet each other and to create objects and structures that help them develop curriculum, as EnergyTeachers.org does with its Sustainability Energy Science Lab.

Religion

Religious organizations have also begun to open virtual meeting places within Second Life. In early 2007, LifeChurch.tv, a Christian church headquartered in Edmond, Oklahoma, and with eleven campuses in the USA, created "Experience Island" and opened its twelfth campus in Second Life.⁷¹ The church reported "We find that this creates a less-threatening environment where people are much more willing to explore and discuss spiritual things".^{citation needed} In July of 2007, an Anglican cathedral⁷² was established in Second Life; Mark Brown, the head of the group that built the cathedral, noted that there is "an interest in what I call depth, and a moving away from light, fluffy Christianity".⁷³

Egyptian owned news website Islam Online has purchased land in Second Life to allow Muslims and non-Muslims alike to perform the ritual of Hajj in virtual reality form, obtaining experience before actually making the pilgrimage themselves in person.⁷⁴

Embassies

The Maldives was the first country to open an embassy in Second Life.⁷⁵⁷⁶ The Maldives' embassy is located on Second Life's "Diplomacy Island", where visitors will be able to talk face-to-face with a computer-generated ambassador about visas, trade and other issues. "Diplomacy Island" also hosts Diplomatic Museum and Diplomatic Academy. The Island is established by DiploFoundation as part of the Virtual Diplomacy Project.⁷⁷

In May 2007,⁷⁸ Sweden became the second country to open an embassy in Second Life. Run by the Swedish Institute, the embassy serves to promote Sweden's image and culture, rather than providing any real or virtual services.⁷⁹ The Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Carl Bildt, stated on his blog that he hoped he would get an invitation to the grand opening.⁸⁰

In September 2007, Publicis Group announced the project of creating a Serbia island as a part of a project Serbia Under Construction. The project is officially supported by Ministry of Diaspora of Serbian Government. It was stated that the island will feature Nikola Tesla Museum, Guča trumpet festival and Exit festival.⁸¹ It was also planned on opening a virtual info terminals of Ministry of Diaspora.⁸²

On Tuesday December 4, 2007, Estonia became the third country to open an embassy in Second Life.⁸³⁸⁴ In September 2007, Colombia and Serbia opened an Embassy.⁸⁵ As of 2008, Macedonia and the Philippines have opened Embassies in the "Diplomatic Island" of Second Life.⁸⁶ In 2008, Albania opened an Embassy in the Nova Bay location. SL Israel was inaugurated in January 2008 in an effort to showcase Israel to a global audience, though without any connection to official Israeli diplomatic channels.⁸⁷

Malta and the African country Djibouti are also planning to open virtual missions in Second Life.⁸⁸

Live sport entertainment

Popular forms of live entertainment have been making their appearance in Second Life. Many sports have appeared, allowing residents to watch or participate in many popular activities. Sporting leagues have sprung up for American football, Football, boxing, and auto racing.

Professional wrestling has also found its way into Second Life. One of Second Life's largest live entertainment organizations, Second Life Championship Wrestling, puts on weekly shows, as well as daily exhibitions for residents to watch.

Arts

The virtual creations from the metaverse are disclosed in real life by initiatives such as Fabjectory (statuettes)⁸⁹ and Secondlife-Art.com (oil paintings).⁹⁰ The modeling tools from Second Life allow the artists also to create new forms of art, that in many ways are not possible in real life due to physical constraints or high associated costs. The virtual arts are visible in over 2050 "museums" (according to SL's own search engine).⁹¹

Live music performances in Second Life takes place in two distinctly different ways;

Linden Lab added an Event Category "Live Music" in March 2006 to accommodate the increasing number of scheduled events. By the beginning of 2008, scheduled live music performance events in Second Life spanned every musical genre, and included hundreds of live musicians and DJs who perform on a regular basis. A typical day in Second Life will feature dozens of live music performances.

Live theater is also being presented in Second Life. The SL Shakespeare Company ⁹² will be performing Hamlet live at the end of 2008. The first scene of Hamlet was produced as a kind of trailer in February, 2008.

In 2007 Johannes von Matuschka and Daniel Michelis developed Wunderland, an interactive SL theatre play at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin, Germany.⁹³

In 2008 the UK act Redzone announced they would release their new live album only via Second Life.⁹⁴

References in popular culture

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Public appearances in the grid

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