Residents of the extremely popular MMPORG ‘Second Life’ have been up-in-their-virtual-arms since last week, after an in-game ‘tool’ was made available for download which not only threatens their virtual identities but also potentially their livelihoods’ reports InformationWeek.

CopyBot, which was initially designed as a debugging tool for the game’s developer Linden Lab, was reportedly modified and ‘leaked’ within the game. It has the ability to replicate people’s avatars as well as entire objects and in-game possessions.

The two main issues here are identity theft and stolen intellectual property. Nobody wants to have another ‘Bob’ wondering around who looks identical to them and could commit ‘crimes’ on their behalf which results in them getting kicked out of the game or worse, losing out on a date. Virtual ‘bling’ such as clothing and jewellery is bought and sold by avatars in the game on a frequent basis and considering that more than $7.4 million worth of business transactions took place within Second Life in September alone according to the InformationWeek article, one can start to see the ramifications of having your stock effectively cloned.

Apparently more than 600 shop owners in the game went on strike in protest of Linden Lab’s slow reaction to this threat and are threatening them with a class-action lawsuit. The question of democracy, and who really governs ‘their world’ has also become part of the debate with many Second Life residents arguing that Linden Lab has too much control over the game and are responsible for constant meddling.

The questions I ask are could we see a virtual revolt as this meme starts to take traction and would a game developer ever consider handing over their intellectual property ‘to the people’ to democratically govern? Probably not.