For many people with very little going on in their lives,Second Lifeis a great retreat, a place where they can be anyone they want. Or at least, itwas. New rules are being put into place that willstopSecond Lifeusersfrom creating avatars of existing people, with Barack Obama and Angelina Jolie specifically referenced.
Second Lifepublisher Linden Labs was sued earlier this year by TASAR Inc. over a trademark dispute. It would appear that, while the suit was dropped, Linden is taking no chances and making sure that similar legal difficulties don’t arise in future.
Quite how Linden Labs will enforce this, however, I don’t know. For a start, it’s not actuallyillegalto create likenesses of real people. Even if it were, however, I don’t envy the people who now have to troll throughSecond Life‘s huge userbase, trying to eliminate anything and everything that might be fall under their new prohibition. Something tells me there will be a lot of Obamas out there, and Linden’s not going to catch ’em all.
