I have heard about this ground breaking internet community and have studied virtual communities at university, however the story on Four Corners last night did reveal issues that I had never thought about, including:

• How would a virtual Stock Exchange work within Second Life? However later I also thought that the real world stock exchange is pretty much virtual anyway – people buy and sell shares of a company, which give them no say about how the company is run and they don’t see any profit from the company (unless dividends are paid).
• I had also never thought about the law and order problems – Do laws exist in the virtual world? Are real world laws applied to the virtual world or are laws only defined by the EULA? Should real world police enforce laws within Second Life or should the game developers cover the cost?

In the next few months and years more people will be entering virtual worlds and you would think that crime would follow. Do you agree with this – would people in a virtual world commit crimes? Why?