Having grown up in Tampa, I can personally attest to the uncanny level of weirdness that comes out out that town and state. Freaky Florida at its best. Exhibit A: the strange case of the stolen virtual sex bot.
Kevin Alderman, whom AP describes as a "46-year-old entrepreneur," wrote some code - in the scripting language of the Second Life virtual world - that allows residents to animate their avatars in a variety of sexual positions. Now he's suing the person behind an avatar named Volkov Catteneo for allegedly busting open the copy-protection and selling the randy wares on the Second Life black market.
Yes, this is funny: the sort of stuff you'd read in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. But of course it's also sort of a big deal. As virtual worlds grow more sophisticated, the stuff users are creating is maturing in tune. That means there will be more cases of piracy and theft, with more money at stake. The article quotes an intellectual-property attorney who says, "Virtually every aspect of real life is getting duplicated, and all the laws that can be applied to the real world are being applied in 'Second Life."
