It’s your classic chicken/egg question with digital hooves, digital mares and digital peanut butter between the gums

While SG has covered Second Life before, we don’t tend to cover it a lot simply because it’s just too goddamn weird for this planet. I mean, it may not even be an actual video game, so much as a place to give up your money and then find someone to sue.

The latest one concerns two makers of virtual animals, specifically ponies and bunnies. They’re locked in a lawsuit over who copied whose digital meaningless crap first. One litigant’s demands were particularly cruel, or hilarious, depending on your point of view. They asked that Linden Labs shut down the store of the alleged infringer, which would have shut down the feed supply for the virtual horses, which would starve them to death. Linden said no thanks.

But lo, there is a human victim, a woman who lives in upstate New York who cares for one of the animals in jeopardy. While Linden hasn’t shut down the feed store, that’s still the aim of Ozimals, Inc. which is a virtual bunny ranch (no, not that kind) that claims Amaretto Ranch Breedables, the horse farm, copied its intellectual property. A judge recently ruled that the suit could go forward but did not grant Ozimals’ wish to starve the ponies.

I don’t understand anything anymore. That sound you heard was my brain exploding.

Surprisingly enough, it’s not all that shocking

A lawsuit filed in Arizona on April 17 charges Second Life creator Linden Lab and a slew of other individuals for trademark infringement on TASER’s handheld self-defense device.

CHUNG-CHUNG.

The big deal in this case, though, is why TASER is suing Linden Lab instead of the content creators. The answer to that, according to the analysis of the official complaint, is because Linden Lab bought XStreet SL a while ago. That means:

…the Lab is no longer mediating transactions between buyers and sellers. Xstreet SL arguably retails on behalf of sellers, and takes a commission. It’s going to be difficult to argue that the Lab/Xstreet SL is not selling these items.

CHUNG-CHUNG

SG’s guess? TASER would most probably rather sue the guys with some actual money (internet space-bucks or not), rather than the actual (penniless) infringers themselves.

Life can be stranger than fiction

For anyone in that case, there’s the computer game “Second Life”. However, stories involving “Second Life” always tend to be more surreal than normal. This one is no exception.

A woman wanted for the attempted kidnap of her ex-Second Life boyfriend has been caught after a search that spread across several states. 33-year-old Kimberly Jernigan had an online affair with a 52-year-old man via Second Life, and when he ended the relationship, she became quite distressed … as well as demented. It always works out that way, right?

The relationship ended after the pair had met in real life (likely meaning she didn’t resemble her Second Life avatar enough), and in the beginning of August, Kimberly allegedly drove to her ex-boyfriend’s Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap the man at gunpoint. Apparently she couldn’t even manage that successfully, and had to come back two weeks later and track him down to his Delaware home, posing as a postal worker to find his address. After cutting and removing a screened window to gain entry to the man’s house, she lay in wait for him with a set of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, a taser, a BB gun and her dog Gogi.

Her foolproof scheme failed after the man simply ran away, having entered to find a laser beam pointed at his chest. Kimberley had fled soon after, but her dog was discovered bound in duct tape and abandoned in the bathroom to stop him making noise. She was found an hour later in Maryland and taken into custody after a “brief struggle” at a rest stop. For all we know, being bound in duct tape like a dog may be something possible in the Second Life world.