Virtual Terrorism - the Second Life Liberation Army
From the web site of the Second Life Liberation Army :
The Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA) was formed as the ‘in-world’ military wing of a national liberation movement within Second Life. The movement contends that univeral suffrage is a right that should be established within Second Life immediately. As Linden Labs is functioning as an authoritarian government the only appropriate response is to fight. To this end the political movement has dissolved itself and handed over interim power to the SLLA Army council headed by it Chief of Staff. When the SLLA succeeds in its aims it will disband and hand power back to the political wing of the movement. For the time being all military decisions will be taken by the SLLA Chief of Staff and implemented by SLLA fighters.
The SLLA has been exploding “push guns” or virtual bomb blasts that temporarily cloud over the screen so that you can’t see your avatars or anything around them.
From a story on this from the AFP, one of their major demands is for Second Life’s developer, Linden Labs, to go public and allow users to buy shares of stock–claiming this as a “basic right” of Second Lifers.
Is rebellion the same as terrorism? How about on Second Life, where violence has been technologically curbed? In the absence of courts, in a virtual world controlled by a private company, how can virtual citizens demand their rights, especially if they’re in a minority?
Apparently, there was an attempt to establish courts–the Second Life Superior Court–but I haven’t been following this enough to see if there has been anything established. The blog post linked above is over a year old, and it’s the only mention of it from a Google search, so maybe it’s defunct.