This post covers background and tips on the economy of Second Life with a particular focus on how objects are owned and used. It was based on a query from one of attendees after the October 17th session: "If I buy an ambulance for $1.43, add it my inventory and use it, can I resell it if I find a faster, sleeker looking model a few months later?"
Second Life has an economy of its own based on Linden dollars for buying and selling land (i.e., space on the Linden Lab servers) and objects (i.e., digital assets that you or other people create). Both of these features work similar to the way they do in the real world when we buy and sell land, household and personal possessions but there are some difference. Read this wikipedia article to get more background on Second Life Economy and Real Estate. The section of the article that discusses creative rights and copyright is most relevant to answering our question.
Another piece of information that helps us our understanding is to know what the term privileges means in Second Life and how it affects objects that people create. Let's say you create a walkie talkie in Second Life. When you create it, you need to make three choices about the privileges for the walkie talkie object:
Can it be copied? (i.e, cloned)
Can it be modified? (i.e., changed).
Can it be transferred without restrictions to other Second Life residents?
In the case of your walkie talkie, if you said it could be copied, modified and transferred, others could use it, modify it and also give it away. When you buy an object, you want to look closely at the privileges if you plan to make copies of the object, change or share it with other people.
