secondlife.com/whatis/land.php

On the front page it says “Get” virtual land, as if you can no longer “own” it. But inside, on this instructional page, it says “own virtual land”.

Benjamin Duranske, ever the legend in his own mind, is not performing any rocket science here. Many people, even not being “lawyers,” will have instantly grasped that it has to do with the Bragg case, and the challenge to the rhetoric about ownership. And it may be that the Lindens haven’t gotten around to fixing these inner pages yet, and they bear watching.

What’s more important than Bragg driving the new TOS drop-down and the removal of this rhetoric is the announcement about the new grid plan, open architecture, and open source. Because the Lindens want to make sure, when they go open source and devalue land and content completely, and disrupt the resident-created economy, that they will not have to face any significant lawsuits — lawsuits that will have a lot more community support and legitimacy than Bragg’s. They will both make it easy to pay off some smaller suits should they legitimately arise, and make it harder for those with larger holdings and creation to litigate without facing some losses.

You don’t own the right to land where an apartment is, that’s misguided. You own the access to your condo in that building complex. Owning a condo indeed is a lot like owning the server space in SL.