I apologize in advance for the morbid nature of this article. I got to thinking about how some residents get tired of SL and leave, sometimes not bothering to delete their account. Sometimes the real people behind the avatars die. My wondering led me to consider what happens to the property of these people once they're gone.

It's against the TOS to operate someone else's account, so logging in as someone else to transfer their possessions over to your account is illegal in SL. Not to mention all those non-transferable items. There are, potentially, a whole Second Lifetime's worth of memories in any one person's Inventory folder; it's a shame to think of them all going away forever once that avatar does.

Yet, there's no Next of Kin clause in the TOS, is there? Even for Partnered residents? If one were to make the request to access someone else's Inventory on the grounds that the referenced resident has passed, what would LL say?

My friends list is filled with residents that have come and gone from Second Life. Some have quit, while others have been banned. They may disappear from search, but they are immortalized on my list. As of Thursday, another friend of mine will never log in, but for an entirely different reason. He passed away ...

Jesse Malthus, a 17 year old high school junior from Kentucky named Jesse Higginbotham, was well-known among the IRC and LibSL circuit. He was involved in an accident on his way to school on Wednesday morning. Jesse was brought to the hospital in critical condition and passed away on Thursday morning.

While only having been in-world for three days shy of a year, he left a lasting impression on the community, spending time answering libsecondlife questions. He was also a member of the Second Citizen forums, where members are gathering to pay their condolences to a young man that expired way before his time. If you knew Jesse, please take some time out to sign his memorial guestbook so that his family knows how loved he was in Second Life.