An idle thought for a Sunday afternoon: virtual worlds such as Second Life, The Sims Online and World of Warcraft are hugely popular online games, in part because they manage to combine elements of the real world with fantasy and the unreal, and also because they allow for all kinds of behaviour (good, bad and in between) to find a harmless outlet. Such behaviour includes malicious acts known as “griefing” in Second Life, adults pretending to be children for sexual purposes, and even the rise of what amounts to a virtual Mafia in The Sims.

The game Grand Theft Auto has also become hugely popular by allowing game players to engage in all kinds of nefarious behaviour, including theft, murder, assault and battery, prostitution, drug-dealing, and so on. So why isn’t there an online version of Grand Theft Auto, where people can form gangs and beat other players up, steal their virtual money, blackmail or extort other players, set up prostitution rings and so on? It seems like it would be a slam-dunk.

Obviously, there would be a risk of real-world violence being blamed on Grand Theft Auto, but that already happens. I’m only half-joking here. I think watching people’s behaviour inside such a game would be like an incredible real-world psychology laboratory in action.

(Note: This is a piece I just posted at globeandmail.com, based on an interview with Weblo founder and CEO Rocky Mirza):

As the founder of a UK-based online-gaming property called IBetX.com and an Ottawa-based auction site called UniqueAuction.com, entrepreneur Rocky Mirza knows a little about what people like to do with their money online, and he is hoping that they will want to spend some of it buying and selling virtual properties as part of his newest venture, an online “virtual world” called Weblo.com. Mr. Mirza has managed to get some high-powered backing for this latest project (which launches on September 26): a major shareholder is none other than Richard Rosenblatt, whose most recent company — a little thing called MySpace.com — was bought by News Corp. last year.

Weblo has a long way to go before it is as massive as MySpace, of course, but Mr. Mirza says he believes it has the same kind of appeal as a social-networking site, with one added element: money. And not the kind of virtual money that players use in a virtual world such as Second Life or World of Warcraft, but real dollars. In a recent interview, Mr. Mirza said Weblo is a little like the game of Monopoly, but “without the board and with real money.” Players buy the right to “own” real-world properties such as the Taj Mahal, and then make money by either renting out space to other players, or from advertising that runs on their part of the site. They can also make money by selling their properties to others (Weblo takes a cut of each transaction).

There’s more to it than just that, however. Mr. Mirza says Weblo also has a kind of “Internet within an Internet” that is part of Weblo, and players can bid on and own domain names as well — such as PR.com or money.com — and choose where they are redirected to in the real world. In that way, a company’s Weblo property could direct players to its real-world Web site. Although Weblo originally planned to sell players the right to any domain name that existed in the real world, Mr. Mirza said that trademark issues got in the way and so no one will be allowed to own the Weblo version of Google.com or Microsoft.com. The company also planned to let people buy and sell celebrities such as Paris Hilton, but now they are only allowed to own (and buy or sell) the right to maintain a Weblo site devoted to that celebrity (which could also include advertising and other e-commerce tools).

Sound a little confusing? There’s more. Players will also be able to buy and sell cities such as Toronto or New York, and even to run for “mayor” of those cities, which will allow them to collect taxes from anyone whose property is part of that city (taxes that are split with Weblo). And in order to buy or sell a city, you have to be a citizen of whatever virtual country that city belongs to, which means buying citizenship from Weblo — which only costs a few dollars, unless you need it immediately (in order to sell London to another player, for example) in which case you can pay more for emergency citizenship.

“It’s a second chance at life,” says Mr. Mirza, who is originally from Ottawa. “Everything that exists in the real world exists in Weblo, so you could buy Toronto and become mayor of Toronto. It’s like Monopoly on steroids.” Weblo, which Mr. Mirza says he has been thinking about and working on for nine years, launches on Sept. 26 and a basic membership — which comes with a free celebrity of your choice — is free. Paying players get a larger share of the revenue their virtual properties generate.

One of the things I find fascinating about virtual worlds such as Second Life, The Sims Online and There is that in many ways they are very much like the real world — right up to the point where things start to get really weird. The fact that the laws of physics, morality and even life itself can effectively be re-written on the fly has a way of making things very interesting (and in many cases confusing) for non-players. I’ve written about this kind of thing before, and I recently came across another example — and one with a Canadian flavour, no less.

In a recent post on Second Life Herald, a writer named Pixeleen Mistral tells the story of what happened when she went to get a new cellphone for her avatar (yes, she felt her in-world character needed a hot new cellphone) at a new store set up by Telus, a Canadian wireless provider that has — like T-shirt maker American Apparel and several other retailers — opened a virtual version of one of its real-world stores. Unfortunately for Pixeleen, the store had been completely encased in plywood by a “griefer” artist trying for a Christof kind of look (griefers are like in-world hackers and troublemakers).

She came back a little while later to find the plywood removed, but then watched as another griefer (this one with a gun fetish, and an avatar whose clothes were covered in long spikes) first shot a customer (another journalist) and then waved around a sword to show off his script-writing skills. Sparkle Dale, who works at the Telus store, reportedly handed the whole affair with aplomb, and even managed to sell another customer a phone — all while the griefer was busy shooting another customer, a “trend consultant” from PSFK.com named Brighton Giugiaro, for standing between him and the door.

Juvenile? Perhaps. A waste of time? No doubt. But fascinating nonetheless.

Okay, it’s only Duran Duran — the classic 1980′s “Hungry Like a Wolf” hair band — but it’s still pretty interesting that a band is setting up a virtual island in Second Life, where the boys will put on virtual concerts for giant robots, huge pink bunny rabbits, surfer dudes with green hair and other SL avatars. According to comments from the band, they seem pretty excited about the whole thing.

This seems like the next logical step in the virtual music business, after a recent concert put on by the BBC involved a Second Life component (virtual attendees got a tiny virtual radio so they could take the show with them as they moved around the virtual world), and a group of U2 devotees put on a virtual concert involving avatars of the band.

The latter concert didn’t just feature virtual versions of the band but also included downloadable U2 songs and a host of “virtual sponsor” giveaways such as cans of Coke and bottles of Evian water — despite the fact that neither the band nor the companies had agreed to have their names and likenesses featured. The organizer says it was done to increase the realism and as a tribute to the band, but I wonder whether U2 or Evian would see it that way (the organizers tried to reach the band but didn’t get anywhere).

In other Second Life music news, Suzanne Vega — the iconic folk-pop singer whose Tom’s Diner became the first song ever made into an MP3 file — recently gave a concert inside the virtual world, one which started off (naturally) with a version of Tom’s Diner. Although attendees had to remove all add-on objects (including their avatar’s hair, apparently) so as to reduce lag in the game, this sounds to me like the beginning of something, well… real. Bands and performers have already gotten used to using MySpace to advance their careers.

And in other business-related SL news, Starwood Hotels says that it is going to try out a new micro-brand hotel idea inside the virtual world before launching it in real life. More on the process of setting up the virtual hotel can be found here. Lest all this Second Life-ing get a little too serious, I offer you this cartoon I came across at BLaugh while looking around for SL-related stuff in the blogosphere (hat tip to Fred Wilson).