Second Life is an open-ended virtual world created in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab. It is similar to There, another such world created around the same time, which is, again, very open-ended. The brain-child of former RealNetworks CTO Philip Rosedale, Second Life gives its users (referred to as residents) tools to shape its world. A large majority of the content in the Second Life world is resident-created, and one of the unique things about this environment is that residents retain the intellectual property rights to the objects they create.