Advertising Police Arrive Inside Second Life

(MoneyWatch)  In a decision on a product advertised on billboards inside Second Life, the Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program found that PhotoBlocker Spray does not, unsurprisingly, make your real-life car invisible to police radar and traffic cameras. Second Life is the online virtual world where unemployed people have fake sex and then get real-life divorces.

ERSP said the advertiser, Innovative Media, could not prove the PhotoBlocker will:

"Make your car invisible to traffic cameras" and "-- hide your license plate from red light cameras."

ERSP is part of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, the National Advertising Division and the National Advertising Review Council, voluntary bodies which impose discipline on wayward -- often crazy -- advertisers. The decision is its first on advertising in Second Life.

IM -- whose icon is an awesome blind Lady Justice with a traffic radar coming out of her head -- made other patently nonsensical claims for its spray can:

• Avoid costly unjust traffic tickets!
• Make your car invisible to traffic cameras
• This spray will make your car invisible to traffic cameras.
• It will hide your license plate from red light cameras
• Red light cameras are about revenue, not safety!
• Become a dealer and earn 300% + ROI
• I made over $21,000 in less than half a day!

In a dead giveaway, IM had already been cited and banned by the state of Pennsylvania. ERSP also let it be known that it is lurking inside Second Life regularly:

The advertising came to the attention of ERSP, the electronic direct-response industry's self-regulatory forum, through ERSP's ongoing monitoring program.

So next time a leggy, barely clad "professional gambler" hits on you while online, beware -- it could be a nark.