To own real estate in the virtual world, users must buy server space from Second Life's creator, Linden Research.
At some point in March or April, hackers allegedly use bitcoin to buy server space and a virtual private network account in Malaysia.
The recording industry argues that paying for music is just another cost of doing business, like buying server time and software, and that musicians should be paid for their work.
By buying webwide distribution, the publisher gets better performance, doesn't have to buy server gear that will soon be obsolete, and can avoid the headaches of running its own server system.
Bigger companies can negotiate to buy servers and power for less, and deploy gear more effectively.
ASHLEE VANCE COMMENTAnother reason nobody is buying servers is because of new technologies such as virtualization.
They wanted to expand the site to several hundred more schools that fall, and they needed money to buy servers.
Dell and H.P., he said, "see their cloud business going through the roof, the Web monsters buying servers at rates they've never seen before.
But companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon.com and Microsoft buy servers by the thousands as they try to keep up with demand from Internet users.
Businesses that used to buy servers from them, perhaps a dozen or two at a time, will increasingly rent computing services in the cloud instead.
