Hi Phil, I would venture to guess that the people who set up Edwards' campaign space in Second Life were unaware of the multiple ways to prevent unauthorized avatars from dropping objects on the land.

At the Avatar Action Center, for instance, we use group-based permissions that allow only authorized group members to place persistent objects. Unauthorized avatars can also place objects, but the land is set to "autoreturn" such objects to their creators after several minutes.

We could completely prevent unauthorized avatars from placing things, but using autoreturn is our way of trusting that people visiting this common space will not abuse it. It's much like a real-life public park in that respect...wow, imagine if trash could be automatically returned to people who dropped it in public spaces!

Thanks for your interest,
Erika