Jealous, or don't like copyright laws?
It seems that the majority of these posts attack the person who has been "injured" here, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why. Is it jealousy? Because he's making money doing something he enjoys, and the rest of these people are not?
What does it matter that it happened inside a virtual environment? Does that mean copyright laws should not apply? His name is still associated with the virtual property (as is his trademark), which means his reputation is associated with the virtual property. Like it or not, that creates a real-world relationship. And if someone else in the game is copying his objects and selling them AS his objects, claiming that they ARE his objects, then he has every right to seek compensation.
Do I personally agree with what he does as a business? No. But I do respect his right to do it. As for the "value" of his objects, I'll ask one question -- how do you put a value on anything? "Value" is nothing more than the amount people are willing to pay for something, whether that something is tangible or intangible.
As for the first post, "Financial Loss", can you sound like a bigger idiot? Let me give you an analogy. Let's say you own stock in a company. You bought 1000 shares at $10 per share, and now it's up to $15 per share. You want to sell it, but your broker doesn't get around to it for whatever reason. By the time he does get to it, the stock has plummeted down to $0.93 per share. Does that mean that this was "not a real financial loss"? If you take the time and think about it, this analogy is the same as your scenario in which a new world is opened up and people leave SL, thereby causing the value of Linden dollars to plummet. Same reaction. So does this mean you shouldn't go after the broker who lost you $14,070?
To look at it another way, since there is a real-life currency exchange, just think of it as another country. If you have $5,000 worth of Italian currency, and through some devastating blow their currency become worthless, would you have not suffered a "real financial loss"?