do real-life laws stretch into virtual worlds?

one of the things that has second life moving so quickly is the fact that there are very few regulations. obviously there are good things and bad things about having few regulations... but i was wondering how many real-life laws actually applied to things that happened in second life.

here's an interesting article i found. the author talks about the possibility of terrorist escaping wiretaps by using World of Warcraft or Second Life to make plans... because then they could always say "hey it's a virtual world, i was only PRETENDING". it brought up some great points, and i def. think this will probably be a bigger deal in the near future.