Peter Black's Freedom to Differ

Carr and Stelter on Wikipedia's Day of Protest

David Carr and Brian Stelter, in this TimesCast video, discuss the decision by Wikipedia to close on Wednesday to educate its audience about proposed antipiracy legislation in Congress that it considers a threat to an open Internet. Time to crack open those old copies of Encyclopedia Britannica.

via mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com

We Live in Public trailer

Josh Harris has created a documentary We Live in Public, about the possibility of the virtual world taking over society in the future, which premiered this week at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival:

Desperate times call for desperate measures

The New York Magazine reports on a NYU student who has invented a virtual girlfriend ... as part of art class:

Photo: Courtesy of Drew Burrows

You work late. Like, every night. You probably screwed up your last steady relationship, and, well, maybe there's no one to curl up next to in bed when you stumble in the door at night. Drew Burrows knows the feeling. "I'm in this grad program right now, and it's totally consuming," he said. "I come home every night to an empty bed." So Burrows, 28, engineered (literally) a solution, which he unveiled to the public last night at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program Spring Show at Tisch School of the Arts.

It's simple to behold — a single mattress, tucked into a dark, curtained back room of the showcase space. On it: a lithe brunette. She's perfectly quiet, but once you sit or lie down, she responds to your every move. Lie on your back, she snuggles up right next to you in a log position. Curl up in the fetal position, she spoons. The only hitch: She's 2-D. "Yeah, you can't feel the girl. That's the thing," Burrows explained as he demonstrated his invention, an "infrared sensitive" light projection (meaning it reacts, and the projected woman moves, based on an infrared sensor) called INBED. "Still, it's so nice if you're tired and worn out to have someone to curl up with."

As for satisfying those not-so-innocent late-night desires, this lady adheres to her role as steady girlfriend. Give her kiss on the check and she rolls over and buries her face in the pillow. And yes, she stays fully clothed at all times. Nonetheless, Burrows suggests his new alternative to a full-body pillow or (ugh) blow-up doll could provide late-night comfort for traders, lawyers, or any other single guy in Manhattan who simply works too hard to keep a girlfriend. Speaking of, how long has Burrows been single?

"Long enough to come up with this idea," he sighed.

Read it here.

The social networking chase

Do you ever feel as though you are being chased in the social networking wars?

(Hat tip: Ross Hill.)

Blawg Review #156

Benjamin Duranske at Virtually Blind hosts a superb Blawg Review focusing on virtual worlds.  Read it here.

Virtual fame

The Age profiles three Australian artists who are using Second Life to build their profile:

Second Life has become second nature for three enterprising Australian artists, writes Clare Morgan.

Imagine an art gallery where you can not only touch the works on display, you can walk over them, sit on them, even fly through them. Such actions would doubtless send security staff into apoplexy, but in Second Life, the world is your oyster.

Today three Australian artists unveil their exhibition Babelswarm in the 3D virtual world of Second Life, an interactive sculpture based on the mythical Tower of Babel. For those who like the old-fashioned gallery experience, there is a "real" show at Lismore Regional Gallery.

Christopher Dodds, a visual artist, Adam Nash, a musician and 3D real-time artist, and Justin Clemens, a writer, all from Melbourne, were last year awarded a $20,000 artist-in-residence grant from the Australia Council to create a work for the online social networking world - believed to be the largest grant of its type.

Read more here.

Avatar Heroes

Jon Stewart reports on the US Congress Hearings on Second Life:

Virtual protest against internet censorship

CNN reports on an important virtual protest against internet censorship:

Fifteen countries were named as "Internet enemies" on Wednesday as press freedom campaigners called on Web users to join a 24-hour virtual protest condemning cyber-censorship.

The online demonstrations in virtual locations including China's Tiananmen Square, Cuba's Revolution Square and North Korea's Kim Jong Il Square were taking place to mark the first Online Free Expression Day, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) said in a statement.

"We are giving all Internet users the opportunity to demonstrate in places were protests are not normally possible," the statement said.

"At least 62 cyber-dissidents are currently imprisoned worldwide, while more than 2,600 Web sites, blogs or discussions forums were closed or made inaccessible in 2007."

As well as China, Cuba and North Korea, the list highlighted 12 other countries where Internet freedoms are restricted: Belarus, Myanmar, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

A further 11 countries were named as "countries under watch:" Bahrain, Eritrea, Gambia, Jordan, Libya, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

The report also criticized Western companies for cooperating in cyber-repression, citing the case of U.S. company Yahoo! providing information to Chinese censors which resulted in a journalist, Shi Tao, being jailed for 10 years.

Read more here.  Ars Technica also reported on a disappointing aspect of the protest:

Reporters Without Borders today organized the Online Free Expression Day, including a virtual Internet protest against censorship, but the group is incensed that a UN organization yesterday backed out of supporting the event.

UNESCO, the UN agency in charge of scientific and cultural education, was to have sponsored the protest, but let Reporters Without Borders know yesterday that it had changed its mind. "We are not fooled," Reporters Without Borders said in a statement today. "Several governments on today's updated list of 15 'Internet Enemies' put direct pressure on the Office of the UNESCO Director General, and deputy director general Marcio Barbosa caved in. UNESCO's reputation has not been enhanced by this episode. It has behaved with great cowardice at a time when the governments that got it to stage a U-turn continue to imprison dozens of Internet users."

Read more here.

Second Skin

A trailer for an upcoming documentary on virtual worlds:

(Hat tip: Boing Boing.)

Banning banks in Second Life may be problematic

In an article FindLaw's Writ, Anita Ramasastry considers the consequences of banning banks in Second Life:

Just last week, Second Life, an online virtual world, banned unregulated banks from its cyber-realm. Linden Labs, the operator of Second Life, announced that only banks or other financial institutions (such as investment companies and credit unions) that have a real-world presence and are licensed and regulated by real governments (U.S. or foreign, apparently) would be allowed.

 

Second Life has said it will verify this status by requiring "an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter."

Previously, banks could exist solely within Second Life. Thus, in theory at least, a customer's deposits or investments were governed only by their agreements with Second Life and with their cyber bank there.

Banks on Second Life accept deposits of Linden dollars, Second Life's currency, which is convertible into real U.S. dollars. As I discussed in a previous column, bank failures and frauds on Second Life have caused its citizens to lose some funds. . According to Linden Labs, it has also received complaints about several in-world "banks" defaulting on their promises of very high interest rates. .

Plainly, Second Life's hope regarding the ban is that banks with real-world presences will operate safely and not defraud consumers. And in theory, Second Life's ban is a good idea. But in practice, as I will explain in this column, it may be unnecessary at this stage; will surely cause more confusion for regulators and Second Life citizens alike; and may not stop fraud.

 

Moreover, there was an interesting alternative that might instead have been employed: Linden Labs might have allowed its participants to create their own regulatory schemes - tailored to the geographies and customs of Second Life.

Read more here.

The Dumb Man

Check out Lainy Voom's The Dumb Man, a stunningfully beautiful piece of machinima and a great showcase for Creative Commons licenses:

The Dumb Man from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

(Hat tip: Boing Boing.)

Forrester: "within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today"

Forrester has released a report titled Getting Real Work Done In Virtual Worlds.  This is the executive summary:

Virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, and more business-focused offerings are on the brink of becoming valuable work tools. Major companies and public-sector organizations — such as BP, IBM, Intel, and the US Army — are investing heavily in virtual world technologies. But it's still early, pioneering days. You've practically got to be a gamer to use most of these tools — setup can be arduous, navigating in a 3-D environment takes practice, and processing and bandwidth requirements remain high. But within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today. Information and knowledge management professionals should begin to investigate and experiment with virtual worlds. Use them to try to replicate the experience of working physically alongside others; allow people to work with and share digital 3-D models of physical or theoretical objects; and make remote training and counseling more realistic by incorporating nonverbal communication into same-time, different-place interactions.

Read more here.  This summary makes some big claims about virtual worlds in business, but from my perspective I think it will be particularly fascinating to see how higher education institutions as well as politicians and governments take to these virtual worlds.

(Hat tip: ReadWriteWeb.)

Some more weekend reading ...

Here are two more interesting academic articles ...

The first is on how to assess the impact of the blogosphere:

Kirchhoff, Lars and Bruns, Axel and Nicolai, Thomas (2007) Investigating the impact of the blogosphere: Using PageRank to determine the distribution of attention. In Proceedings Association of Internet Researchers, Vancouver, Canada. Available at QUT ePrints: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00010517/

Abstract: Much has been written in recent years about the blogosphere and its impact on political, educational and scientific debates. Lately the issue has received significant attention from the industry. As the blogosphere continues to grow, even doubling its size every six months, this paper investigates its apparent impact on the overall Web itself. We use the popular Google PageRank algorithm which employs a model of Web used to measure the distribution of user attention across sites in the blogosphere. The paper is based on an analysis of the PageRank distribution for 8.8 million blogs in 2005 and 2006. This paper addresses the following key questions: How is PageRank distributed across the blogosphere? Does it indicate the existence of measurable, visible effects of blogs on the overall mediasphere? Can we compare the distribution of attention to blogs as characterised by the PageRank with the situation for other forms of Web content? Has there been a growth in the impact of the blogosphere on the Web over the two years analysed here? Finally, it will also be necessary to examine the limitations of a PageRank-centred approach.

The second looks at the contracts governing online communities:

Fairfield, Joshua, "Anti-Social Contracts: The Contractual Governance of Online Communities" (July 2007). Washington & Lee Legal Studies Paper No. 2007-20 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1002997

Abstract: By 2011, four out of every five people who use the internet will work or play in virtual worlds. World of Warcraft and Second Life have seized the imagination of millions. These and many other online communities are ruled nearly exclusively by contract law: End User License Agreements, Terms of Service, or Codes of Conduct. But all is not well. Contracts are private law. Communities need public law. Contracts are a critical means of helping two (or a few) people negotiate their preferences. But online communities are made up of enormous and shifting populations that have no time or ability to negotiate agreements with every other community member. Thus, although contracts are important, the use of contracts - alone - to govern communities of millions of people threatens the investment and creativity of online communities. This article continues the work begun in the author's Virtual Property, and demonstrates that contracts cannot, by their very nature, provide for every legal need of large and shifting online communities. The article then demonstrates how courts can use basic common law principles to provide online communities with the private property, dignitary and personal protections, and freedom of speech that communities need to thrive.

Blawg Review in Second Life

The nomination ceremony for this year's Blawg Review Awards will be held in Second Life:

The nomination ceremony for this year's Blawg Review Awards will be held on Thursday, December 27, 2007 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time at the offices of the Second Life Bar Association. Second Life users can follow this SLURL to the Second Life Bar Association offices on the 6th floor of the "Justice Center."

Read more here.

Legal Aspects of Web 2.0 Activities: Management of Legal Risk Associated with Use of YouTube, MySpace and Second Life

The Intellectual Property: Knowledge, Culture and Economy (IP:KCE) Research Program in the QUT Faculty of Law has released a report originally prepared for Smart Service Queensland on the legal issues of Web 2.0 - Legal Aspects of Web 2.0 Activities: Management of Legal Risk Associated with Use of YouTube, MySpace and Second Life:

As Web 2.0 technologies proliferate, an increasing number of Australians, especially young Australians, are relying primarily on information and communication technologies to engage and interact with each other and the world. If governments are to have meaningful interaction with young people, it is therefore important for them to explore the potential of these communication platforms. But legal considerations must be taken into account when strategising how best to make use of emerging technologies.

The report identifies the practical legal risks associated with activities conducted in online participatory spaces. Encompassing Copyright, Privacy, Defamation, Breach of Confidence and other areas of law, the report outlines the main considerations that arise when engaging in the online environment. It also examines the popular social networking platforms YouTube, MySpace and Second Life in detail, analysing legal issues specific to their Terms of Use and functionality.

The report was written by Jessica Coates, Nic Suzor and Dr Anne Fitzgerald with Anthony Austin, Kylie Pappalardo, Brendan Cosman, Damien O’Brien, Elliott Bledsoe and myself.

You can download the report here.

Stealing online furniture

A Dutch teenager has been arrested "for stealing online furniture" in the game-world Habbo Hotel:

Dutch police have made their first arrest of an online thief -- a 17-year-old accused of stealing virtual furniture from rooms in the Habbo Hotel -- a popular teenager networking Web site.

An Amsterdam police spokeswoman confirmed a report that the teenager was accused of stealing 4,000 euros (2,833 pounds) worth of virtual furniture by hacking into the accounts of other users.

Read more here (from Yahoo! News).

Virtual law

Writing for ZDNet News, Eric J Sinrod looks at what happens when When virtual legal chickens come home to roost and the case of Eros LLC v. Thomas Simon:

Netizens are spending more and more of their time living their lives online in virtual worlds. But while many virtual world interactions are not real and take place in fictitious places, virtual disputes increasingly are landing in real courts back in terra firma.

Second Life is one of the best known virtual worlds. Through interactive computer simulation, participants act through their avatars and are able to see, hear, and work with simulated objects in a computer-generated environment.

Participants, who come from the United States as well as various other countries, number in excess of 9 million people, according to Linden Research, Second Life's owner and operator.

Second Life residents are governed by terms of service which specifically allow users to retain all intellectual property rights in the digital content they create or own in Second Life. Although we're talking about a virtual world, users conduct transactions that cumulatively involve more than $1 million per day.

But when dollars are at stake, disputes inevitably follow. And just as it is true for real world transactions, this is becoming true with respect to virtual world transactions that involve real money.

This brings us to the case of Eros LLC v. Thomas Simon. The complaint was recently filed in federal court in New York on behalf of several plaintiffs. Let's focus on the allegations of the lead plaintiff, Eros.

Read more here.

Second Life Patent and Trademark Office

Virtual IP governance in Second Life.  From Blawg IT:

According to Virtually Blind, Second Life players FlipperPA Peregrine (aka Tim Allen) and Michael Eckstein have opened up a virtual Second Life Patent and Trademark Office (SLPTO) within the video game. This comes on the heels of six Second Life gamers suing Rase Kenzo (aka Thomas Simon) for stealing their intellectual property. The allegations range from Unfair Competition, to Copyright Infringement, to Civil Conspiracy. The designs allegedly stolen include clothing, shoes and beds.

The SLPTO does not have any immediate plans for generating income, its owners have wisely stepped back and decided to let Second Life denizens choose how the SLPTO can best be utilized.

Read more here.

Virtual defamation

A recent article in the Brooklyn Law Review considers the tricky subject of virtual defamation.  Here is the abstract:

Chin, Bettina M., "Regulating Your Second Life: Defamation in Virtual Worlds" . Brooklyn Law Review, Vol. 72, No. 4, 2007 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1013462

Abstract: Although the issue of virtual harm has never been raised in real-world courts, virtual worlds like Second Life have become increasingly significant in terms of both time and money for their users. As such, it is important to develop theories of how the law may apply to and resolve disputes that originate in these worlds. This Note will therefore argue that because users have imported real-world concepts, specifically currency and economy, into the metaverse, it would behoove brick and mortar societies to provide for redress if a user suffers pecuniary loss in these worlds. This Note will also explore certain ambiguities inherent and unique to the virtual environment when traditional elements of defamation law are applied to it. Moreover, this Note will argue that real-world courts should be the proper forum in which to litigate defamation actions, where victims suffer pecuniary loss due to the fall of their reputations.

Australian interest in Second Life slows down

From Corporate Engagement:

The AFR (paid subscription required) reports today (p. 28) that Linden Lab (second life publisher) has released statistics that show that SL ''attracted just 11,975 virtual Australians during September 2007, a decline of 13.3 per cent on the previous month, and 24 per cent from July". The article quotes Duncan Riley as attributing the decline to poor broadband and the tyranny of distance.

Read it here.

The best of machinima

Tracy Harwood, the Manager Machinima Festival Europe 07, lists her top five machinima films:

Machinima is a medium that has come of age.

As an "emergent art", it has been around as a form of user-generated content for some ten years now: hardly emergent then. 

As Friedrich Kirschner, a leading authority on Machinima, explains in his blog, it has come from subculture to a genre of its own. It is now a recognised approach to film-making, having been used by the likes of Spielberg to test special effects scenes before shooting the "real thing".

What is evident, however, is the growth and scope for machinimating following the more recent arrival of virtual environments such as Second Life. Indeed, some of my favourite films are the ones I've seen as part of my Festival Manager role.

Sharing my Top 5 machinima films is challenging as I'm relatively new to this art form and I took on the organisation of the first "European Machinima Festival" as part of my day job, which is as a senior research fellow for the Institute of Creative Technologies.

Read her list here.  Out of Harwood's top five, I think Edge of Remorse is my favourite:

Defamation in virtual worlds

An interesting article on Second Life published in the Brooklyn Law Review:

Chin, Bettina M., "Regulating Your Second Life: Defamation in Virtual Worlds" . Brooklyn Law Review, Vol. 72, No. 4, 2007 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1013462

Abstract: Although the issue of virtual harm has never been raised in real-world courts, virtual worlds like Second Life have become increasingly significant in terms of both time and money for their users. As such, it is important to develop theories of how the law may apply to and resolve disputes that originate in these worlds. This Note will therefore argue that because users have imported real-world concepts, specifically currency and economy, into the metaverse, it would behoove brick and mortar societies to provide for redress if a user suffers pecuniary loss in these worlds. This Note will also explore certain ambiguities inherent and unique to the virtual environment when traditional elements of defamation law are applied to it. Moreover, this Note will argue that real-world courts should be the proper forum in which to litigate defamation actions, where victims suffer pecuniary loss due to the fall of their reputations.

Rethinking Second Life

Duncan Riley rethinks the role and value of Second Life:

Lately I’ve discovered the benefits of voice in Second Life in its ability to be used as a spontaneous web meetup space ...

The natural comparison is to the conference facility on Skype, but as a long term Skype user who built a startup that relied on Skype I’ve long known that any more than 4-5 people on a Skype conference call is a recipe for unusable. Second Life on the other hand never skipped a beat at 15-20 people. The visualizations and point of reference speech (SL delivers audio from the point of reference, so if the avatar is to your left you hear the voice from the left of your headset) made for a workable meetspace.

The ability to join and discuss anything in Second Life delivers something between a Barcamp or Podcamp, and a discussion at your local bar (or pub) amongst friends. I’ve read elsewhere suggestions that people who spend time in Second Life are sad; to that I can only respond: married with children. Whilst my wife was catching the latest episodes of America’s Next Top Model (streamed over the home network on a Zensonic Z500…which is probably pretty geeky) and my son was asleep I participated in a virtual recreation of many a good blog meetup or barcamp, and better still it was spontaneous. Over time more will see these benefits in Second Life and other virtual worlds as a useful meetspace. No longer is it necessary to hold a discussion in person in a real world meeting venue when you can have the same discussion via Second Life, at no cost and with virtual reach.

Read more here (from TechCrunch).

"Real Hope in a Virtual World"

A charming story on an under-appreciated aspect of Second Life from the Washington Post:

After suffering a devastating stroke four years ago, Susan Brown was left in a wheelchair with little hope of walking again. Today, the 57-year-old Richmond woman has regained use of her legs and has begun to reclaim her life, thanks in part to encouragement she says she gets from an online "virtual world" where she can walk, run and even dance.

Roberto Salvatierra, long imprisoned in his home by his terror over going outdoors, has started venturing outside more after gaining confidence by first tentatively exploring the three-dimensional, interactive world on the Internet.

John Dawley III, who has a form of autism that makes it hard to read social cues, learned how to talk with people more easily by using his computer-generated alter ego to practice with other cyber-personas.

Brown, Salvatierra and Dawley are just a few examples of an increasing number of sick, disabled and troubled people who say virtual worlds are helping them fight their diseases, live with their disabilities and sometimes even begin to recover. Researchers say they are only starting to appreciate the impact of this phenomenon.

Read more here.

Newt in Second Life

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, appears on Capitol Hill in Second Life to launch a series of "Solutions Day" Workshops to be held in the virtual world:

Second Life and bestiality

Duncan Riley's TechCrunch post on Second Life and bestiality has reached the top of Techmeme:

Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life, may be extending their crackdown on “Broadly Offensive” behavior to Bestiality, following attempts to remove virtual pedophilia (or Age-Play) from Second Life in March.

The Second Life Herald (NSFW) goes on to ask whether consenting adults dressing up like animals and partaking in virtual sex with each other or with human shaped avatars (virtual bestiality) constitutes broadly offensive behavior.

Read more here.

"Virtual marketers have second thoughts about Second Life"

The Los Angeles Times looks at the fortunes of businesses in Second Life:

SECOND LIFE — a three-dimensional online society where publicity is cheap and the demographic is edgy and certainly computer-savvy — should be a marketer's paradise.

But it turns out that plugging products is as problematic in the virtual world as it is anywhere else.

At  http://www.secondlife.com — where the cost is $6 a month for premium citizenship — shopping, at least for real-world products, isn't a main activity. Four years after Second Life debuted, some marketers are second-guessing the money and time they've put into it.

"There's not a compelling reason to stay," said Brian McGuinness, vice president of Aloft, a brand of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. that is closing its Second Life shop and donating its virtual land to the nonprofit social-networking group TakingITGlobal.

Read more here.

And read Duncan Riley's analysis here (from TechCrunch).

Well, that's no fun

Wired's Regina Lynn suggests that Second Life without sex would be a sad life indeed:

This week in Second Life, I swam with a dolphin, line-danced with six other women at a saloon and test-rode a horsie that I am considering buying. I also received an offer to "have the sex" with a young man who was wearing his penis outside his pants.

One of the great joys of a virtual world like Second Life is the ability to indulge in fantasy limited only by your own patience and skill with the tools. But there's nothing virtual about the anxiety felt by Second Life residents these days. Some are even saying it's the beginning of the end of the true Second Life.

Read more here.

Life in Second Life

A real-world take on what life in Second Life is like:

Warning: if you've never been in Second Life, you might not get it.

Second Life survey

Shenja van der Graaf, who currently conducts her research on the social and economic aspects of virtual worlds at the London School of Economics, would like all Second Lifers to help in her latest survey.  Read more here.

(Hat tip: Berkman Blog.)

Porn and gambling in Second Life

Media Post's Online SPIN blog has an interesting post on why pornographers and gamblers are good for Second Life:

In his most recent podcast episode of "Across The Sound," marketing guru Joseph Jaffe reacted with irritation to a commenter downplaying the virtual world Second Life because of its infiltration by pornographers, prostitutes and gambling. Joe responded by underscoring that where there's sex and gambling, there's life. And in life, you have the choice to ignore the scum. For the record, I agree 100% with him, and I'm personally not for any of these aforementioned activities. 

But to the chagrin of the pure and the prude, I would point out that pornographers and casino proprietors could actually be beneficial to the development and sustainability of Second Life as a viable community and marketing platform -- at least in the short term. And the underworlds of porn and gambling are likely to go down in history for making some of the greatest contributions to emerging virtual worlds, including Second Life.

Read more here.

Some weekend reading ...

Here a couple of interesting technology law papers that are worth reading.

First, Leandra Lederman considers the topical issue of taxing virtual worlds:

Lederman, Leandra, "'Stranger than Fiction': Taxing Virtual Worlds" . New York University Law Review, Vol. 82, 2007 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=969984

Abstract: Virtual worlds, including massive multi-player on-line role-playing games (game worlds), such as City of Heroes, Everquest, and World of Warcraft, have become popular sources of entertainment. Game worlds provide scripted contexts for events such as quests. Other virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are unstructured virtual environments that lack specific goals but allow participants to socialize and engage virtually in such activities as shopping or attending a concert. Many of these worlds have become commodified, with millions of dollars of real-world trade in virtual items taking place every year. Most game worlds prohibit these real market transactions, but some worlds actually encourage it. Second Life, for example, grants participants intellectual property rights in their creations.

Although it seems intuitively the case that someone who accepts real money for the transfer of a virtual item should be taxed, what about the player who only accumulates items or virtual currency within a virtual world? Is valuable “loot” acquired in a game taxable, as a prize or award is? And is the profit in a purely in-game trade or sale for virtual currency taxable? This is an important set of questions, given the tax revenues at stake. Although the Internal Revenue Service has not yet attempted to tax transactions within virtual worlds, it is aware of the issue, and there is pressure on the government to determine how to resolve it, given that the economies of some virtual worlds are comparable to those of small countries. The Joint Economic Committee has announced that it is studying the issue.

Most people's intuition probably would be that accumulation of assets within a “game” should not be taxed even though the federal income tax applies even to non-cash accessions to wealth. This Article argues that federal income tax law and policy support that result. Loot “drops” in game worlds should not be treated as taxable prizes and awards, but rather should be treated like other property that requires effort to obtain, such as fish pulled from the ocean, which is taxed only upon sale. Moreover, in-game trades of virtual items should not be treated as taxable barter. If courts uphold game agreements that purport to provide players with a mere license to use the game, in-game trades do not constitute realization events and thus are not taxable. Otherwise, tax policy considerations suggest that Congress should provide nonrecognition for these exchanges.

By contrast, in virtual worlds that are intentionally commodified, such as Second Life, tax doctrine and policy counsel taxation of even in-world sales for virtual currency, regardless of whether the participant cashes out. However, as in game worlds, participants should not be taxed on purely in-world trades of non-currency items. This approach would allow entertainment value to go untaxed without creating a new tax shelter for virtual commerce.

Second, Douglas Hass evaluates GNU General Public License:

Hass, Douglas A., "A Gentlemen's Agreement: Assessing the GNU General Public License and its Adaptation to Linux" . Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property, Vol. 6, p. 213, 2007 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=951842

Abstract: The open source community is conducting a robust debate on the intellectual property issues surrounding the GNU General Public License (GPL) a popular modified public domain software license, and Linux, its most successful project to date. The Linux community has evolved its open source development model to accommodate realities of copyright law and the need to secure both significant commercial participation and widespread industry adoption. The legal issues underlying this transformation have not undergone the same robust analysis. This paper sheds light on those issues and tests some of their limits.

The GPL fails to define fundamental terms adequately, including the inconsistent use of based on (derivative works), the lack of a choice of law provision, and the ambiguous treatment of patents. The GPL holds itself out as a viral license, purporting to foist itself on any software developer who has incorporated GPL code into a project. These and other factors combined with the Linux community's outdated views on copyright protection for kernel modules make it unlikely that a court could give full effect to the GPL or protect open source code from closed source intrusions. The GPL, however, does act as the most important beacon for Linux and the rest of the open source world. Its most significant contribution may differ greatly from the one envisioned by its creators: collaborative, decentralized development rather than free software. Contrary to some non-legal analyses, the gentlemen's agreement model employed by Linux to ensure that both closed source and open source software can coexist is a legally defensible, common sense adaptation of the GPL.

Entropia Universe

TechCrunch reviews Entropia Universe, a new virtual world competing against Second Life:

Depending on who you listen to, virtual worlds are the new black. Second Life needs no introduction and yesterday rumors surfaced that Sony was in talks to acquire Club Penguin for $500+ million.

To date there are two leading online spaces. World of Warcraft has been an unrivaled success, bringing Dungeon and Dragons style fantasy role playing to an audience in excess of 8 million. At the opposing end is Second Life with its embrace of capitalism and intellectual property rights.

What happened if you combined both?

Enter Entropia Universe.

Set in a Sci-Fi future players assume the roles of colonists who must develop the untamed planet of Calypso. Game play is open across a number of different fields. Players who prefer a World of Warcraft style experience can undertake quests and join in groups to hunt and fight monsters. Mining is an option for those who don’t like swinging a sword. Moving towards a more Second Life experience, players are able to own and run shops, manufacture goods, own land and build on that land, as well as being able to trade, buy, sell and create goods and services.

The addition that makes Entropia Universe a direct competitor to Second Life though is money. Like Second Life, the in-world currency in Entropia Universe can be converted to US dollars. Unlike the Linden dollar that continues to decline in value, the Entropia Universe PED can be traded at a fixed exchange rate of 10 PED to $1 USD.

Read more here.

Virtual rape

In a provocative column for Wired Regina Lynn asks, is virtual rape a crime?'

Unfortunately, rape in virtual spaces is not unheard of. And I'm not talking about the "consensual" rape built into some games (although if you're interested in that debate, GameGrene has a good conversation about it).

There is no question that forced online sexual activity -- whether through text, animation, malicious scripts or other means -- is real; and is a traumatic experience that can have a profound and unpleasant aftermath, shaking your faith in yourself, in the community, in the platform, even in sex itself.

Our laws say that an adult subjecting a teenager or child to sexual words, images or suggestions on the internet is preying on their mental and emotional state in a sexual way. Even if you never try to meet the minor in person, and even if you never touch them or expose your naked self to them, it is a crime to attempt to engage sexually with a minor.

If it is a criminal offense to sexually abuse a child on the internet, how can we say it is not possible to rape an adult online?

But I have a hard time calling it "rape," or believing it's a matter for the police. No matter how disturbed you are by a brutal sexual attack online, you cannot equate it to shivering in a hospital with an assailant's sweat or other excretions still damp on your body.

...

Rape is the ultimate perversion of sexual intimacy. Like sex, rape has mental and emotional elements that go beyond the body and the damage to the mind and spirit generally takes much longer to heal than the body.

But that doesn't make the psychological upheaval of virtual rape anywhere near the trauma of real rape. And I can't see us making virtual rape a matter for the real-life police.

It's a shitty thing to do to someone. But it's not a crime.

Read the whole column here.

Presidential candidates not quite Web 2.0?

From Media Post:

Candidates in the 2008 Presidential race are doing a pretty poor job of marketing themselves online. While Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama have put loads of material on their Web sites, loaded videos on YouTube, posted profiles on MySpace, and even opened up offices in Second Life, "there is a sense it is mostly one-way traffic -- from "them" to us," analysts say.

How very un-Web 2.0 of them. Oxford University Professor Helen Margetts, who directs research at the Oxford Internet Institute, says that politicians need to expand their online efforts by allowing more interactivity and user-generated content. "They haven't been very innovative," she said.

Indeed, engagement is low, despite the candidates' attempts to utilize Web 2.0 applications. Dialogs need to be created, and ideas need to be challenged and answered. Otherwise, it's just the same old story--a bunch of politicos talking at us, instead of with us. 

Read more here.  And Australia's politicians are doing even worse ...

Teaching in - and with - Second Life

Guest blogging at Terra Nova, Elizabeth Townsend Gard has a great post on using Second Life and the concept of virtual property in a first year property law course.  Read it here.

Welcome to Cyberia

The Age walks the streets of Cyberia:

Anine-Year-Old walks down a dark street late at night looking for new friends and experiences.

Bar and restaurant patrons spilling onto the footpath observe this child, walking alone and desperately seeking someone to talk to - not just tonight but every night. Soon the child has new friends and feels comfortable enough to begin sharing personal information about themselves, their family and friends.

Welcome to Cyberia!

If we wouldn't let our children wander the streets in the real world, talking to strangers, why are we allowing them to do it via the internet and mobile technologies?

The possibilities are endless in Cyberia, a new digital world that is as wonderful as it is frightening.

Read more about this scary world here.

Four Corners to look at Second Life

Next Monday night ABC's Four Corners is taking a look at Second Life.  Should be interesting ...

Taxing Second Life

CNNMoney considers the problem of taxing income generated in Second Life:

Under current tax law, it's clear that earnings in real U.S. dollars generated within virtual realities are reportable to the IRS. If a Second Life real estate mogul cashes out of her in-world property portfolio, she's liable to pay income tax on any profit that's been exchanged into real greenbacks - just as an eBay seller is responsible for reporting income generated from an online sale.

Tax law is murky, however, when it comes to dealings that occur solely within Second Life or other computer-simulated environments. For instance, is a transaction that occurs only in Linden dollars and doesn't involve any real-world, dollar exchange taxable?

Questions like that have the tax community buzzing about the issue, said Paul Caron, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who edits the TaxProf Blog.

The issue has also attracted the interest of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which said last fall that it was studying issues related to the economies of virtual realities like Second Life and World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game.

Read more here.

Be heard in Second Life

From Australian IT:

THE "avatars" or animated proxies for members of the popular virtual world Second Life will get even more realistic with the addition of voices of their own.

Software group Vivox said that its technology woudld enable the three-dimensional avatars that represent people in Second Life to "speak with each other simply by walking up to other residents and talking".

The speech capacity will add a new dimension to Second Life, an online world with more than four million members from more than 100 countries, in which "residents" create and build homes, vehicles, nightclubs, shops, landscapes, clothing, and games.

Read more here.

Sweden to open Second Life embassy

As I blogged on Tuesday (see here), more and more corporations are maintaining a presence in Second Life.  Now comes the news that nations are following suit.  From from CNet News.com:

Sweden plans to be the first country to open an embassy in the popular virtual world Second Life. "It will have answers to questions on all aspects of Sweden," Olle Wastberg, general director of the Swedish Institute, an organization that promotes the country's image abroad, said Tuesday.

The embassy will be called House of Sweden and will be modeled on the country's new embassy in Washington. It will open in a couple of weeks.

Read more here.

The expanding virtual world

The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that Telstra and the ABC are establishing - separately - a presence in Second Life, which is decribed in the article as "the cultural virtual world".  They join several other major companies, including Dell, Toyota, Adidas, IBM, and Intel, as well educational institutions the University of Southern Queensland and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, which have a presence in Second Life. 

The article also references SLOz, a news source dedicated to covering Australian movements within the virtual world.  Check it out here.

Also today, Wired looked at MTV's attempts to regain its relevance by investing in virtual worlds:

Now MTV execs are scrambling to catch up with the hot new hangout spots on the Web. The network’s parent company, Viacom, had a chance to buy MySpace, but competitor News Corp. snapped it up for $580 million in 2005. (A corporate reshuffle at Viacom followed.) MTV has been reduced to copycat initiatives. Last May, MTV beta-launched the subscription-based music-download service Urge to compete with Apple’s iTunes. It continues to beef up Overdrive, a broadband site offering free music videos and show outtakes that vainly tries to compete with YouTube. The shows also have discussion forums-—but they aren’t holding on to as many eyeballs as the network would like. “Kids were watching Laguna Beach,” says Matt Bostwick, an MTV senior vice president, “but then they were going everyplace else on the Web to talk about what they’d just seen.”

These overhyped, underperforming MTV.com portals may, however, soon be overshadowed by a tiny unit within the network called Leapfrog. Its mission: Don’t try to compete directly with today’s top destinations. Instead, find the next big thing so MTV can, yes, leapfrog the competition once social networking sites start to seem so five minutes ago.

... In the Leapfrog model, the virtual world becomes an equal partner. Your experience there isn’t secondary to a TV show or video rotation; it is the show, and it is the rotation.

Read more here.

Second Life: "one of the most significant technology breakthroughs in history"

Fortune senior editor David Kirkpatrick looks at Second Life:

I'll reiterate what I said in a feature story I wrote for the current issue of Fortune - Second Life is important not because it resembles a game, or because of how many people are signing up, or the big companies starting to do business inside it. What convinces me it is one of the most significant technology breakthroughs in history is that it is a platform on top of which users can create their own software and content, realize their ideas, and even make money ...

I spent today asking myself what it is about Second Life that has suddenly engaged the interest of so many different kinds of people, in a way that other technology topics seldom have.

Here's what I hypothesize: Second Life enables online human communication to resemble offline in-person communication more than, up to now, has any application, including e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, and even online games.

Read the whole piece here.

Get a First Life

Darren Barefoot has put together Get a First Life, a parody of Second Life.

It is pretty funny by itself, but it got funnier when Darren got a "Proceed and Permitted" letter from Linden Labs:

This is an interesting bit of follow-up news that I thought might interest you guys. I don't know if it's common for Linden to do this, but I thought it was classy.

Today I awoke from my nap to a letter (via the comments on the announcement) from Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life. 'Ah, well', I though, 'here come the lawyers'. But no. To their enormous credit, they sent me what I can only describe as a 'proceed and permitted' (instead of 'cease and desist') letter. Here's an excerpt:

"We do not believe that reasonable people would argue as to whether the website located at http://www.getafirstlife.com/ constitutes parody – it clearly is. Linden Lab is well known among its customers and in the general business community as a company with enlightened and well-informed views regarding intellectual property rights, including the fair use doctrine, open source licensing, and other principles that support creativity and self-expression. We know parody when we see it."

Hilarious.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

Media trends for 2007

Media Guardian summarises an interesting new survey from the Deloitte's technology, media and telecoms team:

Media trends in 2007 could include social networking websites such as MySpace charging users, according to a new report.

The survey, by Deloitte Touche Tomatsu's technology, media and telecoms team, also predicts that virtual world Second Life's burgeoning economy may attract the eye of government tax experts and money launderers.

Deloitte Touche Tomatsu's findings suggest that while older users may want to join the most popular social networking websites, such as MySpace, Bebo and Piczo, they may also be willing to pay for privacy to ensure that some content, such as personal videos and photographs, is only seen by a select group of friends and peers.

These premium subscriptions could, in addition to guaranteeing privacy, offer value-added services ranging from voice messaging to group chats, online storage and webpage design.

Read more here and see the three reports outlining the trends that will influence the global Technology, Media & Telecommunications market in 2007 here.

DMCA complaint dropped

Last week I blogged about Anshe Chung's Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint against YouTube, demanding that YouTube to pull down a video of her virtual self being harassed during an interview (see here).  According to CNet News.com, it turns out that that DMCA complaint has now been dropped:

The husband of Second Life land baroness Anshe Chung said he should not have filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint against YouTube in his attempts to have the site delete a video of her avatar being attacked by a barrage of digital flying penises. And as a result, he said, he has revoked the DMCA claim.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Guntram Graef, the husband of Anshe Chung's creator, Ailin Graef, explained that he now understands that the video, which he still considers offensive and a sexual attack on his wife, was not copyright infringement and, therefore, his DMCA complaint was not appropriate.

"I would like to make it clear that I regret filing DMCA claims in this case, because the real issue at hand wasn't at all about copyright," Graef said.

Read more here.  Also, read the interview with Guntram Graef here.

Second Life sceptic

Ed Lee believes that Second Life's "hype and potential far outweigh it’s execution" and gives seven reasons why it will never be as mainstream as many commentators think.

1. Basic hardware needs are too high.
2. Lack of understanding from the colonials (businesses).
3. The indiginous population.
4. Interoperability between 3D virtual worlds.
5. Metrics.
6. The SLers are deviants.
7. Ethical dilemmas.

Read more here.

CBS embraces openness and new media

Bambi Francisco at MarketWatch looks facourably at CBS's new media strategy:

Openness is ... more critical when it comes to media on the Web, where walled gardens apparently are a turn-off to a generation that likes to choose. Essentially on the Net, deliverers of content cannot expect to be the sole producer of the content consumed. All I have to say is "AOL."

CBS President and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves displayed this openness during his CES keynote in Las Vegas this week, where he announced that the media company's deals with YouTube and Second Life. "These companies are helping us extend the digital and interactive reach of our world-class assets, and build deeper connections with our audiences," he said.

In the YouTube deal, the video site owned by Google Inc. will host a contest for the best 15-second inspirational video. It's an interesting idea that actually may turn into a repository of complaints about companies and the war.

...

In the Second Life deal, CBS will incorporate a Star Trek environment in the virtual world, and hopefully tap into interesting story ideas, based on how people interact, for future Star Trek productions. In both partnerships, CBS is basically saying to the audience that their content matters.

Read more here.

Do you own your avatar?

CNet's News.com reports on an interesting legal issue arising out of Second Life, namely, whether you own the copyright in your Second Life avatar:

A Second Life land developer has convinced YouTube to pull down an off-color video of her virtual self being harassed during an interview, raising novel questions about the legal rights of virtual world participants.

Last month, Anshe Chung Studios demanded that YouTube delete the recording, citing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which generally requires Web sites to remove material that infringes on copyright laws. The controversy stemmed from video taken during an interview with Anshe Chung, the virtual world's biggest land owner, conducted by CNET News.com in its Second Life bureau last month.

During the interview--which took place in a digital theater in front of dozens of audience members' avatars--a group intent on sabotaging the event attacked it with 15 minutes of animated penises and photographs of Anshe Chung's real-life owner, Ailin Graef, digitally altered to make her look like she was holding a giant penis.

Afterward, a video of the attack was posted on YouTube.  When Anshe Chung Studios filed a complaint with the popular video service claiming that Graef's copyrights had been infringed because images of her avatar were used without her permission, YouTube promptly removed the video.

Anshe Chung Studios has also, in a private e-mail, alerted The Sydney Morning Herald, which ran a December 21 story, along with a screenshot, on the attack, that it should take down the photograph because the newspaper, too, was hosting an infringing image.

...

While it's true that Second Life users own the content they create, a legal expert and others in the online news business, as well as the virtual world's publisher, Linden Lab, argue that the use of images or video from the so-called "griefing" attack are almost certainly protected by fair use doctrine.

Read more here.  While that is the likely situation under US copyright law, Australia does not have the fair use doctrine, relying instead on several fair dealing exceptions.  This means that there would not be a general defence for using someone else's avatar under Australian law, it would have to be a fair dealing for research or study, criticism or review, or reporting of news.  In this particular instance, the Sydney Morning Herald's use of the avator was for reporting the news, but would be harder to rely on that exception to excuse the posting of the clip on YouTube.

How popular is Second Life?

CNet News.com looks into how popular Second Life really is:

Last month, the virtual world Second Life reached 2 million registered accounts, an impressive number considering it hit 1 million accounts just eight weeks earlier.

But critics argue that the eye-popping, seven-figure total is, at best, misleading. As a result, Second Life publisher Linden Lab is coming under increasing fire from bloggers and gamers who say the virtual world's creators aren't giving their customers the full story.

...

"We're being asked to believe that this is the future of the Internet," said Clay Shirky, a writer and professor at New York University's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, referring to the grandiose hype surrounding Second Life and its cultural significance. "If you're being told that something is the future of the Internet and the arguments are based on the incredible popularity, the first thing you want to understand is how popular it is," Shirky added.

Read more here.