Santa Clara / Recent News

Below are some recent mainstream media stories on virtual worlds for those who might have missed them.  Thoughts, comments, and links to other things welcome, as always.

Before that, though, if you should happen to be in Santa Clara County on Friday (the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, specifically), I'll be there as part of a panel talking about how trademark law should work in virtual worlds.  See this page.  Much more interesting, though, are the other folks who will be speaking, such as Richard Stallman, Alex Kozinski, Marty Roberts (GC of Linden Lab), Chris Kelly (Chief Privacy officer of Facebook),  Zahavah Levine (Chief Counsel of YouTube), and a whole bunch of other people rather fancier than myself.  Apparently, you can attend for free, although they encourage you to donate $10 to pay for cheese and such.

Now onto the news...

The Wall Street Journal on the Second Life Banking Crisis

"When virtual environments first started, they were viewed as libertarian dreams with no interference," says Behnam Dayanim, a lawyer who specializes in Internet law at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP in Washington. "As companies that sponsor these environments become more accountable to investors or regulators, they are starting to encounter real-world limitations."

The New York Times on Kid's Virtual Worlds

Club Penguin, where members pay $5.95 a month to dress and groom penguin characters and play games with them, attracts seven times more traffic than Second Life. In one sign of the times, Electric Sheep, a software developer that helps companies market their brands in virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com, last week laid off 22 people, about a third of its staff.

ABC News: Can Web Worlds Teach Real Life?

Proponents of online research counter with figures that the audience for today's "massively multiplayer" games mirror the general public far more closely than most other video games. And in hopes of quelling the skeptics, several studies are attempting to see if reality shines through in the online worlds of pixels and pixies.

The BBC on the Habbo Theft

A Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from "rooms" in Habbo Hotel, a 3D social networking website.

(And click here for a similar hacking/virtual property story from Japan.)

Wired (Julian) on Griefers

Pwnage, zerging, phat lewts — online gaming has birthed a rich lexicon. But none, perhaps, deserves our attention as much as the notion of the griefer. Broadly speaking, a griefer is an online version of the spoilsport — someone who takes pleasure in shattering the world of play itself.

Comments

[Benjamin Duranske]

1.

Holy crap, Greg. Kozinski? And key in-house guys from Linden Lab and Facebook? That's a panel. Just the fact that Kozinski is even *on* a panel on legal issues in virtual worlds is an interesting development. I'm going to see if I can get a reasonable ticket on short notice. How did this not get more publicity before now?

[Benjamin Duranske]

2.

Ah... wait. The panel is not the people listed here; some are speaking independently. My quick reading error. Though it looks like you do have Marty Roberts on the panel with you (and a number of other big names, including Post). Want to ask Roberts if they're worried about contributory trademark infringement, if I don't make it down for this to ask myself?

[greglas]

3.

Hi Ben --

Judge Kozinski actually has talked about virtual worlds and virtual property in the past. I'd be surprised if he doesn't say something about them in his talk.

http://forge.ironrealms.com/2007/04/21/judge-kozinski-on-virtual-property/

With regard to Marty Roberts -- stay tuned as I'll post here a copy of the paper that Candy Dougherty and I are writing on the topic for this symposium. It will be saying quite a bit about contributory trademark infringement, mostly focusing on how it might play out in Second Life. So I'll be really interested in what Marty has to say about Linden's position on that issue.

[Peter Landwehr]

4.

I thought the Wired article on the PNs was really good, & in fact spent the weekend digging around for more information on them. So good stuff. The digging, though did bring up one issue (though small): the article seems to make it out that W-Hat/SA were responsible for the Edwards attack, but that was the PNs (see interview at http://preview.tinyurl.com/2dzcet). But yes, really really liked that coverage.

[greglas]

5.

Videos from the Santa Clara conference law & virtual worlds panel are now online. So if you'd like to hear my go on about trademark law, RMT, and other questions in virtual worlds -- or you want to hear a Second Life GC talk about the RMT there, visit the journal's website here.