Virtual Justice

Update 11/2/10:

So as promised, here's the book: http://bit.ly/virtualjustice

That link points to a 2.5 MB PDF that is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial.   I'm hoping to get a cleaner copy at some point soon--if I do, it will be posted at the same location.  I got a MUCH better copy as of noon on 11/3/10 and it is now posted at the above link.

If you prefer wood pulp, this is the Amazon link: http://amzn.to/virtual-justice

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Oct 4, 2010:

So, apologies for the self-promotion, but my new book, Virtual Justice, is now on sale in the bookstores.  It was also recently featured in a short segment of NPR's On The Media, which you can find here. 

The book is subtitled "The New Laws of Online Worlds," and that's pretty much the topic.  I start out with a pretty in-depth overview of the past and present of virtual worlds.  I cover history, business models, the various genres, demographics, and technology.  Then, around Chapter 4, I jump into the law, covering the law & legal theory surrounding issues like jurisdiction, gaming, property, computer hacking, and copyright.

It has always been the stories that have fascinated me about law and virtual worlds, so I tried to fit as many of the best ones as I could into the book.  There's the Vendroid Scam, the Cally Eve Scam, the EQ dog dupe, Bragg, Qiu Chegwei, Mr. Bungle, Twixt, etc.  But I use them all in support of the book's overarching theme: that virtual worlds offer private alternatives to standard legal ordering.  I restate that theme in the conclusion as follows:

All of this suggests that virtual worlds are becoming, in essence, separate jurisdictions governed by separate rules. As a matter of legal doctrine, these rules may not qualify as “laws,” given that no territorial government has recognized the formal sovereignty of virtual worlds. But as a matter of effective legal practice, the doctrines of contract, property, hacking, and intellectual property all serve to greatly empower those who own and administer virtual worlds, effectively insulating their actions from legal review.

The metaphor I use for this point is the castle, which, although in essence a technology, effectively became a new jurisdiction and source of law during the Middle Ages.

I'm also happy to say that Yale University Press has agreed to let me release the text of the book under a Creative Commons BY-NC license.  That means that (hopefully very soon) I will be able to post a link to the final PDF here so that anyone interested in saving a tree can (legally) download and share the book for free.

Finally, as I stated in the acknowledgement, I owe a profound debt of gratitude to the TN community for educating me over the past seven years about all aspects of virtual worlds.  And with virtual worlds getting bigger every year, I think these issues will only be getting more interesting, so I'm looking forward to more conversations.

Comments

[ecastronova]

1.

Read. This. Book.

[John Carter McKnight]

2.

Got my copy, and looking forward to reading it. Great news on the CC license: I'd like to use it as the base for my "Law of Virtual Worlds" class next semester.

[Lisa Galarneau]

3.

Has classic written all over it! :-)

[greglas]

4.

Thanks, Ted & Lisa! :-)

John -- that was my part of my hope in making it available as a free PDF. Much easier to assign it to students -- and it's the sort of book that I think can work well for undergraduate courses.

[Andy Havens]

5.

AWESOME! Makes me wish (not really) that I was still working in Lawyer Land, as I'd have a valid excuse to expense the thing.

[Thomas Malaby]

6.

Congratulations, Greg!

To TN Readers: I had the pleasure to read a section or two of this book while it was coming together, and I knew already then that it would be a fantastic example of nuanced, thoughtful, and yet grounded scholarship. Buy it!

[ecastronova]

7.

Greg has a great knack for taking complicated legal cases and explaining what they mean in terms of the worlds (real and virtual). You'll encounter these cases and your brain will sort of spin inside your head and then, as you read on, you'll see the basic arguments that a reasonable person might make about the situation, and walk away with a better grasp of the social nuances of the technology.

[greglas]

8.

Thanks again! And I love the "brain spinning" part, personally -- some times I get stuck there. :-)

[John Beety]

9.

Looking forward to the CC version. I'm sure I'll get a lot out of it, and if it's a book I'll want to read again, I'll go ahead and kill a tree (and spend my money).

[greglas]

10.

John, it should be available within the next month. And I'm much more interested in people reading it than people buying it. So giving it away online is actually a win/win.

[John Beety]

11.

@greglas: Thank you. It didn't seem like the type of book you wrote to get rich. Doesn't make it any less important, though!

[John Nelson]

12.

I look forward to reading it. I'll be interested to read how your views on virtual property have developed since the older "The Laws of Virtual Worlds" and your subsequent articles.

[Ren Reynolds]

13.

I shall order asap.
squee

[Ren Reynolds]

14.

FYI my current take (that I've mused on for quite a while but have now co-written (with Melissa DeZwart) a paper on) is that Virtual Worlds are for (increasingly) many legal purposes akin to sports. In a peculiar twist next I'm going to try to apply this to Human Rights law.

[greglas]

15.

Hey Ren --

I actually spend a whole chapter (6) on games & sports -- if the reader doesn't think there's an important connection between MMPORPGs and sports (and some people don't), they'll be wondering why I spend so much time talking about the laws of baseball, football, and golf.

Is your paper with DeZwart posted online?

[Gareth Mensah]

16.

'... effectively insulating their actions from legal review.' Take that Governator.

Sounds like a great read, I'm adding it to my wishlist.

[Andres Guadamuz]

17.

Gratz Greg!

Have ordered it on the Kindle.

[gunmaker_guardian]

18.

hey guyz :) its me :) both of u igniter and nicholas"mafia" are full of shit if u did iether of what each other accuses each other of saying... its propaganda.. im the one who used my own coding skills to enhance the lower orbit ion cannon, as well as other powefull source codes orignally derived from a certain code spider :) and ill give u a link to a virus infested version of a precompiled one if u want .. should dday occur.. use rapidsearch for "loic.exe". i call myself the code locker and gun maker because thats what i do. if you ever wondered why patrioticnigras.org wnent out of business? well, it was a joint effort that i first got permission for all u goofy buddies out there to the fbi :) that u could fire away.. and secondly, on a certain month of last year i fired my laser in THREE colors :)
red hot:: straight from my pc to a unkown amount of bots i modified loic.exe to loic.net ;) and broke a hackers world record of 20 million packets per second(i swapped types on occasion) from a single pc
the other color was
solid ruby(and some mice on a wire :): i used secondlife itself to launch a mail bomb if impossible proportions, and a vessel i liked to call "sand fleas", you sea i came to realize the pn was stupid enough to have an email address system within their domain(this was just the first wave... fyi) imagine a self replicating nanoscopic black dot, that was physical bouyant and moved with the wind. find a water connected sim.. such as one of my old hangouts known as rizal :) ( still go there if im testing epic things.. fyi).. and then unleashing them there. the flout to the surface... an quickly out of the sim. oh yeah and btw sorry.. the reason for the 100 emails per sim per user limit is me xD.
the final attack was inworld upon the patrioticnigras.org infested woodbury 'school' of humorous people.. also known as 4chan server(or #### ####;'s as i like to call them) where they had hidden underground maze of extreme gay stupidity... they actually had super giant gold textures statue of a African american(im not racist btw) with a salute an an erect dick.[ i immediately commenced an premature attack on this sim(and got temporarily ip banned for not using stealth..) it had to go...] using the roman orbis source code{a perma sim crasher that is black listed..( i have more than 3 copies of it so ask for "gunmaker" if u need to make use of .. my services :) that i optomized to bypass the blacklist.. and increase the weapon strength several hundred fold >:) and shot it in their sim a couple thousand times. my work was done there :) color of that laser is light blue,, fyi :)