I 'attended' my first virtual seminar at the SL Bar Association's sim in Second Life yesterday! It was very interesting, and worked surprisingly well. Starting only 5-10 mins late, but with good audio feed and very little disruption, I was also pleased that it worked with my laptop on battery power and using a wireless LAN - sat on the sofa at home!
Not being familar with the SL Bar Association, I had some assumptions that the majority may be American (probably Californian), but was surprised to hear the first speaker with an English accent - Paul Marsh, the VP of the Law Society, aka 'LawSocietyPaul Finesmith'. The Principal Speaker was David Naylor, a partner in the Technology Law Group at Field Fisher Waterhouse in London, aka Solomon Cortes in SL.
David (or Solomon, if you prefer) spoke about the main legal issues faced by both the users and creators of virtual worlds. The emergence of disputes and issues generally arises when commercial transactions are present - i.e. both parties have something that they stand to lose, if things go wrong. Therefore, we find lawyers there too! Anonymity was a main aspect to several points made throughout the one hour (CPD accredited!) session - particularly interesting when the main speakers and most of the attendees are under the guise of an avatar name, with no easy way to trace their identity back in the 'real' world.
Anonymity gives rise to issues in jurisdiction - perhaps more relevant where e-commerce or distance-selling is present as the law offers consumers some protection (in the EU,in particular). David also spoke about virtual 'creations' in SL - things that residents have build in the virtual world. It is fairly easy to find the owner or creator of such objects, but again, this information relates to their virtual pseudonym and not to their legal name. Therefore, if a replica of the Apple store on Fifth Avenue appears in Second Life, the creator may be infringing the IP rights of Apple, unless the avatar name happens to be an employee and creating this 'asset' on behalf of the organisation.
For me, the most interesting part of the seminar was a discussion on goods and services. Laws are generally drafted with either goods or services in mind, with different warranties for either, and 'virtual assets' are neither one nor the other. Some creations may look like goods that can be bought and sold, but in reality, they are only virtual, and are composed merely of binary data on a server somewhere at Linden Labs. Therefore, the question arose of whether we need a new class of asset - the Digital Asset.
Read the rest of the post for snapshots of the event, and further links!
Forthcoming Schedule
- July 22, 2008, 12:00 noon
"Intellectual property enforcement in virtual worlds," Juris Amat
1 hour CLE Credit (California)
Click here for more details and to register - July 29, 2008, 12:00 noon
"Internet fraud," Theophan Paine
1 hour CLE Credit (California)
Click here for more details and to register - September 9, 2008, 12:00 noon
"Trademark infringement in virtual worlds," Legal Writer
1 hour CLE Credit (California)
Click here for more details and to register - September 16, 2008, 12:00 noon
"Legal research on the (free) internet," Cat Galileo
1 hour CLE Credit (California) (approval pending)
Click here for more details and to register
Other Stuff
Recent publication: Kennedy, Rónán (2008) 'Virtual rights? Property in online game objects and characters', Information & Communications Technology Law, 17:2, 95-106
B&W scan of the Seminar Handouts - not particularly good resolution / quality.
https://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=TTdFZUN0WkJlaFJjR0E9PQ,
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