Some of Metaverse Law's readers may remember in-wolrd presentation of self-govermental project called Al Andalus Caliphate. Here is great machimina about Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds and some similar initiatives including Al Andalus.
More info about the project:
Full video: link here
Paper: link here
Two interesting articles was published recently:
1. Trust Revisited: Content Creation Theft and Open Source Grids:
Very detailed story of legal issues related to transfering work form Second Life grid to Openlife grid.
2. IMVU Avatars “stole” my eyes (textures):
Vint Falken's story of Creative Commons licensed pictures published on Flickr and used in IMVU.
The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) released an interesting position paper on some of the concerns associated with virtual worlds. The report published in November 2008 is entitled:
"Virtual Worlds, Real Money: Security and Privacy in Massively-Multiplayer Online Games and Social and Corporate Virtual Worlds"
Link here
ENISA an EU agency created to advance the functioning of the internalmarket. The agency is a centre of expertise for the European Member States and European institutions in network and information security, giving advice and recommendations and acting as a switchboard of information for good practices. Moreover, the agency facilitates contacts between the European institutions, the Member States and private business and industry actors.
The report identifies 12 recommendations to tackle some of problems:
To the European Commission and National Governments (Government Policy Recommendations)Read more...
1. Support the setting up of an industry wide forum for MMO/VW service providers to share information and best practice on security vulnerabilities. In such a competitive sector there is a clear need for a neutral forum to exchange information on security incidents for the benefit of all concerned. Given its mandate to foster a culture of information security and bring together stakeholders in Europe, ENISA would be in a good position to stimulate such an initiative.
2. Fund work on legal clarification of key issues, such as the status of intellectual property, acceptable risk and personal information in MMO/VWs. Although this is not an information security issue per se, a lack of legal clarity is at the root of many information security problems identified in this report and therefore an effort to address this issue by appropriate bodies should be part of the solution. NB: This is not a call for extra legislation but only a call for clarification and interpretation of existing legislation.
3. Encourage and fund independent dispute resolution for player-to-player disputes.
4. Create financial procedures appropriate to MMO/VWs in order to prevent virtual asset theft using chargebacks. Again, this is not an information security issue per se, but it is a root cause of the information security problems identified in this report. This should be in partnership with MMO/VW providers, banks, credit companies and online payment services.
5. Investigate and address MMO/VW provider concerns about conflicting obligations brought about by legislation on common-carrier status.
To MMO/VW providers
6. The five most important technical issues to be highlighted in this area (see full report for more details) include item-duping, end-to-end security and MMO/VW specific denial of service. In general, providers should create an appropriate balance between security measures aimed at detection and response and those aimed at prevention.Detection and response is often a more effective means of addressing security issues in MMO/VWs than prevention.
7. Privacy policies should clearly specify data collected as part of anti-cheating measures and data available to other users (eg, via eavesdropping), including any information which might identify a user uniquely.
8. Providers should consider charging a token, returnable lodgement fee for all ODR complaints to prevent false complaints (eg,€50).
9. Any initiative which increases the strength of user authentication (while maintaining an appropriate balance between usability and cost) should be encouraged.
10. We recommend a standard set of governing documents and terminology, a single point of reference where governing documents may be obtained, and the input and participation of end-user groups in their design and development.
11. As an option formore security-conscious users, in certain MMO/VWs, a bootable CD image (LiveCD) containing necessary software can be made available; this is already a well-known measure to improve security in critical online operations such as online banking.
Awareness raising and research
12. Awareness raising: We describe issues to be highlighted in awareness raising campaigns, such as how to detect account theft, how to deal with inappropriate behaviour, privacy risks, in-world property risks, etc.
Research: The group has identified some future trends emerging in MMO/VWs which have important security implications, including effective content filtering for MMO/VWs, security and reliability issues of open world formats, and security vulnerabilities in corporate worlds.
Three short articles with some basic IP information regarding:
1. Trademarks
2. Patents
3. Copyrights
all by Ross Dannenberg the editor-in-chief of the Patent Arcade blog, and an adjunct professor at George Mason Law School in Arlington, Va.
It looks like american software patents system threaten virtual worlds too.
General Patent Corporation and World's.com announced yesterday:
We are pleased to have the expertise and IP experience of General Patent and Lerner David to enforce Worlds’ patent portfolio,” stated Thom Kidrin, Worlds’ CEO. “As the number of virtual worlds and MMORG’s continues to grow, Worlds has seen the space we pioneered in 1995 validated in techniques and methodologies we believe are defined in our patents.
Therefore, it would seem that General Patent Corporation and Worlds.com are taking the position that the above-referenced patents cover the idea of the computer architecture for a three-dimensional graphical multi-user interactive virtual world systems. If so, this announcement is arguably a very thinly veiled notice to the virtual world industry that infringement suits are forthcoming for those companies who do not enter into a licensing deal with General Patent Corporation and Worlds.com.
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