Dictatorship or democracy in virtual worlds

Why not just create a "democratic" game that has a constitution, full citizenship for players, and all the prerequisites for stable wealth? Such a game would be open source (so that other, interoperable "nations" could be established for you to emigrate to if you don't like the will of the majority in one game-world), and run by elected representatives who would instruct the administrators and programmers as to how to run the virtual world. In the real world, the TSA sets the rules for aviation -- in a virtual world, the equivalent agency would determine the physics of flight.

an article by Cory Doctorow from Informationweek

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Lively by Google

It's not a secret anymore.





The Terms of Service are not very surprising and generally look similar to Secondlife TOS.


Two the most important differences:

1. Lively doesn't have currency.
2. The content in Lively is mostly generated by vendors working for Google and a small number of trusted testers.


So it looks more like clone of IMVU (combination of "chat with friends" in cartoonish 3D) than Secondlife or the Metaverse.

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The Secondlife of Lawyers

There was a time when the most influenced lawyers like Lawrence Lessing and Richard Posner appeared in-world. What is more important they gave very interesting speeches regarding legal aspects of the Metaverse:



THE SECOND LIFE OF JUDGE RICHARD A. POSNER



THE SECOND LIFE OF LAWRENCE LESSIG




both likns from the New World Notes blog.

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The Metaverse Republic Party!

If you still don't know what exactly The Metaverse Republic is and what wants to achieve that means you need to be there!

* here is the in-world landmark.

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Legal aspects of machimina

The big issue in Second Life is copyright. The creators of Second Life, Linden Lab, assign intellectual property rights in the avatars (characters) and the objects that individuals create to the Second Life users who create them. This means that you would need to get permission from the creators of any avatars or scenes that you film in Second Life, in order to avoid breaching copyright.


Generally Linden Lab does not give permission for anyone to film in Second Life because they do not own the content (the copyright in the avatars and scenes) but they do however liken filming in Second Life to filming in New York, where generic street scenes and landscapes can be considered “fair use”.

from: Machinima the legal way - a post by Mixin Pixel.

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Podcast on Law in Virtual Worlds

An interview with Dr Melissa de Zwart from australian Monash University’s Law Faculty.


Here you can listen or download the podcast. Worth your thirty minutes, in my opinion.



You can also read an article by Dr Melissa de Zwart, where she explains why our legal system can't ignore the rapidly growing interest in virtual worlds.

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Confederation of Democratic Simulatiors

The oldest Democracy in Second Life



by Draxtor Despres

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