4 comments

• 

  Crosbie Fitch

  2 years ago

  That's the trouble with trying to enable people to visit a virtual world, rather than give them influence over fictional avatars.
  
  People think that if it has real players you can copy the real executive, legislature, and judiciary too.
  
  VR was supposed to be an escape from reality, not a legally invigilated computer generated theme park.
  
  Shut down the border before it's too late. VR systems must be reclassified purely as teleconferencing facilities where people role play and all speech is a priori ephemeral, with no contracts binding.
• 

  Crosbie Fitch

  2 years ago

  A VR world also has to be defined as a public domain work not subject to IP law - and consequently no exclusive rights can be enjoyed by the proprietor.
  

  
  This (and other issues) all add up to an inescapable conclusion that any large scale virtual environment must be a publicly owned system.
  

  
  That's what I concluded when I wrote this:
  http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000313/fitc...
  
• 

  Andreas

  2 years ago

  A couple of points:

  
  <ul>
  <li>

  "But the vast majority of them seem to agree that property rights are being violated and that something must be done soon before the virtual economy within Second Life begins to deteriorate."

  
  

  This is exactly the problem with VR environments: players feel this is about property rights (which it is not), while in fact, it's all about intellectual property rights.

  </li>
  <li>

  See the parallel with the music industry scenario. The labels started to release music in a digital format in the 80s, when mp3 compression and file-sharing technology weren't around yet. After having created a business model around selling high-fidelity digital audio, the internet and mp3 compression came around, undermining the very basics of the labels' model. We all know the results...

  </li>
  <li>

  "A new world has been born and now its citizens are struggling with defining the basic principles and laws that will govern it. It's what political scientists refer to as a nation's "constitutional moment.""

  
  

  There's a difference with real world scenarios though: the entity defining SL's rules is Linden Labs, not the community (although they can of course exert pressure, as has happened here). As Cory Doctorow says: "benevolent dictatorships aren't the same thing as democracies." Curious how this will work out.

  </li>
  </ul>
• 

  Andreas

  2 years ago

  "[...] it's all about intellectual property rights."
  And about the SL ToS defined by Linden Labs, of course.