Archive for 'Legal Issues'
“It”s Not Illegal Yet!” — Opening the Sports Book in SL
by Walker Spaight As the rash of Tringo parlors makes clear, gambling is a not unpopular activity in Second Life. Now, just in time for March Madness, a full sports book is coming to SL that will allow residents to indulge their taste for wagering on RL sports like NCAA basketball, Major League Baseball, and [...]
Full StoryOp-Ed: When the Game Goes Too Far
by the Teflon Don A recent incident in which three Louisiana high-school students were arrested for something called “cyber-bullying” should put the fear in some MMOG residents, as it now appears that what some groups do in-world can be considered a felony.
Full StoryMeet the W-Hats: swastikas, minors, obscenity, and griefing
Screenshot of the W-Hat property. Swastika since removed by Nova Linden. The W-Hats have been in the news of late, but who or w-hat are they exactly? In this interview we talk to their long time Baku neighbor One Song, who fills in the picture for us, and it isn’t pretty: despite several bannings, the [...]
Full StoryKorea Investigates Poor Customer Service in MMORPGs
Why can’t we have what Korea does? Our sister publication, the Korean Herald (well ok, it does have Herald in the name), is reporting that Korean Fair Trade Commission is looking at online gaming companies that are failing to deliver on promised service. Dan Hunter summarizes its investigation as follows: Korean consumer protection authorities are [...]
Full StoryJames Miller’s Dispute Resolution Proposal
We’ve been thinking a bit about dispute resolution here, and I think the following proposal by James Miller deserves closer consideration. Basic idea is that it gives users the option to take their case before a jury of peer avatars (or alternatively going to the Lindens). As it stands I personally think there is too [...]
Full StoryNannies with Badges
During the State of Play some months ago, there was a special session on dispute resolution with Robin, Cory, and Phillip Linden attending, in addition to a number of anthropologists, lawyers, and industry types (eBay) that were experts in dispute resolution. What the concensus of the experts seemed to be was that the Lindens should [...]
Full Storymore stuff you can do with terms of service (TOS) agreements
i dunno how many of you guys have bothered to follow the TOS thrashes that show up here now and then. for those of you who do not follow them — the points debated can concern the use of TOS as holy writ v the use of TOS docs as really fine personal information reapers.
Full StoryExploring Online Conflict Resolution
In an historic meeting at the State of Play, a group of game developers, lawyers, and conflict mediators met to discuss strategies for conflict resolution online. The headline idea emerging from the meeting was the thought that rather than impose uniform conflict resolution strategies in a top down manner, it might be more useful for [...]
Full StoryFree Speech for Avatars! And?like?Now!
Ludlow blasts Stratics. In a Session at The State of Play entitled Avatar Rights, Virtual Liberty, and Free Expression in Virtual Worlds, Peter Ludlow blasted the organized censorship policies of Stratics, while Fred Schauer of Harvard University suggested that the possibilities for free expression in virtual worlds should be used to explore alternative models of [...]
Full StoryStratics bans anti-Kerry .sig
Ohhhh Stratics, you’ve done it again! Just when you think the Stratics Thought Police have run out of speech to ban, a stratics user now claims that the following .sig was banned by the Mods:I mean, I’ll be voting for Kerry too, but it would never occur to me to ban a siggy like that. [...]
Full Story
Recent Comments