Archive for 'Legal Issues'
David Pierce Files virtual Class Action Suit Against AVGs Chad Thomas
Several days ago in a post in the comments section of this blog, Chad Thomas of the Alphaville Government admitted to using proxy servers to vote over 200 times for Mr-President in the now infamous Alphaville Elections between Mr-President and Ashley Richardson. Now, David Pierce has filed what what may be the worlds first virtual [...]
Full StoryJason Sim on Oprah: AVG Elections were rigged!
In the latest round of charges and countercharges on the scandal that will not die but which manages to get murkier by the day, Jason Sim has taken his charges of election-rigging to the Oprah Show in Alphaville. Following is a transcript from the show, which we have received courtesy of Ian at the Alphaville [...]
Full StoryAlphaville Election Scandal Won’t go Away
The Alphaville Gazette, which is edited by SLH contributor and former AVG Press Secretary Ian is running a story to the effect that Jason Sim had posted an election-rigging confession in his user profile (since removed). Supposedly there was a Perl script that allowed one person to vote for Mr. President 264 time. Did this [...]
Full StoryProfanity no longer a reportable offense in tso, but what does it mean?
Most of you know that TSO has announced (well, Tigger has announced) that profanity is no longer a reportable offense. RB has editorialzed on his blog that this shows an outbreak of sanity at EA, since profanity reporting was principally just a tool used by griefers to ban citicisms that get fed up with their [...]
Full StoryEditorial: Friendship Web or Snooper Web?
EA/Maxis picks its spots to champion the privacy of its users. If, as was the case, a user claims to have beaten his 8 year old sister and put her in the hospital, well that?s a case where EA/Maxis has said that they can?t notify the police because it would violate their privacy policy. But [...]
Full StoryYale Law Prof Ponders Uri’s Plight
This draft law review article — entitled “VIRTUAL LIBERTY: FREEDOM TO DESIGN AND FREEDOM TO PLAY IN VIRTUAL WORLDS” is a must read. Written by Jack Balkin, who is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment and Director, The Information Society Project at Yale Law School. The article covers a lot of [...]
Full StoryInterview with EA’s Jeff Brown
EA’s Vice President for Corporate Communications, Jeff Brown, recently agreed to answer questions from a reporter from the Michigan Daily. Following is an excerpt from the interview that was prepared for publication in the Daily and leaked to the AVH. We will call the reporter “Woverine.” The interview is pretty remarkable given that Mr. Brown [...]
Full Story2 & 1/2 Months later ESRB responds to J: Get Lost!
Some time ago our contributor J published an Op/Ed piece arguing that the ESRB rating system for MMORPGs was broken. This was part of a research project that he was doing on the ESRB Rating system. As the comments following that essay show, most readers found his analysis thoughtful and careful. When he was doing [...]
Full StoryOp Ed: Did EA Mislead the Electronic Software Rating Board?
by J A question that has been much discussed in the Alphaville Herald in recent weeks is how to deal with minors in the dynamic context of The Sims Online. More specifically, how on earth did TSO get a rating of “T” for teen (suitable for children aged 13) despite all the adult content, ranging [...]
Full StoryOn Display for All: Stratics Message Boards Caught Deploying Selective Censorship Against Urizenus
As we reported earlier, there was an attempt (not by us) to open a “Free Urizenus” thread on the Stratics Sims Online Message Boards. A secondary thread, opened by a journalism student at The University of Texas at Austin attempted to address issues related to the report of r/l child abuse and r/l children working [...]
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