Temple Law Professor Calls for “Serious Legal Systems” in Virtual Worlds
August 23rd, 2007 by Benjamin Duranske
David Post, a law professor at Temple University (also an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, a Fellow at the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School, the Co-Director of ICANNWatch.org , Disputes.org, and the Cyberspace Law Institute, an occasional contributor to the Volokh Conspiracy blog, and a member of the band “Bad Dog“), called for “serious legal systems … that more closely resembles what we call law” in virtual worlds in an interview with ZDNet Asia.
He was interviewed while attending the State of Play conference in Singapore (mental note… find corporate sponsor). Setting aside my petty jealousy and turning to Professor Post’s insightful comments:
I think until you have some sort of serious legal systems in these virtual worlds, they really are just games. But I think [virtual worlds] have the potential to be really more than games, and they won’t reach that potential until there’s something there that more closely resembles what we call law.
Also from the interview:
Why would you invest [and] spend six months digging up your land to plant crops if someone could come in the next day and take it from you? And since you know that before hand, you don’t spend the six months [building] a nice structure because you don’t have any security that you will be able to keep it under a fair rule.
The full interview is well worth the click. And the band he’s in isn’t bad either, if you like funky Dylanesque bluegrass. My favorite? “Betsy Likens” (.mp3).
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Professor Post always writes well on this subject. I haven’t read the full interview yet, but I have no doubt that it’ll be worth it. It is a most important issue.