VB is pleased to bring readers a new, notable paper in virtual law, Alan Turing and the Matrix: Intelligent Systems for Law Enforcement in Virtual Worlds (.pdf) by Bart Schermer, a partner at consultancy firm Considerati and an assistent professor at the University of Leiden (Faculty of Law) in the Netherlands.

Schermer has written his PhD. thesis on the legal aspects of intelligent software agents. This paper emphasizes virtual, intelligent law enforcement agents in 3D networked environments. Scary? Maybe. Interesting reading? Definitely. From the paper:

We have established that crime in virtual worlds is a possibility, and that the societal impact of virtual crime might become more significant over time. As such, surveillance and law enforcement in virtual worlds might become necessary. This will put additional strain on the capacity of current law enforcement. It is therefore worthwhile to examine whether intelligent systems can take over some of the surveillance tasks normally executed by law enforcement officers.

That’s right — Agent Smith. Schermer also touches on “artificial judges” and a number of other themes that should resonate with VB readers.

Schermer’s paper originally appeared in Liber Amicorum.

VB’s Reading Room periodically features new, notable papers in virtual law.  If you have written or are writing a related paper that you would like to have hosted at VB, email the editor for more information.

New World Notes is running an item expanding on CNN iReports coverage of an ongoing investigation by Playboy into trademark infringement in Second Life. The original report isn’t sourced, outside from identifying a couple of Playboy representatives visiting a potentially infringing display in the virtual world, but New World Notes tracked down Playboy Island manager MSGiro Grosso, who noted that the investigation is in the early stages, and that he’s trying to work with infringers who might be up for a partnership.

My take? I love the way Playboy is approaching the problem. They originally built a very pretty island that was sparsely visited. They then started doing in-world partnerships with content creators, and have apparently turned things around. More praise? It now looks like they’re taking a smart, long-term view of their presence in virtual worlds, and are joining Aeron chair maker Herman Miller in trying to find creative ways to police their trademarks without instantly defaulting to lawsuits, or even DMCA notices.

Where they hit resistance, they’ll have to consider a suit eventually, but it’s good to see companies handling these issues with some sensitivity to the fact that they arrived well after their brand was already being represented by fans. Turning to licensing and revenue sharing first is the right approach.

Court minutes (.pdf) from May 5 indicate that Brock Pierce has now paid Alan Debonneville whatever amount of money they agreed he’d pay in order to settle their bitter, often personal, lawsuit.

Though they parties had reached a confidential agreement over a month ago, problems with the settlement (which appeared to boil down to Pierce not paying Debonneville what he’d promised) along with a ridiculous level of apparent animosity between both the litigants and the lawyers involved kept the case alive. This step, however, likely does really end the dispute.

From the court’s minutes:

The Court takes judicial notice of the fact that defendant has now made the payment required by the settlement agreement and the Order to Show Cause is taken off calendar as moot. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the previously issued Temporary Restraining Order and Writs of Attachment are dissolved and vacated.

There is still a motion for sanctions (.pdf) against Brock Pierce pending for allegedly not showing up for a scheduled deposition, and the judge could, theoretically, still rule on that — though there’s a reasonable chance it will be withdrawn now that Pierce has paid. There’s also a response to the motion (.pdf), of course. The motion and response are fairly standard posturing, but for people who would like a glimpse into the ugly world of high-stakes litigation, the exhibits to the motion (.pdf) and exhibits to the response (.pdf) include a bunch of emails back and forth between the lawyers for both sides of this case that are fairly hostile (particularly as demonstrated in the exhibits to the response) and that shed some minimal light on the settlement, though the emails were redacted before filing.

The motion for sanctions is sort of a fitting end to the whole mess. As entertaining as it’s been at times, this suit consumed more posts here than it had any business consuming given its tangential relationship to any issues that actually matter in a big picture sense. The sliver of a possibility that we’d get a ruling that accidentally said something meaningful about virtual property kept me interested, but I can’t say I’m unhappy to see this in the rear view mirror.

Three Chinese men have been jailed for operating pirate servers of Giant Interactive’s MMORPG ZT Online, according to Pacific Epoch. The men are ordered to pay a total of RMB 60,000 (USD $8,586) in compensation to Giant for the servers that are said to have cost Giant a minimum of RMB 59,000 (USD $8,443…the cost must be tied to lost subscriber fees). Chen Jian was sentenced to one year in prison for building the servers while his accomplices, Shi Zunkai and Sun Jun, were sentenced to 10 months and nine months, respectively.

Pirate servers (actually, server emulators) are unauthorized game servers run by a third-party. The game experience will be similar but not identical to that of official servers but lacks all official technical support. This typically leads to laggy or inconsistent game performance. Pirate servers are usually created by writing or using custom emulation software which mimics the behavior of the official server. Operators of pirate servers are even able to offer incentives to play on their pirate servers rather than the official servers, such as custom or new items, accelerated XP gain, or even the ability to go to war with your own faction.

Wikipedia provides a nice summary of some of the legal issues surrounding pirate servers:

Copyright and Reverse engineering: The first issue is a possible infringement of the game creators copyright. As the case of Lotus v. Borland demonstrates, recreating “methods of operation” is not a copyright infingement. Thus, emulating copyrighted material is not a breach. However, this demands that the complete emulator is a work of its own. Sometimes the original server software leaks out of the company that created the game, for example AEGIS (Ragnarok Online). Use or distribution of this is definitely a copyright infringement. Modified versions of such original server software are not considered to be server emulators. The protocol that is used for communiciation between server and client is not subject to copyright, in contrast it could theoretically be patented, whereas software patents is a disputed field also. There are cases where a game creator effectively shut down popular private game servers by threatening lawsuits due to obvious copyright violations such as offering the client for download, or offering downloads of modified files from the original game package.

End User License Agreement and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Another legal issue is the EULA. Today most commercial MMORPGs require the user to sign a clause not to create or use server emulators when installing the client he bought. As shown in the case of Bnetd Vivendi Universal v. Jung, the DMCA can be relied on as well if the lawsuit is in the United States — the DMCA is a US specific law, although there are similar laws in some other countries. They argued that server emulation requires the circumvention of copy protection. The server emulator company lost the suit and the bnetd.org domain was transferred to Blizzard.

Giant Interactive says the recent arrests prove the company’s commitment to the fight against pirate servers, a fight Giant by no means is taking on alone. Everyone’s favorite (ok, at least mine…for now) MMO operator, Blizzard, is no stranger to pirate servers. In fact, it’s pretty simple to find a reliable WoW pirate server…one quick Google search found over 200 of them.

As Playnoevil mentions in their coverage of the arrests, this type of arrest may only prompt pirate server operators to move their servers off-shore to countries that have weaker intellectual property protections, much like the online gambling business has already done in the US. But whereas the government is cracking down on gambling, it’s the game companies who must do the heavy lifting against pirate servers. Especially so in China, where it’s estimated that 90 percent of lawsuits against Chinese copyright and trademark violators are filed by infringed companies.

Obviously game companies should keep an eye on pirate servers, but to what extent? How much of a threat do they really pose? World of Warcraft has topped 10 million paying subscribers despite the proliferating pirates. Isn’t it just as likely that consumers will take the bait and sample the pirate server, enjoy what they’re doing (if you’re a game company with a game that people don’t enjoy, you’ve got bigger problems than a few pirate servers) but tire of the often unstable and buggy experience and therefore decide to become a paying subscriber? That’s free advertising and can only help business. After all, every person playing WoW (even pirated WoW) is a person not playing your competitor’s game and, more importantly, falling in love with yours.

On the other hand, there may be some trademark/counterfeit-like concerns…let’s say a consumer wants to play World of Warcraft but somehow stumbles upon a pirate server. Looks like WoW, plays like WoW, even has WoW trademarks and copyrighted material all over the place? But it’s not WoW?? Alot of that sort of activity and Blizzard’s marks start to lose their source-identifying properties…we’ve seen where that road leads. Blizzard doesn’t want an inferior knockoff on the market, and so that’s why we see Blizzard and other companies taking upon themselves a duty of quality control and enforcement on behalf of their consumer base.

Question for the comment section: Would there be any advantage to doing a similar thing with worlds such as Second Life? Would a pirate server make sense? Probably less if at all, since the experience is defined by being a part of “the grid.”