The folks at Harvard Law School who have been running mock trials in Second Life have produced a machinima reenactment of part of the Dred Scott argument before the Supreme Court in 1856.

It’s just a proof-of-concept video, and there are some production issues (e.g. seeing the attorney who is “speaking” typing in the air is really odd) but they lined up a professional voice actor, and overall, it’s a decent first effort. It will be interesting to see what they can do if they devote more time to one of these.

Virtually Blind periodically runs “quicklinks” — items that are not long enough for a full story, but are worth a click. Here’s today’s batch:

• Gamepolitics reports that French watchdog group Familles de France is bringing a lawsuit targeting Second Life and a number of ISP’s who provide access to it because Second Life contains, “…pornographic photos and videos in free access [areas where] users can mimic sexual acts, going as far as rape scenes, bondage, zoophilia and scatophilia.” Here’s a translation of the original article (from the site liberation.fr). It looks like there’s a real lawsuit involved, as the article mentions a June 18 hearing before the Tribunal de grande instance de Paris. It is not clear what French law is allegedly being violated.

• According to Heise Online, the German police have confiscated child pornography from a Second Life user. The article discusses the report that aired on German TV several weeks ago highlighting child pornography in Second Life, but doesn’t draw a direct connection between the incidents.

• Finally, (and totally unrelated to virtual law, except that I got to visit the real-life venue when I was defending an expert deposition in Nashville a few years ago) the Bluebird Cafe now has a Second Life presence and is streaming live shows! Why am I so excited that I’m employing a rare exclamation mark and going this far off-topic? The Bluebird Cafe is the place to hear the best new singer-songwriters and vocalists trying out their stuff, bar none. Stars like Garth Brooks and Kathy Mattea played the Bluebird before they were famous, but it’s not all country… or at least it’s not all the kind of country you probably don’t like. Got a Second Life account? Check the schedule of live events and then check it out at this SLURL. You’ll be very happy you did.

A Federal judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued a new 46 page order (.pdf) in the Bragg v. Linden case denying Philip Rosedale’s motion to dismiss the portion of the lawsuit directed at him for lack of personal jurisdiction, and also denying defendants’ motion to compel arbitration.

Commentary

First, I’m excited to see how thoroughly the Court dug into these issues. The Court could have granted or denied these motions with little discussion, but it didn’t. The Order states: “Ultimately at issue in this case are the novel questions of what rights and obligations grow out of the relationship between the owner and creator of a virtual world and its resident-customers. While the property and the world where it is found are ‘virtual,’ the dispute is real.” You can tell that the Court “gets it” right off the top.

Regarding the motion to dismiss Rosedale for lack of personal jurisdiction, the bar for establishing personal jurisdiction is pretty low, so I wouldn’t read too much into that part of the Court’s decision. Realistically, there are a lot of ways Rosedale can get himself out of the case later, and personal jurisdiction is fairly easy to establish.

But the denial of the motion to compel arbitration? That is a pretty big deal.

Understand initially that arbitration provisions are enforced all the time, and defeating one isn’t ever a simple thing. Moreover, when there’s complex technology and somewhat bizarre issues involved, the smart money says there’s a good chance the Court will let alternative dispute resolution procedures play out before it tackles the case.

The smart money would have been wrong this time. The Court held that Linden Lab’s Terms of Service amount to a “contract of adhesion” that “provide[s] Linden with a variety of one-sided remedies to resolve disputes, while forcing its customers to arbitrate any disputes with Linden.” In other words, the arbitration provision — though equally applied to both Bragg and Linden — is unconscionable because the rest of the Terms of Service (particularly those provisions that give Linden Lab unilateral, unlimited ban rights) aren’t “mutual.”

Bottom line is that this is a pretty extraordinary decision which, assuming it survives an almost certain appeal, will likely be cited as the seminal decision in virtual law for the foreseeable future. It will certainly force Linden Lab to revisit their Terms of Service, and in the end, it will result in virtual world participants being viewed somewhat more as “citizens” of these spaces and somewhat less as gameplayers subject to the whims of the provider.

There are a lot of issues raised by this Order, among them: the impact on the other provisions of the TOS, the possibility for special rights for participants in virtual spaces, and whether this will encourage other law suits. Readers, please consider sharing your thoughts on these issues, or any other issues raised by this Order. There’s a lot to digest here, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Quick note to welcome readers who are visiting Virtually Blind for the first time after following the link in this Reuters article on trademark misuse in virtual worlds (particularly in Second Life). If you’re looking for the VB post that was discussed in the Reuters article, you can find it here.

I’m quoted in the article, both for background and for my position that Linden Lab isn’t in a position to police for trademark infringement on behalf of companies. Just to be totally clear, I do believe that virtual world providers have an obligation to follow up once allegations of trademark abuse are made, and I’m a little surprised that Linden Lab appears to be issuing warnings (not suspending or closing accounts) for trademark violations. I just don’t think that it is practical to expect virtual world providers to do the initial detective work to discover misuse of marks.

I’ve been out of town for a few days, so I’ll get caught up by way of VB’s regular feature, “Quicklinks.” Here’s today’s batch.

• Tony Walsh is asking readers for input on trademark reporting in Second Life. He recalls (as, vaguely, do I) some mechanism in Second Life for reporting trademark violations to Linden Lab. Neither of us can find it now. He’s interested in your recollections, and I’m curious too.

• Blizzard (operator of World of Warcraft) is suing Peons4Hire, a group that sold World of Warcraft gold to players (and apparently advertised their services heavily in-world). The reaction in Bilzzard’s forums is almost universally positive.

• Second Life CEO Philip Rosedale was recently quoted in an Information Week article saying that “everything in Second Life is marked with your identity and name. If you break the law in your locality in real life, and we can facilitate people going after you, we have no problem with that.” The writer asked whether this would apply to an authoritarian regime’s request for information. Rosedale didn’t directly answer, but did say that “preserv[ing] people’s freedom as much as we possibly can” is important.

• A post on a Second Life project called the “Justice List” and an interview with ‘Ashcroft Burnham,’ one of the driving forces behind the project, recently appeared on the Secondlife Newspaper Daily News. The idea of the Justice List is — in extremely broad strokes — a proposed grid-wide, opt-in justice system that uses formal judicial procedures and parcel ban lists. [Disclaimer: Though I am not personally involved in the Justice List project in any meaningful way, I have discussed the project with 'Ashcroft Burnham' in my capacity as President of the Second Life Bar Association, and some SLBA members are part of the project.]

At one point, I thought Virtually Blind was flirting with overspecialization, but I came across this today: a new blog called Second Life Law.

The site’s promising name aside, SLL appears, at least for now, to be a largely automated aggregator for Second Life news in general (and the aggregator needs a little tuning; it is currently displaying an article on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland). There is a little original content buried in there though, and the news does tend toward the business/legal end of things, so Virtually Blind is pleased to welcome another site to the tiny virtual law blogosphere. We’ll be checking in regularly to see what they’re up to.

Just a quick post closing out an ugly week in virtual law on a more upbeat note. On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of attending a solid presentation on legal issues facing virtual worlds in Second Life. The presentation was given by ‘Shmapple Patrono,’ the avatar of a student at Ithaca College. It was well attended, and covered topics ranging from the Bragg v. Linden Lab lawsuit, to intellectual property infringement, to Second Life’s EULA. Ithaca College Assistant Professor Kim Gregson has posted a short summary and a few screenshots here.

Allegations of simulated and actual child pornography in Second Life have attracted the attention of mainstream international press outlets including the BBC, the CBC, and Australia’s The Age. Linden Lab says that it is cooperating with authorities, and that it has banned the accounts of two users (a 27 year old woman and a 54 year old man) who controlled avatars which appeared to be involved in simulated sexual acts between an adult and a minor.

The reports all stem from a German television news story that ran on a show called Report Mainz on Germany’s ARD network. The report itself (in German) is available as a RealPlayer video here. [Note: Particularly explicit portions of the video are "blurred," but it is NSFW, and some readers may find the video disturbing.] There is a transcript of the report, also in German, here (Google translation here). The story focuses on depictions of apparent in-world sexual contact between adult avatars and avatars with child-like appearances, but also claims that photographs of real-life child sexual abuse have been made available in Second Life.

Unlike the United States (where the Supreme Court, in 2002, struck down a law prohibiting “virtual” child pornography on First Amendment free speech grounds), many countries criminalize non-photographic images that appear to depict minors in sexual situations.

A complete survey of the law in this field is beyond the scope of this article, but a quick search reveals that a number of countries, including at least the U.K., Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, and Italy, have laws on the books banning virtual child pornography.

Any discussion of this issue inevitably leads to the fact that in virtual worlds, a small number of residents engage in “sexual ageplay” involving avatars that appear to be minors, but which are (presumably) controlled by adults.

There is an ongoing debate over whether sexual ageplay is a healthy outlet for adult fantasies, or a scourge of virtual worlds. That debate is not the subject of this article, but for the record, sexual ageplay practitioners differentiate themselves from pedophiles (who, they point out, are sexually interested in actual children, rather than in adults who roleplay children). Right or wrong, there is little question that sexual ageplay in virtual worlds does violate various countries’ laws prohibiting virtual child pornography.

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Virtually Blind periodically runs “quicklinks” — items that are not long enough for a full story, but are worth a click. Here’s today’s batch:

• Several sites are reporting that Germany joins the list of concerned countries (who aren’t the US) that are looking into sex and pornography crimes in Second Life. This time, it’s an accusation that real-life pornographic images of children were made available in-world. Appropriately, these reports have a slightly more serious tone than the usual stuff on virtual pornography. Why so much concern from abroad? That one’s easy: most Second Life users are now not from the US.

• On a less serious note (though you’d not know it visiting their headquarters) The Blog of Love has an interesting post up that discusses, among other things, a self-appointed vigilante police force in Second Life. They fight griefers, stand up for the rights of virtual citizens, sell police equipment, and, if they’re anything like everyone else in Second Life, probably spend a fair bit of time getting their uniforms just so. The highlight is this bit of dialog: “Love: ‘You guys just decided to become cops?’ Cop: ‘Sure, it’s Second Life.’”

• And finally, an academic note: CALIopolis reports that Gene Koo at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society has a paper out called “New Skills, New Learning: Legal Education and the Promise of Technology.” It’s going on my reading list. A wiki based on the paper is here, and there’s a .pdf of the published version there too.

Okay, okay. I give. I revisited “There” today after getting an invitation for a tour (and also a fair bit of well-deserved crap) in the comments to an earlier post where I criticized There for looking like a toy, having a terrible interface, and limiting me to an ugly orange shirt.

I didn’t manage to connect with the two readers who offered to show me around, or with another reader who offered to give me some stuff to get started (but thanks ‘SailorGuy,’ ‘aztec3,’ and ‘TheyCallMeNascar,’ I will look for you later). I did, however, spend some time exploring There on my own.

Partly to appease my loyal readers from the land of There, and partly to give it a fair look, I forked over the $9.95 for a “Premium Membership.” I also gave Makena Technologies another ten dollars so I could buy my very own blue oxford shirt, khaki pants, oxford shoes, and tortoise-frame glasses. And I got a haircut. Collectively, this de-newbifying shopping spree pretty much wiped out my Hamilton, which goes some distance toward clarifying Makena Technologies’ business model.

The clothing was a little steep, but that $9.95 I paid for premium status? It’s a one time charge. And there’s more to premium membership than getting to change your wardrobe. For your $9.95, you get permanent access to a bunch of nifty features, including voice communication. That’s right, it’s There already, and it works really well. How do you like them apples, Second Life fans?

I stand by my critique of the visuals (incredibly dated) and avatar customization options (very limited). And the interface is inferior to Second Life’s in every way, particularly for camera positioning. But that all said, I now see some genuine advantages to There.

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