Fresh off settlement of Bragg v. Linden Lab, Marc Bragg, as recently-reinstated Second Life avatar ‘Marc Woebegone,’ has posted to his blog seeking evidence of land bot abuse in Second Life for a potential class action lawsuit. Landbots are automated programs that operate within Second Life to purchase land which has been accidentally mispriced at less than its fair market value.

I’ll say that again, and this time, read it slowly and just let the sublime irony wash over you: Marc Bragg is collecting evidence of Second Life users taking advantage of pricing errors to buy virtual land at less than market value so he can sue them. This is so rich it makes my teeth hurt.

Though a suit by landowners against landbot users is not completely unreasonable, the differences in proof necessary for each individual defrauded by a landbot user seem to make class certification problematic. If the suit ends up in Federal Court — and even if it is not filed there, removal is likely — then Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 will govern:

One or more members of a class may sue or be sued as representative parties on behalf of all only if (1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable, (2) there are questions of law or fact common to the class, (3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class, and (4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.

In addition, a class will only be maintained when:

…[t]he court finds that the questions of law or fact common to the members of the class predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.

That last one is a potential sticking point here because each potential claim seems to require different evidence, and each will be lodged against one of any number of different defendants — unlike typical class actions involving, for example, a group of diners who all get sick from eating the same thing at the same restaurant, or a group of consumers who were all defrauded the same way by the same company’s false advertising.

Bragg presumably intends to target one or more landbot users and conceivably (given that he says he seeks injunctive relief) Second Life creator Linden Lab. At this point, no defendants are named.

Other coverage comes from Your2ndPlace, SLReports, and VintFalken. Also, a hat tip to Cat Galileo, who sent me the first link on this.

Welcome to new readers visiting the site for the first time after hearing about it at Virtual Worlds 2007 in San Jose this week.

I am going to be in the Bay Area through the weekend, so regular updates will resume next week.

Here are a few initial thoughts and notes from the conference…

• Kevin Alderman (Second Life’s ‘Stroker Serpentine’) gave a great presentation on his thoughts on enforcing his Eros trademark and copyrights using a lawsuit. Alderman said he hopes for settlement in the near future, and thanked the content-creation community for everyone’s ongoing support of his efforts.

• Virtual world economic expert Edward Castronova had an interesting presentation. Take home message: if there are no rules — or no real way to enforce the rules that do exist — virtual worlds and games will inevitably suffer a tragedy of the commons. Oh, and regulation is coming, like it or not, so we’ll all be better off if we work to make sure it is good regulation.

• Sean Kane, one of my co-chairs on the American Bar Association’s committee on Virtual Worlds and Multiuser Online Games of the Section on Science and Technology Law, gave an informative overview of copyright in virtual worlds. Bottom line, it’s $45. If you care at all about your content, register.

• I’ve been to some other great panels too, but best of all, have had surprisingly candid one-to-one conversations with executives from Active Worlds, IMVU, Entropia Universe, There.com, Multiverse, and a handful of others — some on and some off the record. I have a much deeper understanding of these companies’ virtual spaces at this point, so readers can expect more coverage of these platforms.

Personally, it was fantastic to meet so many readers, members of the blogosphere, and most importantly, people who are involved — sometimes very personally — in the stories I cover here. This is a really exciting time to be involved in virtual worlds, and attending an event like this makes me look forward, more than ever, to seeing and being a part of what comes next.

Virtual World News alerted me to this story: Herman Miller (who makes the best, albeit most expensive, chairs in the world) is fighting knock-offs in Second Life by giving away the real thing. Well, the virtual real thing. But not a knockoff. You get the idea.

From the VWN article:

Furniture designer and manufacturer Herman Miller announced that it would be entering Second Life with help from Rivers Run Red. In the real world, Herman Miller has taken aim at knockoff products with its “Get Real” campaign, and it will be bringing the same principle to the virtual world.

It will be offering a collection of 15 pieces for L$300-L$850, or approximately U.S. $1.40 to $3.50, but users that have bought knockoffs in the past will get the new pieces for free. … Those taking advantage of this limited-time, honor-based offer need only delete their old inventory and then “Get Real.”

And from Herman Miller’s in-world advertisement…

Herman Miller is pleased to give you the opportunity to own authentic virtual versions of some of our products. Each is designed to represent as closely as possible its real-world counterpart

This means three things to me. First, big companies are now — finally — starting to pay attention to trademark abuse in Second Life. Second, some of them, like Herman Miller, are going about it the right way, embracing the virtual world and trying to deal with the problem creatively. And third, my Second Life avatar ‘Benjamin Noble’ has a nicer chair than I do right now. A L$500 sixty-three prim chair, but a nicer chair nonetheless. And yeah, I paid for it.

Second Life’s ‘Cat Galileo’ — real life law librarian Kate Fitz (JD, MLIS) — runs a deep virtual law archive that I’ve directed readers to before at Lawspot Online, and she just added a new feature where she tracks historical changes to Second Life’s Terms of Service.

The page is worth bookmarking for practitioners, researchers, archivists, and end users too. I’ve gone to the internet archive for these before, but the coverage is spotty and you can’t tell what has been changed. ‘Galileo’ has excerpted the changes so you can see what is different in each version. She also seeks information from readers regarding the dates of changes, as well as any that the internet archive may have been missed; in time, I suspect she will compile a complete collection.

There’s no analysis here (for that, you’ll want to poke around on VB for the purely legal angle, or seek out the detailed writeups on the changes from ‘Nobody Fugazi’) but Lawspot does what libraries do best — puts the information you need at your fingertips. Hat tip to ‘Galileo’ for yet another great addition to her invaluable resource collection.