Elizabeth Townsend Gard, a Visiting Professor at the Seattle University School of Law, has her 1L Property students exploring Second Life using the avatar ‘Fizzy Soderberg’ and posting weekly screencasts on property law as applied to virtual worlds.

The class has covered several topics of potential interest to VB readers, including in-world marriage and divorce, virtual landlord/tenant disputes, and (though the screencast is not currently available online) the legality of sex workers in virtual worlds.

• Weekly Screencasts from Seattle University 1L Property Class

The screencasts are available in two forms — the original versions (which run 18-30 minutes), and shorter clips that focus only on the property question at hand, omitting such material as how each group customized the avatar.  One caveat from Professor Gard: “These were created by the students, and they are responsible for the content and comments.”

The screencasts are entertaining and informative, albeit fairly simplistic in terms of the property concepts addressed, and that’s the point. On the course’s blog, Professor Gard explains, “The goal of this experiment is to get 1L students to apply their very basic knowledge in a different setting. Do they see elements of modern ‘real life’ property being replicated in ‘virtual property?’”

The project is also the subject of an interesting discussion over at Terra Nova, where several of the students have posted about the project.

The Second Life Bar Association (SLBA) held its first large-scale organizational meeting yesterday at the Capitol Hill North public meeting space in Second Life.

The meeting was attended by about 25 avatars, most of whom identified themselves as attorneys, law students, or law librarians.

Discussion focused on the SLBA’s plans for projects for 2007, which include a voluntary credential verification service for in-world attorneys, a pro bono resource center, exploration of in-world justice/dispute resolution systems, and practice support options for attorney members. The organization also voted to impose dues of L$500 ($2.06 US) per year for membership.

The SLBA currently has over 140 members, including over 110 members who have logged in to Second Life within the past 30 days.

Note: Benjamin Duranske, as Second Life avatar ‘Benjamin Noble,’ founded the SLBA and is currently the organization’s President.

Particularly observant readers may have noticed that the banner tagline here changed today from “Justice, Law, and Politics of Virtual Worlds” to “Virtual Law | Legal Issues That Impact Virtual Worlds.”

There are two reasons for this change. First, I believe VB is the first site to regularly use the term “Virtual Law” to refer to the law as applied to and used within virtual worlds, and I want to reinforce that. I suspect that virtual law will become a popular specialization over the next five to ten years, and I’d like people searching for the term to be easily able to find this site. Second, the previous tagline was simply too broad. There are other sites that do a better job covering political and social science issues in virtual worlds than VB ever would, so it makes sense to narrow VB’s focus to what we’re best at — virtual law.

The content here won’t change (though I’ll have to find more creative ways to justify poking fun at ugly campaign headquarters); this is really just a stylistic change to make the site’s image align more accurately with its content.

Blogger and video journalist Josh Wolf (his blog is The Revolution Will Be Televised) was recently released after 226 days in federal “coercive custody” for refusing to turn over video footage of an anti-G8 anarchist protest in San Francisco that he recorded in 2005. The case still raises issues of importance, especially to the blogosphere. To explore those issues, Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson and HLS Graduate/Computer Science Ph.D. Candidate Rebecca Nesson are preparing to run a moot court trial of the Josh Wolf case on Berkman Island in Second Life this weekend.

The lawyers in this trial will be HLS students, and Professor Nesson will be the judge. Second Life citizens will act as mock jurors. The trial will be held Sunday, April 22nd from 1:00-3:00 pm SLT (Pacific) on Harvard’s Berkman Island in Second Life (here’s a SLURL), and the event is open to the public.

Harvard Law School also conducted a mock trial of the Bragg v. Linden case earlier this year.