Earlier, VB briefly covered the opening of Japanese politician Kan Suzuki’s Second Life office. The BBC is now reporting that Suzuki has been forced to shut down the office. Why? Because as everyone (including Suzuki) knew when it was opened, the office runs afoul of pre-internet Japanese election laws that limit campaign materials to paper postcards and pamphlets. What’s interesting here is that unlike most “closed down” Second Life installations, Suzuki’s office (SLURL here) isn’t gone, it’s just virtually boarded up.

Nothing has changed on the inside — it stands there like a memorial to a brief shining moment of electronic campaigning in Japan. And from the outside, the office looks much like it did before, except there are virtual wooden boards nailed up over the virtual windows and doors.

I love it; if only all politicians were as subtle, subversive, creative, and technologically focused as Suzuki. Are your country’s luddite election laws stuck in 1950? Well then you clearly don’t have to delete a virtual build that violates them, you just have to get yourself some virtual lumber and board it up! I wish I could vote for the guy, whatever his politics.

I’m going to put a bigger-than-front-page-acceptable .jpg of a sign that is currently nailed to the boards on the front of Suzuki’s offices in the comments to this piece. Any of VB’s regular readers able to translate it? I’d really like to find out what it says.

It’s a banner day for podcasts. Here’s a link to an informative interview with one of the people behind the Metaverse Republic, ‘Mondrian Lykin,’ on the blog Metaversed. The Metaverse Republic is a project that is attempting to create a grid-wide opt-in justice system in Second Life. The podcast provides a great overview of the project, the interviewer hits the important questions (including the million-dollar question, “Isn’t this basically extortion?”), and ‘Mondrian Lykin’ handles the inquiries very well. Worth your twenty minutes, in my opinion.

The blog Law School Innovation is running a piece by Gene Koo that includes links to a podcast of an interview with law professor Elizabeth Townsend-Gard and a law student who assisted her (Rachel Goda) regarding their use of the Second Life platform in a first year Property Law class.

Regina Lynn’s Sex Drive column this week focuses on the Eros copyright litigation. Regina makes a point that I’ve been wanting to make here — basically, that this is a real lawsuit and it shouldn’t be treated as a joke. The snickering coverage is inevitable, of course, given the confluence of a lawsuit, a virtual world, and a sex toy (wow, typing that… yeah, it really is inevitable) but journalists who want to riff on this should at least read the complaint.

On the upside, press attention is focused on virtual law like it hasn’t been since the Bragg case was filed, which should help put some of the bigger picture issues in virtual law on the table in the long run.