Category Archives: Virtual Worlds

On Virtual Travel

Why would a denizen of a virtual world want to cross over into another virtual world, especially if she couldn’t bring her special powers, skills, or goods into that other world?  This was the question asked in a comment the … Continue reading

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Laws for the Virtual Universe

What if virtual worlds, no matter their purposes, narratives, unique details, and other variations, could be linked? What if they had borders between them, keeping the right stuff in its place, but in other ways being permeable? Continue reading

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New ways of looking at video game IP

This is where we tread the line between copyright and patent – between creative work and invention – that has plagued software intellectual property protection for a very long time. The game bears enough in common with its paper-and-dice ancestors to merit some form of patent consideration; yet the invention here is in fact a platform for storytelling – a tool to inspire and facilitate the creation of content by its users. Continue reading

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How to make the Massive Tech Show into a massive tech show

I’ve been critical of the Vancouver Massive Tech Show both here and on Tazzu. I’ve branded it as boring, uninspired, a waste of an afternoon, and anything but either massive or a show. I’ve been challenged to propose something better, … Continue reading

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Fair Play and Griefing in Second Life

Terra Nova has an interesting piece on the issue of fair play in virtual worlds. I think the question is whether “griefing” could be considered infringement to fair play, which implies that fair play exists as a principle, and infers … Continue reading

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Selling your everything: Non-comp clauses, IP, and employment contracts

I would like to write, today, about a murky subject I’ve been thinking about for a few weeks. The various forms the germ of this post has assumed over those weeks all stem from a particular type of clause – … Continue reading

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EULAs and Interration

Ed Castronova proposes a legal rubric called interration, kind of like incorporation for virtual worlds. He divides all virtual/synthetic/online/artificial worlds into two categories: closed and open. Closed worlds have no interaction with the outside world (Earth, real life, meat space, … Continue reading

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EULAs aren’t all bad

End-User License Agreements aren’t all bad. They are necessary for interration – that incorporation-like thing for virtual worlds that Castronova talks about – in order to set out and delimit the game space. It is when they violate Castronova’s closed/open … Continue reading

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