E-Race

It’s been a long time since I’ve had time to post, but I received a link from a friend that is very interesting. It is about racism online. I won’t bore you with lots of description you can just listen and look for yourself.

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP7430
E-Race: Avatars, Anonymity And The Virtualization Of Identity
http://s3.amazonaws.com/files.posterous.com/originalspin/poAahytWN95X6l6qNvj4qlQT38WlrOoEHk0ru1DLVD99S2Ra45wYIoYvHAM6/erace_final.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJFZAE65UYRT34AOQ&Expires=1301667941&Signature=t6yhr8IVwkbJE0lkobrel5Fqh2Q%3D
this is the powerpoint that goes with the audio above (it is in pdf format)

Also here’s a link to get the “Visible Hand” paper  by Luke Stein
http://www.stanford.edu/~lstein/visiblehand/

Read on and enjoy. Tell me what you think after.

Alert ALERT… Nothing is happening (or Federal Rules of Second Life #4)

I recently got an alert that a law suit had been filed against Linden Labs (LL). It seems that the person who filed the suit didn’t get that alert.

After filing a complaint, in the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, that alleged “illegal distribution of Plaintiff’s intellectual property in violation of his rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”)” back in April of this year, Corey Fahy (the plaintiff) seems to have forgotten about it. Corey alleged that LL used an algorithm that he created for his Cool VL Viewer without his knowledge or consent, but it seems that he forgot to serve the company notice of the law suit.
When the court issued a Show Cause Order, an order requiring Corey to explain why he didn’t serve LL, he never responded. The court then ordered him to a hearing, which he missed. The court dismissed the case, but was nice enough to do so in a way that would allow him to file again after he got a day planner.
Interestingly enough, if Corey had shown up with some good cause for not serving LL, or proof that he had, he would have been able to continue his suit. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(m) requires a court to extend time to serve a defendant if the plaintiff can show good cause. Lucky for Corey no harm was done, and maybe we will see him back in court on a later day.

Fahy v. Linden Research, Inc., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 109591

Copyright… by someone else

So, I’ve been SOOO busy that I haven’t had any time to spend either on SL or in private research, but while I was doing some school-sanctioned research, I found a law review about copypright in SL. Check it out here.

Even slower

It’s pretty hard to keep up a legal blog alone, but it’s even more so while writing on law review and taking multiple classes. It becomes nearly impossible when you are having health issues and have recently had a death in the family.

Since I have all of these, I will be taking even longer to update the blog. My apologies, but if you actually liked my blog, simply rss and you will get posts when they come out.

Back in the USA

I’m back in the USA and will soon be putting up all the ‘trip posts’ that I was unable to write because my laptop was broken as I left the country. I have lots of pictures and lots of places to go in SL, so keep an eye out in the coming weeks for those and ohter posts.

London

I don’t like to complain,  so I won’t write about London…when I have access to a better computer,  I will upload some pictures.

Summer Trip

I will be in Europe for the next month, learning some international law. I hope to be able to some interesting things to interpert SL legal topics. Hope you all are having a good summer.

****Update****

I’ve decided that it would be fun to find all the places that I will be going rl in sl and reporting on both as I go. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do.

Browser based viewer must be LL only

I found out at the show taping that a browser based viewer was a consideration for future development. I also found out that there was already a browser based viewer in the works called AjaxLife. Excited I searched for and found the AjaxLife viewer and logged in. I was immediately struck by the fact that I could not see. The viewer had no visual interface. Although it did have almost every other capability, it lacked any option for seeing where you were or moving about in the area you were in. You were allowed to teleport, and upon accepting a teleport from my friends, I stood for 15 minutes being ridiculed and (I was told) being bumped around.

Although unhappy with the disability that such a viewer gave me, I was encouraged, and when I had to send my computer in for repair, I eagerly went back. I found that my login did not work. After reading the blog, I realized that off and on AjaxLife would be banned by Linden Labs(r) and that it should only be a matter of time before I would be able to try again, but it was not to be. I could never log in again.

I went back recently and found that the AjaxLife project is being discontinued. Although the code was steadily improving, the security risks of having such a browser make it impossible for LL to allow AjaxLife to continue to connect to the Second Life(r) grid. Here is the post with more detailed information about why a third party cannot run browser based viewer, such as AjaxLife offered. Although the creator is willing to share the code, it cannot be used publicly. As she states, “It’s a shame, but it’s not surprising, and not really LL’s fault.” The legal liability created by AjaxLife would be any lawyer’s nightmare, whether real or virtual.

I do hope, though, that Linden Lab will be willing to use and improve the code in order to create a browser based viewer that includes vision and mobility for residents. As I mentioned before,  because I use a laptop and wireless internet, having a light weight viewer like AjaxLife would be very welcome. Also, having a viewer that I could simply log into from any computer (without additional coding and work arounds) would be nice as well.

http://lifeavlaw.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/standing-in-a-graveyard/

Follow-up to the follow-up in the graveyard

I guess this would be more like a zombie story than a normal graveyard story at this point…they brought Philip Linden back. The resurrected CEO is full of “energy, excitment, and an open mind” and presumably ready with a plan to fix the mess that is SL public relations right now, not to mention the internal mess that lead to it. I’m hoping that the ‘open mind’ is not filled with worms and that the rotting stench clouding around SL is a smell that will leave with former CEO Mark Kingdon. I don’t have any real opinion about it, but I do hope that this controversy ends soon and/or leaves me fertile a ground of legal material to write about…so long as it is not how to take SL through bankruptcy.

Graveyard Update

I just read the letter from M Linden (e.g. CEO of Linden Labs Mark Kingdon). As a university graduate with majors in Entrepreneurship and Marketing. I read it as the typical letter that a CEO might send out to customers and shareholders after a layoff. It was sound business to send out such a letter (I guess), but it seemed so disconnected from what SL is to most if not all of the residents that…well…this is how someone else read the letter.

That reading sounds about in line with what i’ve heard in world. I hope not to be so gloom and doom, but I do get a slight tremor of fear down my spine.