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The Archives
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02.13.08Criminality in Virtual WorldsSecond Life as a tool for criminals? 3-D money laundering? Racketeering in the metaverse? U.S intelligence officials are concerned that criminals and terrorists are using avatars and alternate personalities to conduct criminal activities across the Web, as reported in the Washington Post. To quote from a recent paper published by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (now, there’s an Orwellian organization if there ever was one): "Unfortunately, what started out as a benign environment where people would congregate to share information or explore fantasy worlds is now offering the opportunity for religious/political extremists to recruit, rehearse, transfer money, and ultimately engage in ...
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11.27.07Canadian Police in Second Life: Testing the Waters of Law EnforcementVancouver police are using Second Life as a training ground, recruitment tool, and testbed for exploring future law enforcement issues in virtual worlds. While much of what they're doing is basic "been there" stuff (although first report I've seen of a police department), what's interesting are the following comments, as they get to the heart of future police and government jurisdiction issues: Beyond just recruiting, he sees a lot of potential for using a virtual, Second Life police force in other capacities -- especially since there seems to be exponential growth online. "It's going to be interesting when we start to receive crime ...
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10.31.07Fun with Virtual World PatentsLet's have some fun with patents referring to virtual worlds! (All of these are actual patent applications descriptions found on a patent Web site. Patent: A method and system provides transactions and arrangements in virtual world environments. A user can participate in transactions to acquire virtual property and related virtual rights. In some implementations, real-world and virtual parties can be involved in virtual collateral transactions as well as conditional transfers and/or revocations involving various types of virtual objects and virtual rights. A possible relinquishment of designated aspects of the virtual collateral may result from unsatisfactory compliance with a real-world obligation or virtual ...
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10.26.07Theory of Property and Rights in Virtual WorldsA while back I wrote a lengthy piece on the concept of property, avatar rights to property, and what we mean when we, as users, get in a "huff" about the latest shift in the winds by the Lindens. At "In the Near Future" the writer agreed to my philosophy but also argued that platform providers would always be motivated by profit. I had summarized Benkler in saying: “The question of “who should own this spoon” should be understood as a question about what we want the social relations using the platform to be like.” And then had argued that there was a benefit ...
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10.02.07Virtual vs Artificial Property in Virtual/Synthetic Worlds, (and what to do with real houses on artificial lakes)I've only been here a few weeks, blogging away, and have only been in virtual worlds a few months - I admit it, I'm a newbie. So I've been back-tracking a bit and reading through past posts such as a thoughtful post by Nobody Fugazi on the value and definition of "property" (as in real estate) in virtual worlds. Nobody observes that if we swap out the word virtual for artificial, we might not get so easily confused by notions of "property". We tend to think real estate, tangible items, a closet full of frito lays. If I was to talk ...
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