30/04/2009, 09:54 PM
Thought you could escape real life law in games (well, perhaps not exactly games)? Apparently not so.
Quote:Avatars, attorneys in new world of virtual law- Source: [sfgate.com]
Like so many things, virtual law started with sex. Specifically, the first known legal case originating in a virtual world was over a bed designed for rolls in the virtual hay.
Eros vs. Volkov Catteneo was not unlike business dustups that happen in the real world every day. One person created something and sold it, and another person allegedly copied it and sold cheap knockoffs.
The only thing novel about this case is that the item in question was a piece of furniture made entirely of computer code, and it was bought and sold by 3-D avatars in Second Life, a virtual world run by San Francisco's Linden Lab.
Second Life user Kevin Alderman of Lutz, Fla., created the very interactive bed, which enabled avatars to engage in a range of activities (cuddling, more). But when another user started selling copies, Alderman hired real-life lawyer Francis Taney, who tracked down the real person behind the bed-copying avatar and secured a consent judgment from Florida's U.S. District Court ordering him to quit.
This happened in March 2008, and since then, Taney, of the Philadelphia office of law firm Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney, says that he has devoted 20 to 30 percent of his practice to virtual law, or disputes that happen in virtual worlds such as Second Life.
He's not alone. Although the courts have seen only a few such disputes so far, a number of law firms have created practices focused on virtual worlds and video games, or set up offices within Second Life itself.
Benjamin Duranske, who recently joined the Silicon Valley office of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman to help build such a practice, even wrote a book on the field, "Virtual Law: Navigating the Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds."
"It's an emerging area of law, which is really a treat for attorneys, because the law (in other areas) is somewhat stable," Duranske said.
Occasionally these attorneys deal with disputes that arise inside multiplayer video games, such as World of Warcraft. But most often, these attorneys are focused on Second Life, a free-to-join 3-D environment that looks like a video game except that it has no set goals, nothing to win or lose. People log on to hang out, do business and hook up (hence the popularity of Alderman's sex bed).
Besides its lack of missions and scores, what distinguishes Second Life from video games is that Linden allows users to buy virtual property and create objects that are protected by intellectual property rights.
These characteristics, along with a virtual currency that can be traded for real U.S. dollars, make Second Life the main stage for virtual law's development.
Although some of the buzz that accompanied its 2003 creation has subsided, Second Life continues to grow. Monthly transactions between users increased about 30 percent in the past year, to 25 million in March compared with 19 million a year ago.
As transactions grow in volume, it's inevitable that disagreements will crop up. Linden says that although it will enforce its terms of service, including its ban on violating other users' intellectual property, it can't settle most disputes for users.
"Residents who find themselves in a disagreement with another resident are encouraged to resolve it directly as they would in any other context - online or offline," wrote Linden Lab's general counsel Martin Roberts in an e-mail interview.
That has opened the door for several people offering to mediate disputes for a price - not just real-world attorneys but individuals who market themselves as lawyers, mediators or even judges within the Second Life world. There are even in-world lawyers who say they specialize in divorces among avatars.
Of course, it's difficult to know whether someone who represents himself as an attorney in Second Life is a real lawyer or not - avatars don't have to use a person's real name. Real-life attorneys warn that practicing law in Second Life would risk violating all kinds of regulations, such as attorney-client privilege.
"If you're having a conversation with (a client) in Second Life, it's not confidential," said Duranske, who does not practice law in Second Life. That's because Linden has access to all the chatting among avatars.
But some attorneys set up virtual offices in the world as a kind of advertisement. Intellectual property specialists Banner & Witcoff did just that, and their virtual presence led to their attorney Ross Dannenberg representing one of the highest-profile virtual law cases so far.
Like the sex bed case, the Sailor's Cove case was not unlike many real-world disputes: It was an ownership conflict based on an alleged oral contract.
Dannenberg represented two users who assisted a virtual real estate developer in running a large group of islands in Second Life called Sailor's Cove. When the three parted ways, Dannenberg argued that the owner had previously made his two managers full partners and co-owners in the venture. But the owner of record claimed full ownership.
The case was settled out of court, with Dannenberg's clients receiving a financial settlement.
Robert Brackman, attorney for the owner, issued a news release after the settlement saying that it was still unknown whether conversations between digital avatars could legally constitute oral contracts.
But Dannenberg - and other attorneys including Duranske - disagree.
"I think all users are responsible for the promises they make and the things that they type, regardless of whether they're doing it under their own name," Dannenberg said.
The question on oral contracts isn't the only unanswered one in virtual law. Duranske expects future cases to confront intellectual property issues - as the sex bed dispute did - as well as employment law and tax law.