Legal Research

The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds

By mdell

What are the legal implications of virtual worlds, such as Second Life?  Jack M. Balkin and Beth Simone Noveck examine the changing face of virtual reality and the associated legal issues in The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds. Some of the topics include property and creativity in virtual worlds and privacy and identity in virtual worlds.  One interesting chapter examines democracy in virtual worlds and the future of collective action. 

On page 3, Balkin and Noveck note that "Millions of people around the globe now play in these virtual or synthetic worlds.  In fact, many of the 20 to 30 million regular participants now spend more time in virtual environments than they do at their real world jobs or engaged in their real-world communities; according to one estimate, the average number of hours played is almost twenty-two per week.  People who do not vote or engage in politics in real space eagerly do so in virtual spaces, drawn by the promise of new adventures, new identities, and the possibility of building new social universes."

The State of Play authors had an associated State of Play conference in 2003 sponsored by the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School and the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.  The State of Play conference is now in its 4th year and will be held in Singapore in 2007.  It is sponsored by Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, New York Law School and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.  The organizers describe it as a "pioneering conference on virtual worlds inviting experts across disciplines to discuss the future of cyberspace and the impact of these new immersive, social online environments on education, law, politics and society." Excerpt taken from: http://www.nyls.edu/pages/5057.asp.

The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds is available in the FSU Law Library (K 3705 .V53 S73)

Posted by Marin Dell

Full post as published by FSU College of Law Library Blog on February 15, 2007 (boomark / email).