I am a big believer in the power of stories. In 1993, journalist Julian Dibbell wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled “A Rape in Cyperspace“, in which he described a series of moderating decisions that were taken at an early virtual community called LambdaMOO. The online shenanigans are Read more…
Amongst many other things, writer Neal Stephenson is famous for having coined the term “Metaverse” in his 1992 cyberpunk novel “Snow Crash”, but he has also written a lot about virtual worlds in some of his later work, particularly the novel “Reamde“, which is a techno-political thriller which introduces a Read more…
This is not a post about Gamergate. I have been trying to stay out of the Gamergate discussion from the start, mostly because having missed a big part of the controversy, it has become increasingly more difficult to understand exactly what is going on, but also because I suspect that the Read more…
In “The Lonely End of a Cyberjunkie” (paywall), The Sunday Times all but blames games like World of Warcraft for the death of Robin Williams. The article says: “On the surface, Williams had everything: a beautiful wife and three children he adored, multiple homes and shares in his late brother’s Read more…
The UK Government’s senior adviser in intellectual property issues, MP Mike Weatherley, has made the news by suggesting that theft of articles in online environments should be prosecuted just like theft in the real world. He asked the following question to Mike Penning, Minister of State for Policing: “To ask Read more…
It would be an understatement to say that Google Glass is not getting the warmest reception. Restaurants, bars and cafes have banned Google Glass users. The UK Cinema Association has moved to ban Google Glass over piracy concerns. Casinos have joined the fray. And the term glasshole says it all, Read more…
Consider the following scenarios: A person has all of their money taken from their bank account by fraudsters. An armed gang enters a bank and takes all of the cash stored there. A person has their credit card stolen and the thief goes on a shopping spree. A group of Read more…
It feels like 2007 all over again. There seems to be a resurgence in articles and blog posts seriously discussing the subject of virtual property and the virtual economy, something that was very familiar in the tech press around the time of Second Life’s nadir. By the way, whatever happened Read more…
I have been playing World of Warcraft again in preparation for the forthcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion (two words: panda monks!). For years I played in European servers the same character, an Alliance Human mage who then switched sides and joined the Horde as a Blood Elf, and finally settled Read more…
IT lawyers are always looking for the Next Big Legal Thing (and they also like grandiose generalizations, but I digress). From ebooks to iPods, you can always find an article describing the latest gadget in legal terms. For people involved in this area of law, it is always important to Read more…