TechgnosisWeb Prime

Well, this is just fine and dandy, now isn’t it? I finally get around to re-activating my Second Life account a couple days ago, after having it be inactive for months and months after that hacking incident last year, and what’s one of the first things that I run into? This article: IP’s Brave New World. It’s a really fascinating discussion about how Intellectual Property law (my personal area of interest) and the realities of a virtual world where people can create their own content (such as Second Life) intersect, and just as fascinating, how some real-life lawyers are offering their services in-world, resolving disputes that would be too complex to resolve outside of it. Fascinating stuff, and well worth a read, if only because it’s one of the few articles about Second Life that doesn’t wax rhapsodic about how to make money in the game, or how to have virtual sex with furries.
(more…)

It’s no secret that Second Life, the virtual world where all the cool kids hang out (warning, link requires Second Life software and account installed to work!), is home to many wonders, incredible places, bizarre creations and fascinating flights of fancy. It’s also home to a bevy of digital prostitutes, selling their time and avatars in exchange for L$. Some do little more than provide the typical chat-room cybersex you can find on IRC, while others go all out and trick out their avatars with clickable nipples, detailed sexual animations, extremely lifelike skins, and even sounds. Now, one guy has gotten it into his head to rate and review these online hookers: Second Life Escort Ratings. Totally NSFW, but it’s worth a visit and a read, there’s something inherently fascinating about this, and one gets the feeling that he’s actually looking for something specific, not just rating them to rate them.
(more…)

Technorati Tags: Second Life, virtual world, wonders, prostitutes, avatars, cybersex, hookers, Escort, NSFW

Props to the Second Life guys and gals, they’ve made the closest thing to a real Snow Crash-esque metaverse we’re likely to see in a good long while. Proof? Besides things like virtual book signings (I’ll treasure my signed in-world copy of Cory’s book forever, or until a server wipe deletes it!), and rockin’ New Year’s parties, they’re being visited by some of the real luminaries of the Free Culture movement. Case in point: Lawrence Lessig, brilliant lawyer and author of such books as Code and other laws of cyberspace, and Free Culture, will be dropping by Second Life next Wednesday, January 18th. He’ll be interviewed and will sign virtual copies of Free Culture (I’m getting mine ASAP), should be really interesting. Lawrence is the man who helped advise the Second Life guys on making all the user-created content inside of Second Life belong to the users themselves, a first in online games.
(more…)

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Snow Crash, metaverse, Cory, Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig