AOIR Regulating Virtual Worlds Panel, and My Notes on Investment Expectations in Virtual Worlds
By Eric Goldman Last week at AOIR’s annual meeting (AOIR 8.0) in Vancouver, Greg Lastowka, James Grimmelmann, Tyler Ochoa and I presented on the topic of regulation of virtual worlds. My notes from the presentations are below. See Mark Bell’s…
August 2007 Quick Links, Part II
By Eric Goldman * e360 Insight v. Spamhaus Project, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 20725 (7th Cir. Aug. 30, 2007). An email marketing company was listed on Spamhaus’ ROSKO and sued for defamation and other torts in Illinois. Spamhaus took the…
July 2007 Quick Links, Part II
By Eric Goldman Virtual Worlds * After a remarkable run as media darlings, Second Life is now experiencing some of the inevitable backlash. Case in point: Wired’s “How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life.” In this…
Judge Kozinski Talks About Cyberlaw
By Eric Goldman Last October, Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit chatted with me in my Cyberspace Law course for 75 minutes. If you listen to the recording, you’ll hear Judge Kozinski’s humorous thoughts on receiving gifts when he…
January 2007 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman * Marketers (including Microsoft) are paying authors to write Wikipedia entries. Surprised?! * Also on the topic of Wikipedia and marketers, Wikipedia has tagged all of their pages NOFOLLOW so that there’s no way a marketer or…
Sex.com — An Update
By Eric Goldman Judge Alex Kozinski recently guest lectured in my Cyberspace Law course, which prompted me to reread Kozinski’s opinion in the Kremen v. Cohen Sex.com case. Because that opinion came out in 2003, it made me curious–what’s happened…
NCSoft Sued in South Korea for ID Theft
By Eric Goldman NCSoft has been sued in South Korea for allowing users to improperly register Lineage/Lineage 2 accounts in other people’s official Korean ID number (I’m inferring this is similar to a social security number). More than 3,500 people…
City of Heroes Lawsuits Settled
By Eric Goldman A complex but interesting legal fight between Marvel and NCSoft, about City of Heroes players generating characters that look like Marvel-owned characters, has come to an end. The press release announcing the settlement. Settlement terms were not…
City of Heroes Lawsuit–New Ruling on False DMCA Takedown Notices
By Eric Goldman Marvel Enterprises v. NCSoft Corp., CV 04-9253-RGK (C.D. Cal. Aug. 23, 2005). Given the interest in this case, I’m surprised that this ruling appears to have been overlooked (I found it through BNA [subscription required]). In late…
Virtual Worlds Paper
I have posted the published version of my virtual worlds paper, Speech Showdowns at the Virtual Corral, to SSRN. The abstract: “This Essay considers the rights of virtual world providers to terminate their customers or otherwise control their worlds. The…