Legal threats for Second Life?
Jessica Holyoke on Second Life Herald shouts that Second Life can be seriously threatened by law regulations, in particular those regarding jobs, and media copyright.
Briefly, it’s not clear which law and regulation you must apply to Second Life workers, and this problem will become more and more serious in the years to come; and when you stream music in SL, and someone dance with it, you’re creating a movie, thus you need specific (expensive) licensing for that.
My take is that in the world, sooner or later, there will be an urgent need for a GLOBAL law regarding virtual worlds; I’m not sure if every nation will adhere to that (in fact, I doubt it), but it’s the only way to cast some light in this dark area of cyberlaws.
Also, in my opinion, laws must apply to the person, so if I’m an indian, working in India on a computer which is connected to Second Life, I must answer to indian laws. If I’m an indian working (remotely) in the U.S., I need a working permit for the United States. Problem is: how could those laws be controlled and enforced? How can the U.S. government know that an indian is working in Colorado, using his computer, and thus requires a U.S. working permit? Not easy, uh?
What do you think about it?
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3 opinions for Legal threats for Second Life?
Jim Takanawa
May 13, 2008 at 8:48 am
I think there won’t be any GLOBAL law about virtual worlds, exactly there are no GLOBAL laws about the web.
You simply can’t expect any global law being enforced on the whole net. The history of the Internet shows that things don’t work like that.
Actually, I must admit I’m slightly disappointed by the articles you’re publishing on this blog, because I really appreciate other works by you (e.g. Assisi) and I expected something more. Oh well, it’s a problem of mine. So long!
sbrunozzi
May 13, 2008 at 9:10 am
Hi Jim!
As you can read, I say that there will be an urgent NEED, and that not every nation would adhere to that… I meant that global laws aren’t easy to deploy or enforce :-)
Regarding my articles: I’m sorry to hear that… It may also depend on the amount of time I can dedicate to this blog… Hope I’ll be able to improve soon!
Jessica Holyoke
May 25, 2008 at 8:39 am
Interesting take on the article.
With the employment law issue, while you are correct about it applying to the person, the problem is knowing which person to apply it to. The companion piece to my article in the Herald deals with the greeters for the CSI:NY sims created by the Electric Sheep Company being considered employees for tax purposes. That’s great for a US company with US employees. Where it gets tricky is if the Sheep has non-US employees and in the US, which individual states can claim tax revenue and applicability of employer laws.
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