Posted on August 4th, 2008 by William McGeveran
I joined a group of law professors and public-interest groups that filed an amicus brief Friday in the case of United States v. Drew. That criminal case is a repercussion from the horrible and high-profile cyberbullying conducted through MySpace against a small-town Missouri teenager named Megan Meier, who committed suicide in response. Lori [...]
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Filed under: Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Privacy, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds
Posted on February 8th, 2008 by William McGeveran
Robert O’Harrow, a Washington Post reporter who is very insightful and current in his coverage of data privacy (and author of a good book on it too), today chronicles the inevitable first stirrings of government fear about virtual worlds such as Second Life:
Intelligence officials who have examined these systems say they’re convinced that the qualities [...]
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Filed under: Anonymity, Digital Media, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, NSA, Virtual Worlds, national security
Posted on September 17th, 2007 by William McGeveran
By now it’s basic knowledge — and grist for funny mainstream humor — that young people put overly personal stuff into their social networking pages with abandon, and that schools are flailing around trying ever harder to dissuade them.
But I think one Florida State law professor went too far, if this comment on a [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Digital Media, Internet & Society, Law School, Peer Production, Privacy, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds
Posted on June 19th, 2007 by William McGeveran
At the risk of appearing, inaccurately, to be some kind of an expert in video game law, here is my third post on the subject this month.
Earlier, I noted lawsuit threats by the Church of England against the maker of a video game with a gun battle set in Manchester Cathedral. Today, in research [...]
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Filed under: Court Decisions, Digital Media, Media, Scholarship, Software, Trademarks, Virtual Worlds
Posted on June 18th, 2007 by William McGeveran
In a sure sign that gaming has moved closer to the center of the media universe, a number of nonprofit advocacy groups have devoted significant effort to creating online games that promote their messages. I’ve been hearing this assertion for a while — and a quick web search uncovers MSM coverage (such as this) [...]
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Filed under: Digital Media, Internet & Society, Media, Software, Virtual Worlds, Voting
Posted on June 11th, 2007 by William McGeveran
These are the kinds of stories that make me pull my hair out in despair at the way in which people toss around nonexistent intellectual property rights when they dislike someone else’s portrayal of them. It shows why robust trademark fair use rights are so important (which, no coincidence, is the topic of my [...]
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Filed under: Court Decisions, Media, Software, Trademarks, Virtual Worlds
Posted on June 1st, 2007 by William McGeveran
As discussed by James Grimmelman on Prawfsblawg and Dan Hunter on Terra Nova, there were two big developments yesterday in the fascinating field of real-world law applicable to the virtual world.
In Florida, a putative class action has been filed on behalf of World of Warcraft (WoW) players against IGE, an online marketplace for players of [...]
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Filed under: Court Decisions, Digital Media, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Virtual Worlds, civil procedure
Posted on April 10th, 2007 by William McGeveran
Authorities on the Duluth campus of the University of Minnesota (UMD) have banned student athletes at the school from having accounts on social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster. The story in the local Duluth newspaper is surprisingly good, giving both sides of the debate and avoiding the sort of “Interthreat” sensationalism often found [...]
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Filed under: Digital Media, Filtering, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Minnesota, Peer Production, Virtual Worlds
Posted on April 1st, 2007 by William McGeveran
Derek and I spent the weekend at a great conference organized by Professor Peter Yu at Michigan State University College of Law, entitled “What Ifs and Other Alternative Intellectual Property and Cyberlaw Stories.” The conference consisted of numerous panelists spinning counterfactual sceanarios, which turned out to be an excellent way to evaluate underlying assumptions [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Law School, Patents, Scholarship, Trademarks, Virtual Worlds
Posted on January 18th, 2007 by William McGeveran
There is a great paper just posted on SSRN (hat tip to Larry Solum, of course) that consists entirely of a bloggy debate between info/law profs Christopher Yoo and Tim Wu about network neutrality. A version of their exchange originally appeared last spring as part of the late, lamented Legal Affairs Debate Club (indeed, [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Digital Media, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Media, Network Neutrality, Peer Production, Software, Virtual Worlds, VoIP