Monk

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Virtual reality is getting wilder and more real all the time. At the paralled e-world known as Second Life, we are seeing real-world politics playing out with some passion, though apparently the French are more into it than we are:

PARIS, March 29 -- In a battle between push guns and pig grenades, the exploding pigs won.

The clash started on a January morning when protesters attacked the cyberspace headquarters of extremist French presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the popular 3-D Internet fantasy world Second Life.

Le Pen security forces responded with push guns, whimsical digital weapons that tossed bodies through the air "like rag dolls," according to one witness. Protesters fought back with pig grenades, firing fat pink porkers that exploded in neon pink splatters. When the shooting ended, Le Pen's headquarters lay in ruins, deserted by staff and guards.

The confrontation in Second Life -- the parallel online universe where players cloak their alter egos in cartoonlike bodies -- demonstrated the rising impact of the newest cyber-venue for politicians trying to promote real-world campaigns.

I like this development, myself, though Monk is as timid and reluctant to join and get involved in these e-worlds as he is in real life, but this seems more approachable, and one of these days...

I already proposed to one of my e-crushes to be my e-wife at one of these parallel e-worlds, thinking of Second Life, but I get e-rejected as readily as I get rejected. The line between e-life and real life is perhaps more illusory than we would like to think, though one fancies that it could be a realm to just play out our fantasies without regard for our real-person limitations and shortcomings, where we are limited only by our sexy imagination. It would just be important not to get carried away and try to take the fun to real life.


(Source: Molly Moore for The Washington Post)

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Earlier this month, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner visited Second Life, appearing as a balding, bespectacled cartoon rendering of himself, and addressed a crowd of other animated characters on a range of legal issues, including property rights in virtual reality. Posner stressed that it was in Linden Lab's interest to ensure due process and other rights.

"They want people to invest in Second Life, and we know people won't invest if their rights are not reasonably secure," he told the audience, which included a giant chipmunk and several supermodels. He went on to predict the eventual emergence of an "international law of virtual worlds" similar to international maritime law.

-- Alan Sipress, "Where Real Money Meets Virtual Reality, The Jury Is Still Out" in The Washington Post

With more people spending more time in virtual reality, such as at Second life, issues over what is the nature of 'virtual property' and who owns what are ripening into legal issues:

"Courts are trying to figure out how to apply laws from real life, which we've grown accustomed to, to the new world," said Greg Lastowka, a professor at Rutgers School of Law at Camden in New Jersey. "The law is struggling to keep up."

U.S. courts have heard several cases involving virtual-world property rights but have yet to set a clear precedent clarifying whether people own the electronic goods they make, buy or accumulate in Second Life and other online landscapes. Also unclear is whether people have any claim when their real-life property is depicted online, for instance in Microsoft's new three-dimensional renderings of actual real estate.

The debate is assuming greater urgency as commerce gains pace in virtual reality. In Second Life, where nearly 2 million people have signed up to create their own characters and socialize with other digital beings, the virtual economy is booming, with total transactions in November reaching the equivalent of $20 million. Second Life's creator, Linden Lab, allows members to exchange the electronic currency they accumulate online with real U.S. dollars. Last month, people converted about $3 million at the Lindex currency market.

Monk has been flirting with the idea of trying a 'second life,' seeing how well he has done with the first one, but I suspect he may be too poor of money and abilities there, too, so that he might just end up with two sucky lives instead of one.

Seriously, I would have liked to think of virtual reality as the ultimate escape from real life, but I suppose it was naive to think that real life would not make its way into virtual reality. The problem is human nature, not the medium, and there is no escaping ourselves.

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