Fun with Virtual World Patents

Let’s have some fun with patents referring to virtual worlds! (All of these are actual patent applications descriptions found on a patent Web site.

Patent:
A method and system provides transactions and arrangements in virtual world environments. A user can participate in transactions to acquire virtual property and related virtual rights. In some implementations, real-world and virtual parties can be involved in virtual collateral transactions as well as conditional transfers and/or revocations involving various types of virtual objects and virtual rights. A possible relinquishment of designated aspects of the virtual collateral may result from unsatisfactory compliance with a real-world obligation or virtual world obligation that is secured by the virtual collateral.

Means:
Soon to arrive ability to take out mortgages on virtual property and, failing to make payments, property is seized by the bank (”relinquishment of designated aspects) - so….not only will you lose your house in RL for spending too much time in virtual worlds, now you’ll lose your house in the virtual world too! Yay patent protected!

Virtual Worlds: Map of Current Systems

I won’t comment for now, but two visuals try to give a picture of the current “Metaverse”.

The second is from Fred Cavazza.

Reflexive Architecture: Virtual Worlds Redefine our Relationship to Objects

I’m increasingly fascinated by the work that architects are doing in virtual worlds, Second Life in particular. Documented and discussed at The Arch I can only offer a naive outsider’s view. I’m clueless as to how reflexive architecture, for example, helps to explore concepts of architecture as a discipline.

However, my fascination with reflexive architecture connects to deepening (and confused) thoughts about objects, interaction, and “physical presence” in virtual worlds. As an extension of this fascination, our group has begun to explore concepts of landscape architecture and in particular metaphors of public gardens and their transportability into virtual worlds. Reflexive architecture reinforces a rather stubborn belief that immersive technologies can be both toxic but more importantly beneficial. I base this on the belief that virtual worlds not only create an immersive “reality-like” environment for play, collaboration, and exchange of information but that projecting forward they may be the source of new archetypes. (Again, both toxic and not).

This is just theory, my own mental model. There’s significant literature that says that virtual worlds evoke different emotional responses (have a look at a paper on Alternate World Disorder), that users feel like their avatars are them (with little separation in personal identity between the avatar and the player “behind” the avatar - regardless of the “roles” or personas, users still call their avatars “me”), and that “virtual/digital” objects have a value that is no more or less than “real” objects (if something is valued it has value regardless of whether it is judged as more or less ‘real’).

If virtual worlds feel real, have objects with real value, evoke real (and perhaps enhanced) emotional responses, and ALSO allow the creation of objects and environments that aren’t possible in the physical world - then as new objects and environments are created, maybe we’ll start to see things that change how we view ourselves, the culture we live in, and the world around us. If so, is it possible to invoke spiritual responses because we now have access to new and creative metaphors? This doesn’t replace the spiritual/creative response you might get from seeing the stars at night or an inspiring cathedral. But perhaps it extends our toolkit for invoking this response.

Corporate Greed, er, Sponsorship Saves Mega-Prims

Sorry, couldn’t help it - forget all the lovely builds from someone other than IBM or Rezzable - they’re the ones driving the future of SL afterall.

/me Bites tongue, tongue bleeds, calls paramedic.

In any case, it IS good news that the mega prims will live a long and happy life, HAVOK 4 or not. As reported by NPIRL who attended the meeting with Andrew and sliced this from the transcript:

Worth underscoring:
[16:41] Andrew Linden: Currently there are a bunch of big estate owners who use megaprims to make cool content (IBM, greenies, Electric Sheep, etc)
[16:41] Andrew Linden: There is no way anyone is going to be able to nerf megaprims.

Theory of Property and Rights in Virtual Worlds

A while back I wrote a lengthy piece on the concept of property, avatar rights to property, and what we mean when we, as users, get in a “huff” about the latest shift in the winds by the Lindens.

At “In the Near Future” the writer agreed to my philosophy but also argued that platform providers would always be motivated by profit.

I had summarized Benkler in saying:

“The question of “who should own this spoon” should be understood as a question about what we want the social relations using the platform to be like.”

And then had argued that there was a benefit to the idea of platform providers building their worlds upon an explicit social relations underpinning, accompanied by a forum for listening to their users before and in order to make their god-like changes to the code.

Over at In the Near Future (”ITNF”), the response was:

I get that the point of Dusan Writer’s post here is about the decisions of the platform owners and the ’suggestion’ that they should make those decisions with the input of the participants, but I would argue: what authority do the players have other than that derived from their choice to participate?

My response is that my philosophy of how to treat the issue of virtual property was a pragmatic one, in the end, for the platform providers. There is NO clear legal basis that by giving up their rights by signing a ToS or EULA that players have lost their rights or authority in their relationships with platform owners. According to most authorities (except perhaps China which recently announced a state-sponsored virtual world!!!….now in THAT case the participants REALLY won’t have any rights), as soon as objects become valuable they become commodified and once that has occurred the possibility for damages exist. Once the possibility for damages exist, the law intrudes.

The law does not de facto protect the rights of the platform users anymore than it protects the rights of Enron, or Exxon…the law may tilt in the favor of corporations in some jurisdictions but it does not rest solely on their side.

However, as Larry Lessig first proposed in 2001, synthetic worlds may require unique legal jurisdiction - they are global and exhibit unique characteristics that make application of “real world” precedents difficult.

CSI in Second Life - Kids Parody

i couldn’t stop laughing - someone directed me to Nemo where all the kids hang out…and what an awesome community, one in which I was a proud participant. The Goonies are wonderful at improv/geurilla theatre with Loki feeding the flames.

In any case, a little makeshift tribute to CSI New York by the kids says it all (big arrows, sponsorship, ahhh hilarious!):

CSI:New York in Second Life - the Electric Sheep’s “Real” New York

As previously discussed, the CSI New York sims were disappointingly thin and cartoon-like. After all the spin and hyperbole and excitement I was left with the humbling notion that the real good that came out of all of this was the grid didn’t crash, humiliating Second Life one last and possible irrevocable time.

Hmmm. That’s hardly a measure of success. As Prokovy Neva reports, the ’spin’ now begins - proper stats aren’t available for how many people logged in to date based on the CSI episode, but Pokovy kept a running “green dot tally” and maybe counted 4,000 concurrent - and hardly the grid overload and expected 500,000+ new users.

OK, but back to the build itself. The CSI sim promised” a recreation of Time’s Square” and other brilliant builds to help users immerse in the feeling of being within a CSI episode. Um….well, if that’s Time’s Square I’d suggest you boys get OUT of your offices a bit more. The presence of large useless banners does NOT a Time’s Square make.

Now, now I’m perpetually confused, but this morning in my wanderings I ran across a New York sim. It was a beautiful recreation of Rockefeller Center.

The concrete seemed real. The buildings were beautifully rendered…

CSI in Second Life - OK, tired of Disneyland yet?

As previously posted, CSI NY has a lot to offer as a way of orienting people to Second Life. It has flaws as well, including in the new viewer, namely:

- The search function in the new viewer brings you to the “ALL” tab, the other tabs (places, classifieds) are hidden two levels down. For a newbie, this will mean a struggle to find what they’re looking for.
- The shop button simply launches a browser to the onRez site within the viewer - not sure why we need a browser WITHIN the viewer unless newbies don’t know how to alt-tab either, but then they’ve been sitting on their couches so long watching CSI Miami reruns ya gotta make it easy. (It does cause lag and memory leak however)..
- The viewer leaks memory on Macs
- It is difficult to remove the CSI HUD
- There is no clear way “off” the CSI sims - they don’t give a nice handy guide to newbies on some of the sites in SL.

OK, so I come to SL, attracted through the TV show to the idea of discos, sex, crazy furrys and other antics. I arrive and find - hmm, I find Disneyland. Even the “crime scenes” have huge posters and labels “THIS IS A CRIME SCENE!” as if the police tape and dead body wasn’t enough. Ah well, these are newbies.

But please, for the love of god, if you’re new and reading this, don’t despair. Let’s have a look at what people do with their OWN imaginations (oh, P.S. the build buttons are hidden as well, the buttons that are the WHOLE POINT of Second Life).

Maybe I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Exhibit A: Signage

In CSI NY signage is clear and user friendly. This is part of the Welcome area, for example, generously supported buy Cisco.

This, by comparison, is the welcome centre in Toxian City (oh and I even forced sun to noon just so you could make out some detail, usually it’s grimy and night):