State of Play III: To Some a Conference, To Me Heaven*

The wisdom Charlie Nesson imparted at the  State of Play III struck the core of the reason for all the intellectual and constructive exchanges during the three-day conference.  At the Law in Virtual Worlds panel on Saturday, October 8, Nesson took the audience into a different realm of the law in virtual worlds.  Other panelists discussed the common theme they drew from the holdings of seminal cases like Grokster, BrandX and Marvel v. NCSoft.  Nesson refrained from discussing the ‘excrement’ of the Supreme Court, instead he contemplated on the relationship between games/game builders and the law.  He quoted journal entries from Edward Castronova’s famous paper on Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier to illustrate the emotional experience of learning, such as

Journal entry, 20 April, I have made my first kills, mostly rats.  They did me a great deal of damage and I have been killed several times.  I do return to life but it is a pain to go through.  Nonetheless, I have to attack the rats.  I need money to buy edible food and water, and rat fur, and other similar junk, is about the only thing I can get my hands on that the vendors will pay money for.

Nesson also believes that learning is addictive. To him, the Avatar is learning and the game builder is teaching.  So it is as important for court decisions to be correct as game builders building what is right.  He further cautioned law makers and judges to make law slowly so that they can catch up with their understanding of the virtual world.  He stressed that it is of utmost importance to teach children the difference between real and virtual world because there seems to be an increase in acceptance of the merging the two.

In times when courts are still struggling in their quest out of the maze of the virtual world, where monstrous game builders are hiding behind the veil of the notion of business model to defend themselves, and savvy gamers are stealing copyrighted materials, Nesson’s idea of social responsibility rests not solely on the courts but also that of the game builders, and that is what makes him a visionary.  Undoubtedly, the comments of the rest of the panelists were more than insightful, especially that of Susan Crawford and Ann Bartow,  Nesson’s wisdom is axiological to the discussion of law in the virtual worlds.  Foresight like that of Nesson is appropriate to be found in SOP III because it is itself a colloquium filled with dialogues ahead of its time.

* Luck
Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967)

Sometimes a crumb falls
From the tables of joy,
Sometimes a bone
Is flung.

To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only heaven.

Comments

[charles nesson]

Thank you. Who are you? I'm reading down in your blog to learn about you. The more i go the more i want to know.