Vogel Internet, Information Technology and e-Discovery Blog : Texas Internet, Information Technology, eCommerce & E-Discovery Lawyer & Attorney Peter S. Vogel : Gardere Wynne Sewell Law Firm : Dallas TX

Notwithstanding all the .com failures over the past 15 years it’s unusual to see an Internet phenom change the waterfront so much as twitter. If you were otherwise not aware, twitter with a member base of about 4 million is a micro-blogging service which limits its messages to 140 characters and it just announced that it raised $35 million in third round of funding. However twitter has never had a marketing plan, and as a matter of fact twitter just hired its first director of business development. There was a lot of media attention on twitter when President Obama planned to use twitter to announce his running mate in 2008.

Is twitter on its way to being an Internet giant?
 

A recent article speculated that twitter is replacing Second Life as a business tool because of twitter’s ease of use on cell phones, takes little time to set up, and requires no software. On the other hand Second Life and other virtual worlds, require substantial time and resources to set up. Not to mention that one cannot conduct business in Second Life on your cell. Many B2B marketers are using twitter including BearingPoint, British Air, and McKinsey & Co. Dell Outlet sold hundreds of refurbished computers in a couple of hours by merely sending tweets (a twitter message).
 

Security Concerns for Social Networks
 

At a recent security conference researchers reported that apparently, without much surprise, individuals who use social networks are naïve and as a result have absolute trust in communications they receive from friends in twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. As we are all aware, with the growth of Web 2.0, millions of individuals around the world are spending vast amounts of time and energy with to these social networks. However, these security researchers demonstrated how imposters using these various Web 2.0 networks can steal identities and personal information with great ease. Given these warning of security issues we need to stay tuned for the continued evolution of twitter and the other social networks.
 

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Check out this WatchIT video about virtual world legal issues. Since major IT businesses (including IBM and Dell) and lawyers now have a presence in Second Life, it’s time you thought about some legal issues.

Post comments about this WatchIT video.
 

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An estimated 140 million folks use Facebook worldwide, but this is the first story about legal notice of a lawsuit through a social network. The law has never been fast to move, and there’s no reason to believe that any other country will adopt Facebook as a means of legal service, but this is an interesting story. Since the plaintiff had no success with direct service at the home of defendants, or by defendants’ email, apparently there was a match from the mortgage application with both defendants homeowners to their Facebook pages. The judge ordered that the notice be a private message and after posting this message the defendants have 7 days to respond.

Legal Service and Default

Most people are familiar with personal service where a party actually receives a written notice, and that’s easy to follow. Depending on state and federal laws in the US, service may be accomplished by leaving written notice on some one’s door, publishing a newspaper notice, or sending a certified letter with return receipt. So if the defendants do not respond after proper legal notice, courts will issues default orders against them for failing to participate in the lawsuit. That means the defendant loses by failure to respond. Of course most defaults orders can be set aside if the defendant can show that they were not properly served and given notice of the lawsuit.

Social Network Service?

Since so many people regularly visit Facebook and other social networks this service of legal process may be the beginning of a new phase of the law adapting to use of the Internet. Given all the trends, it seems likely that more and more individuals will participate in social networks. As well, the age of social network visitors has changed from being primarily for college age to middle age, so a broader spectrum of the population is using social networks. One can wonder if we will see service of legal process to avatars in virtual worlds such as Second Life. As the Internet evolves clearly legal process will have to keep up, and where else can we be found except sitting at our computers/laptops/PDAs attached to the Internet?
 

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A recent report that the Pulitzer Prizes will now be accepting submissions from Internet publication is clearly a sign of the times, but what took so long? Without question there’s no rocket science to see that dramatic decline in newspaper publication. As someone who cannot let a day go by without reading a newspaper it’s clear that newspaper readership is in a sharp decline.

What are the numbers?

Even the newspaper organizations report a decline, but it still interesting that many of the daily newspapers like USA Today, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal are printing more than 6 million copies daily. In the meantime the daily eyeball visits to their websites exceed 13 million. As a daily reader of the washingtonpost.com, newyorktimes.com, and the dallasnews.com it’s easy to get a news fix. But the trends portend badly for newspapers in the future.

Where are we headed?

With a generation of youth who rely on cell phones in lieu of wearing watches and use text messaging rather than talk to others, it seems unlikely they will ever read newspapers. At the same time news is on the decline, there is also a sharp increase on people participating in virtual worlds like Second Life. So if people live in virtual, non-real worlds….how does real news even apply? These social issues are changing dramatically by the dramatic growth of use of the Internet. It seems that we cannot really predict exactly where we are headed, but it’s sure interesting to observe these changes as they occur.
 

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Since millions of individuals play online games, and many virtual characters are killed daily it’s hard to image exactly how someone could really be found guilty of killing a virtual character. However, apparently this news story from Japan indicates that the defendant was so angry with her Maple Story online husband that she killed his digital persona. Actually according to the story the defendant found that she was divorced without warning and so she logged into the virtual Maple Story world using her ex-husband’s ID and password to kill him.

How can one kill a virtual person?

This seems a little goofy except that Maple Story and all online virtual worlds, including Second Life, require all users to agree to terms of service (TOS). So it’s not much of a surprise that the TOS restrict what users can do…but neither Maple Story nor Second Life have TOS that even mention killing or murder. So that‘s why the Japanese authorities are charging the defendant with illegally accessing a computer which is a crime in most states and countries.

Where are we going with virtual law?

As mentioned in an earlier blog, the American Bar Association published a book entitled Virtual Law in which Chapter 10 is entitled “Criminal Law and Virtual Worlds” and states that the most common virtual law crimes include money laundering, fraud, gambling, and stalking/harassment. As well, some virtual worlds have tried to deal with sexual behavior which is pretty difficult to regulate. But it seems appropriate that the virtual worlds try to protect children from sexual behavior, so all TOS generally do not permit anyone younger than 18 from participating. However, as my favor New Yorker cartoon indicates with one dog sitting in front of a computer talking to another dog and says “on the Internet no one knows you’re dog.” No one really has a clue who is users really are. But defining pornography is not so easy, even when the US Supreme Court tried to define pornography Justice Potter Stewart’s famous statement in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964) was that he could not define it, ‘but he knew it when he saw it.’ So how can pornography in virtual worlds be regulated?
 

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It’s hardly a passing fancy, virtual worlds abound. Second Life boasts virtual property owned by IBM, Dell, and Manpower. Gaming giants Sony and Microsoft have announced virtual gaming communities where avatars will compete but using their specialized equipment rather than just personal computers. Since law is the glue that holds society together, it’s no wonder that there are unique laws in the virtual worlds and a number of lawyers. As a matter of fact, the American Bar Association recently published a book entitled Virtual Law. Also there was Virtual Law Conference was held concurrently with the Virtual Worlds Conference in New York. Even US District Judge Richard A. Posner made an appearance as an avatar in Second Life.

Modern Day SciFi?

It’s hard to tell whether Virtual Worlds are a form of SciFi computer-Internet recreation. That is, living through avatars in an imaginary Internet world. Not being much of a SciFi reader I vividly I remember reading 1984 when I was in the 8th grade and was pleased with the year 1984 came and went without Big Brother running our world. Also I remember reading Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land in 1972 while in graduate school studying computer science and being impacted.

Lawyers Abound in Virtual Worlds

There must be a connection point that interests thousands of individuals since Second Life and other virtual worlds operate in a number of languages around our earth. Virtual residents own property and conduct commerce, so lawyers naturally have a role. Nonetheless when Linden Labs took some property away from a Second Life resident, the litigation ended up in federal court Pennsylvania. Linden Labs was unsuccessful in moving the dispute to California because the judge acknowledged when Second Life founder Philip Rosendale’s Avatar held a “town hall” meeting in Second Life and residents from Pennsylvania were invited and attended, and so the defendants should have known that they could been dragged into court in Pennsylvania.
 

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