Virtual Law: Navigating the Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds [Paperback]

Benjamin Duranske (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2008 | ISBN-10: 160442009X | ISBN-13: 978-1604420098 | Edition: Reprint

This book introduces readers to the emerging and exciting world of virtual law. It examines current cases and legislation impacting virtual world providers and users, and makes predictions about the future application of current law. It addresses the application of intellectual property law (copyright, trademark, and patent), criminal law, property law, contract law, securities law, tax law, and civil procedure. It also provides practical advice to lawyers who wish to create a virtual world presence for their practice or who have clients with virtual world connections. The book includes extensive appendices listing in-world and web-based resources for practitioners and legal scholars.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The book is timely, circumspect, well written and grounded where it is supposed to be while provocative in areas that it needs to be. The author's experience in virtual world use and commentary shines as he teases out the importance of law to virtual worlds, and vice versa. Benjamin Duranske makes virtual law in concept and practice very tangible and understandable. This book is not only a book introducing Virtual Law -- it is a book of reference for lawyers, virtual world users and virtual world owners alike." -- Taran Rampersad Virtual World/Second Life®/ICT Consultant, KnowProSE.com

"Knowing `virtually' nothing about Second Life, I finally determined to curl up with Virtual Law as continuing education this weekend. I didn't put it down until I finished it. The comprehensive outline of topics, the accessible language, and spot on exhortations of the relevance of this technological phenomenon should make this a best seller. The book gave me, a total amateur, several business development ideas on first reading, and I look forward to actually spending real dollars, not Lindens, to purchase several more copies for non-lawyers to read." -- Chris Grant , Esq. CEO InfecDetect , LLC Princeton, NJ

"Ben Duranske hits the mark again and again with this clear, straightforward overview of legal issues in virtual worlds. All of the main arguments are here, in a single source, allowing the reader to balance the claims of contract law against those of property law in regulating the toughness of the magic circle. Woven together, these arguments constitute a desperately-needed consensus, one that recognizes the inevitable influence of real-world law on the future of this critical medium, but also its limits." -- Edward Castronova Associate Professor, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

"Benjamin Duranske's 'Virtual Law' is far and away the most thorough, clear-sighted, and enlightening introduction to the legal implications of virtual worlds that has been written. It is a must-read for anybody -- lawyer, plaintiff, or defendant -- with a stake in the legal system's fast-evolving relationship with this strange new realm of human affairs." -- Julian Dibbell Contributing editor, Wired magazine; co-moderator, Terra Nova collaborative blog; author, Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot

Product Details

• Paperback: 461 pages
• Publisher: American Bar Association; Reprint edition (April 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 160442009X
• ISBN-13: 978-1604420098
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #536,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #77 in Books > Law > Legal Theory & Systems > Science & Technology
  • #100 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business & Management > Digital Law

More About the Author

Benjamin Duranske is an attorney with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, where he focuses his practice on the emerging field of virtual law, intellectual property law, internet law, and litigation. As the author of Virtual Law: Navigating the Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds (American Bar Association, 2008), the first book on this emerging field, as well as numerous online and print articles on the subject, Mr. Duranske has helped define virtual law. He currently co-chairs the Committee on Virtual Worlds and Multiuser Online Games of the American Bar Association's Section of Science & Technology Law, which he helped establish. He is a frequent speaker on the subject of legal issues facing virtual world and game providers, software developers, content creators, and users. He co-chaired the first Virtual Law Conference, and founded the SL (Second Life(R)) Bar Association, an informal professional organization of attorneys and other legal professionals with an interest in virtual worlds.

Mr. Duranske's practice focuses on all aspects of intellectual property including patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, open source and Internet law. His areas of technical focus include virtual worlds, video games, social networks, computer software, user-generated content, e-commerce, and wireless telecommunications.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely useful book June 23, 2008

By Mary Ellen Gordon

Format:Paperback

Everyone who operates a business that is involved with virtual worlds should be glad that this book was written. As everyone in that situation knows, virtual worlds give rise to a huge number of legal questions, and this book collects those and answers to them all in one place using a writing style that's very readable even for non lawyers like myself.

One thing that I really appreciated about the book is that it describes the degree of certainty associated with different topics. For example, each chapter ends with a section on "open questions" relating to the subject of the chapter, whereas there are other places where the text states very definitively that a given thing occurring in a virtual world would or would not be treated exactly the same way as elsewhere on the Web or in the physical world.

Another thing that I appreciated about the book was how clearly it is written. While it does include case law, etc. that is likely to be of intellectual interest to lawyers specializing in virtual law, it also includes a lot of very practical and accessible information for those of us who have business interests in virtual worlds.

I think it will be particularly useful to three groups of people. First, it will provide a lot of information for people running in world only businesses for which legal advice is probably prohibitively expensive. Second, it will provide small and medium size businesses operating in virtual worlds enough of an understanding of the issues to judge when it's likely to be cost-effective to seek out specialized legal advice and when it's not. Third, I think it will be helpful to the large companies operating in virtual worlds. Many of them have their own legal staff, but they are often are unfamiliar with virtual worlds. This book will help them get up to speed quickly (and avoid slowing down their companies virtual world initiatives).

I am in the second category, and I already feel I got my money's worth from the book in terms of not having to pay for unnecessary legal advice and / or worry that I should be checking things with a lawyer (particularly given that currently most "regular" lawyers are not very knowledgeable about virtual worlds). All in all, I found this book to be extremely helpful on a first read, and it's one I am sure I will refer back to in the future.

The one topic I wish would have received greater attention in the book is jurisdiction since so much interaction in virtual worlds involves people in different countries.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A nice overview July 17, 2008

By Tyler Forge

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is a nice overview of some of the foreseeable legal issues of virtual worlds. I also attended a seminar hosted by the author, Benjamin Duranske, that was sponsored by the American Bar Association. The "session" I attended was in second life in the ABA building. You guessed it, I am a lawyer. As such, the case law in the appendixes was, for me, interesting reading.

Executive Summary: The user agreement, aka terms of service (TOS), governs all (at first). The service providers can pretty much do what they want with your account as long as they don't violate their TOS. On the other hand, the service providers govern their virtual worlds as little as possible because they don't make money from governance. They see it as customer support and retention. Legal arguments aren't the best recourse because the customer support reps are judge and jury.

Repeating: If you have an issue in world, read the TOS and complain to the service provider. If you have an issue with a service provider, read the TOS and then complain to the service provider. Any competent lawyer representing you in such a dispute would do exactly that. Finally, the courts are not well equipped to deal with virtual world issues. They would first look at venue (can this court properly hear this case?) which is an open subject that is somewhat addressed in the book. If the court has venue, then the first thing that is likely to happen is a detailed parsing of ... the TOS.

If satisfaction can't be wrung from the service provider, then it may be time to apply real world laws. Do they apply? The author, Duranske, says it best: "... real world laws apply to virtual worlds to exactly the degree that virtual worlds attempt to offer real world possibilities."

As to the target audience, non-lawyers can certainly get a lot out of the book. It is published by the ABA though and it isn't exactly a light summer read. The chapters are mostly arranged along the lines of legal subjects without going deep into any one. What I liked is that the book hints at where to look to perform certain functions like copyrighting/trademarking an avatar.

Regardless, what surprises me most is the sheer magnitude of legal issues arising in virtual worlds. At first I thought it would be mostly intellectual property type stuff. Not even close. The only "real world possibility" that doesn't seem to have a close analogy is homicide.

Basically, all aspects of real world law seem to come into play as soon as soon as something with a real world monetary value changes hands (with or without consent). Contracts, taxes, torts, etc. Even employment law (although the book doesn't address employment law). Civil and criminal procedure don't yet come into play until real world courts are involved. That will change as soon as a service provider establishes a "coercive entity" and a judge.