We're happy, nay, delighted, to announce that Florence Chee will be joining us as a guest blogger on Terra Nova during the month of April. You may be able to spot Florence in the picture at right, obviously taken at considerable risk to the photographer. For those unfortunate enough not to know Florence, some biographical detail follows. Florence Chee is a PhD Candidate in the School of Communication and Researcher at the Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology (CPROST) and the Applied Communication and Technology (ACT) Lab at Simon Fraser University. As a communication anthropologist, her research interests focus on the ethnographic investigation of how users define themselves socially amidst their technologies and lived realities.

We're happy, nay delighted, to welcome Elizabeth Townsend Gard and Rachel Goda as guest-bloggers this month on Terra Nova. They'll be writing about Fizzy Soderberg, Second Life, and first-year Property law. You'll have to stay tuned for the details, but if you want a preview of the topic, check out this site. We'd like to thank Elizabeth and Rachel for visiting. We're looking forward to some good conversations! Elizabeth Townsend Gard is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Seattle University School of Law, and as of July 1, 2007, will be an Associate Professor at Tulane University Law School. She holds a Ph.D. in European Intellectual and Cultural History from UCLA, and a J.D./LL.M. from the University of Arizona. She is currently a non-resident fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, as well as Justice Faculty Fellow at Seattle University School of Law. H. Rachel Goda is a second year law student at Seattle University.

This day started with the Washington Post reporting (registration required) this incident in Second Life: protesters attacked the cyberspace headquarters of extremist French presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen... Protesters fought back with pig grenades, firing fat pink porkers that exploded in neon pink. Apparently all four major candidates in France's presidential election have offices in Second Life. Mark Wallace also reports that the US State Department is vaguely considering a Second Life project. Both of these stories, in their ways, harken to the ambitions behind USDS's Internet Freedom Task Force (1. , 2. ): a vibrant global community best serves everyone.

Sara Grimes wrote in The Escapist ("Mining the game: when marketing and gaming meet, they do a lot more than advertise"): Kids' online games present a particularly rich case study for understanding the mechanisms of advergaming because - for the most part - they have been allowed to flourish there unchallenged. Even though children's personally identifiable information, like their names and addresses, is protected in many regions under national privacy legislation, there is currently no legal framework in place that regulates the online collection of other types of data - even though consumer trends and opinions are often what interest marketers the most. Torill Mortenson on this point forwards the wise note: I am not saying it is wrong, but it... needs to be questioned, discussed and explored methodologically and ethically.

Working in groups, we are going to explore Second Life in general, and more specifically, look at how much modern concepts of property are being imported into a virtual property environment. We will do this be concentrating on four activities with each group: 1) a property question; 2) avatar maintenance; 3) Experiencing Second Life through tourism and event attendance, and 3) keeping up on news about Second Life. I vaguely recall an optional rule set for simulating command lag in large fleets of sailing ships. These rules sought to simulate semaphor communications in fleets of those times. From the admiral's ship the sailing commands would be issued, however it would take time for those orders to disseminate throughout the fleet.

To make sure that this project does not overwhelm our course, we will have a strict time commitment, both inside and outside of class. All of the work takes place in a one week time period. You will be required to meet four times with supervision/guidance during the assigned week. You will also record a 5-10 minute group screencast presentation. You will also have a one-page writing component. To compensate for the extra time, I will cancel 3 classes during the semester (the first two classes, and a third). I'm sketching a longer piece on how I perceive information and strategy dynamically interrelate in Eve-Online. To illustrate some of the complexity. Consider a not uncommon example: a 250+ person (blue team only) raid that stretches multiple systems, 4+ hours, involving (at least) four squads, 5+ text channels, voice channels, multiple (and staged) sub-goals, and yes consider the gradual (and dramatic) degeneration of communications discipline (as evening drags on) on different channels at different rates.

You will be given set amount of $US for the week to spend as group. Each week, the amount varies, and is part of our experiment. What is your experience like with $1 versus $20? Rather than contemplate on these philosophical fine points, it seems Coldwell Banker has seized the day. Or has it? I've got to wonder what exactly Coldwell Banker is doing here and what kind of deal it has with Linden Labs (presumably there is some contractual arrangement). Second Life advertises on its splash page "Own Virtual Land." But if you buy virtual "land," do you "own" it like you own real land? Certainly not, according to Second Life's lawyer. In a comment on the Bragg v. Linden virtual property lawsuit Second Life counsel Ginsu Yoon was reported as saying: "The term 'virtual' may not have a strict legal interpretation, but if anything it means that the thing being described is NOT whatever comes after the word 'virtual.'"

The group will prepare about a 10 minute PowerPoint screencast presentation on the questions and findings of the week (including also any relevant news about Second Life that week). [Note: in reality, the screencasts have generally been 20 minutes] This will be filmed outside of class in my office on. The presentation will be screencasted and made available for viewing. Make sure to include a “Credits” page in your PowerPoint presentation. You will record the screencast in my office (a week after you begin your work). This will give us the option of either viewing the screencast in class or assigning it as part of homework in order to give us more time for discussion.

Each member must work on a disparate part of the week’s work, as well as with the group. The group must turn in a report on each person’s activities and how the group worked as a whole. You will be graded both on your individual contribution as well as you willingness to work and play well with others.“Rather than having to negotiate for top dollar with Second Life ‘land barons,’ users can visit our virtual office and interact with our virtual sales associate to buy homes from Coldwell Banker at reasonable rates,” Young continued. “Ironically, Colbert Coldwell, and later Benjamin Banker, founded our company after seeing similar practices in 1906 San Francisco. Coldwell Banker was founded just 18 weeks after the earthquake largely because our founders saw the need for ethics and integrity in assisting victims of the devastation who were being preyed upon by unsavory businesspeople. We want to do the same thing in Second Life: give residents the opportunity to participate in fair and reasonable real estate transactions." There's just so much in that for the mind to boggle over that I don't know what to say.

We will have new groups. You may sign up groups on TWEN. Each week will have a different theme, activity, etc. The groups will be made up of 6-8 students. In the first comment, Andy, our faithful marketing commenter, points out that this is essentially a 3-D advertisement for Coldwell Banker's offline services. That's what my cynical side says too -- if it's not all a 3-D advertisement, it is at least partially that. Yet if that's true, then I think most of the press release, especially that last line, should not be taken at face value. Yet Andy also says that if Coldwell's virtual agents provide bad advice to Second Life home buyers, this marketing effort might backfire. So here's another question: what mistakes might these agents make?