This is genuinely exciting news. I’ve spent much of the last couple of weeks lamenting the lack of a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the academic study of virtual worlds, and now we have one.

The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research fills a lacuna in the literature and sets out its focus and scope as follows:

The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is an online, open access academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world. The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is a transdisciplinary journal that engages a wide spectrum of scholarship and welcomes contributions from the many disciplines and approaches that intersect virtual worlds research.

The field of virtual worlds research is a continually evolving area of study that spans across many disciplines and the JVWR editorial team looks forward to engaging a wide range of creative and scholarly work.

What are virtual worlds and what is virtual worlds research, within the context of this journal? These are evolving questions that we hope the formation of a community of scholarship will explore and expand. However, to provide a base to build upon, we consider virtual worlds to be computer-based simulated environment where users interact with other users through graphic or textual representations of themselves utilizing textual chat, voice, video or other forms of communication. The term virtual worlds includes, is similar to, or is synonymous (with extensive qualifications) to the terms of virtual reality, virtual space, datascape, metaverse, virtual environment, massively multiplayer online games (MMOs or MMOGs), massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), multi-user dungeon, domain or dimension (MUDs), MUD object oriented (MOOs), multi-user shared hack, habitat, holodeck, or hallucination (MUSHs), massively-multiuser online graphical environments, collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) or multi-user virtual environments (MUVES), and immersive virtual environments (IVEs).

We see the current predominance of the virtual worlds of Second Life and its competitors as the most recent iteration of a long lineage of developments in virtual reality and gaming both in terms of technologies and conceptualization. Finally, we do not pretend to be a gaming journal, and hope that through this forum we are contributing to the development of specific space within the scholarly and creative communities for discourse on the wide variety of topic areas that are involved in virtual worlds research, including history of virtual worlds, cultural and social theory, quantitative research, qualitative research, virtual ethnographies, pedagogy, education and virtual worlds, development, experimentation, ideas and the intersection of virtual worlds and society.

Of particular interest to me in the first issue:

Cityspace, Cyberspace, and the Spatiology of Information, Michael L. Benedikt [PDF]

Help - Somebody Robbed My Second Life Avatar!, James Elliott & S.E. Kruck [PDF]

A Typology of Virtual Worlds: Historical Overview and Future Directions, Paul R. Messinger, Eleni Stroulia & Kelly Lyons [PDF]

Avatars Are For Real: Virtual Communities and Public Spheres, Eiko Ikegami & Piet Hut [PDF]

How Open Source Software Will Affect Virtual Worlds, Francis X. Taney, Jr. [PDF]

Toward a Definition of “Virtual Worlds”, Mark W. Bell [PDF]

Defining Virtual Worlds and Virtual Environments,Ralph Schroeder [PDF]

This is very significant news for all of us researching virtual worlds and finally provides the sort of forum and resource the field has been sorely missing.

I wish I had more time to respond adequately to a great discussion over at Savage Minds, so this is as much a reminder to self as anything else. Kerim Friedman posted his critique of Tom Boellstorf’s Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, a recently published ethnography of the virtual world I’ve been meaning to have a look at for a while. Kerim doesn’t try to hide his personal dislike of Second Life as a platform but does raise a series of excellent points to which Dusan Writer and Tom Boellstorf amongst others respond. Virtuality, subjectivity, anthropology, post mortem avatars and a lonely cat - all the fun of the fair.

[Cross-posted to CTLab]

Miss Ordinal Malaprop explains how Second Life works:

Aside from being a fascinating graphic from K-Zero, it’s a sobering and exciting thought that over 300m people are now registered as users of virtual worlds. That’s the equivalent to the third-most populous country on Earth, the United States of America.

The list is not complete (it excludes 10m+ World of Wankcraft players, for example) but gives some idea of how many people are exploring these new online spaces. If I’m reading the chart right it’s the under-20s who comprise the bulk of these, and I suspect that more of these are active users than, say, in Second Life. Demographically that suggests a new generation of native users …

(h/t Metaverse Journal)

Michael Tanji’s Getting Serious about ‘Virtual’ Terror: Some Informed Comment About Online Hype and Reality lives up to its own billing as a well-reasoned and level-headed look at the the use of virtual worlds by terrorists and insurgents. The following passage exemplifies the approach we should be taking:

Virtual worlds are a potential breeding ground for new threats, but as with any sufficiently technically advanced or inherently dangerous prospect, there are real hurdles to overcome. The greatest threat however is not that terrorists will achieve some quantum leap in capabilities by operating online; it is that so many are so quick to dismiss the seriousness of this issue thanks to the hype perpetrated by the ill-informed. Death from the ‘Net may never become reality, but there will be no forgiveness if we allow even middling capabilities to develop – and eventually launch – from cyberspace unchecked.

Read the rest of this excellent article here.

(via Roderick Jones)

MICHAEL HILL

The Associated Press

TROY, N.Y.–Edd Hifeng barely merits a second glance in “Second Life.” A steel-gray robot with lanky limbs and linebacker shoulders, he looks like a typical avatar in the popular virtual world.

But Edd is different.

His actions are animated not by a person at a keyboard but by a computer. Edd is a creation of artificial intelligence, or AI, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who endowed him with a limited ability to converse and reason. It turns out “Second Life” is more than a place where pixelated avatars chat, interact and fly about. It’s also a frontier in AI research because it’s a controllable environment where testing intelligent creations is easier.

“It’s a very inexpensive way to test out our technologies right now,” said Selmer Bringsjord, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Laboratory.

Bringsjord sees Edd as a forerunner to more sophisticated creations that could interact with people inside three-dimensional projections of settings like subway stops or city streets. He said the holographic illusions could be used to train emergency workers or solve mysteries.

But first, a virtual reality check.

Edd is not running rampant through the cyber streets of “Second Life.” He goes only where Bringsjord and his graduate students place him for tests. He can answer questions like “Where are you from?” but understands only English that has previously been translated into mathematical logic.

“Second Life” is attractive to researchers in part because virtual reality is less messy than plain-old reality. Researchers don’t have to worry about wind, rain or coffee spills.

And virtual worlds can push along AI research without forcing scientists to solve the most difficult problems – like, say, creating a virtual human – right away, said Michael Mateas, a computer science professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Researching in virtual realities has become increasingly popular the past couple years, said Mateas, leader of the school’s Expressive Intelligence Studio for AI and gaming.

“It’s a fantastic sweet spot – not too simple, not too complicated, high cultural value,” he said.

Bringsjord is careful to point out that the computations for Edd’s mental feats have been done on workstations and are not sapping “Second Life” servers. The calculations will soon be performed on a supercomputer at Rensselaer with support from research co-sponsor IBM Corp.

Operators of “Second Life” don’t seem concerned about synthetic agents lurking in their world. John Lester, Boston operations manager for Linden Lab, said the San Francisco-based company sees a “fascinating” opportunity for AI to evolve.

“I think the real future for this is when people take these AI-controlled avatars and let them free in ‘Second Life,’” Lester said, “… let them randomly walk the grid.”

That is years off by most experts’ estimations. Edd’s most sophisticated cognitive feat so far – played out in “Second Life” and posted on the Web – involves him witnessing a gun being switched from one briefcase to another. Edd was able to infer that another “Second Life” character who left the room during the switch would incorrectly think the gun was still in the first suitcase.

This ability to make inferences about the thoughts of others is significant for an AI agent, though it puts Edd on par with a 4-year-old – and the calculus required “under the hood” to achieve this feat is mind-numbingly complex.

A computer program smart enough to fool someone into thinking they’re interacting with another person – the traditional Holy Grail for AI researchers – has been elusive [the so-called Turing test]. One huge problem is getting computers to understand concepts imparted in language, said Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University.

AI agents do best in tightly controlled environments: Think of automated phone programs that recognize your responses when you say “operator” or “repair.”

Bringsjord sees “Second Life” as a way station. He eventually wants to create other environments where more sophisticated creations could display courage or deceive people, which would be the first step in developing technology to detect deception.

The avatars could be projected at RPI’s $145 million Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, opening in October, which will include spaces for holographic projections. Officials call them “holodecks” in homage to the virtual reality room on the “Star Trek” television series.

That sort of visual fidelity is many years down the line, just like complex AI. John Kolb, RPI’s chief information officer, said the best three-dimensional effects still require viewers to wear special light-polarizing glasses.

“If you want to do texture mapping on a wall for instance, that’s easy. We can do that today,” Kolb said. “If you want to start to build cognitive abilities into avatars, well, that’s going to take a bit more work.”

While this blogger was resting his digital-weary brain, Abu Muqawama, who blatantly never sleeps such is his vigilance, posted Calling All Readers: RFI. In full:

So Abu Muqawama got into a semi-public argument with one of the world’s leading al-Qaeda experts today about a subject he wants you guys to weigh in on. Basically, Abu Muqawama advanced what he did not think a controversial proposition: that the internet is used by terror groups and guerrilla groups to spread TTPs — tactics, techniques, and procedures.

The world-famous al-Qaeda expert, meanwhile, rubbished this claim. He said that while the internet was certainly central to the radicalization process, you need an actual physical space to spread tactics and know-how. He then challenged Abu Muqawama to come up with an example where a terror group had either used the internet to plan an attack or had used the internet to spread tactics.

Okay, so Abu Muqawama’s RFI (Request For Information) is two-fold. One, who out there smart on diffusion theories - that would be you, Mike, and you, Erin - can either support or dispute the claim that the internet has been used to spread tactics? All the diffusion literature Abu Muqawama has read is a little dated in its case studies and examples. The best example Abu Muqawama can come up with is the way in which different terror/guerrilla groups have all begun to use Google Earth to target sites from Israel to Iraq. But did the internet drive that diffusion?

Two, who do you think is right here? Abu Muqawama or the famous (and very intelligent) al-Qaeda expert? Because Abu Muqawama trotted out Thomas Rid’s line about digital natives versus digital immigrants and how younger U.S. Army officers have used sites like platoonleader.org to go around the traditional top-down lessons learned process. And let Abu Muqawama tell you: this esteemed expert did not like being called a digital immigrant - with all the you’re-too-old-and-I’m-young-and-hip connotations that go along with it. But Abu Muqawama thinks he’s right. Folks over a certain age are much less likely to intuitively understand the way in which younger people - digital natives - share information and use the internet.

Thoughts?

Now, this is an issue dear to Ubiwar’s heart, which should be apparent to any readers of this fledgling blog. I’m not going to say much more here, except to suggest that everyone weighs in with their two-penn’orth here and let AM know why he’s right.

One of many questions that keep popping into my mind is: why exactly do certain heavyweight thinkers on COIN, and military affairs in general, consistently ignore the importance of ICT to the global insurgency? One answer might be, as AM suggests, that they are ‘digital immigrants’ and, like many a grandmother who simply refuses to learn how to use a mobile phone, would rather ignore what they don’t understand. A more subtle answer might be that we didn’t all understand nuclear weapons either but their kinetic and strategic effects were readily apparent - it didn’t stop us jumping enthusiastically on that particular technological bandwagon. It’s the social effects of ICT that terrify many policymakers and practitioners, and which drive the jihad. Much harder to counter, as AM would surely agree, and increasingly harder to ignore.

From the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist hotline page:

Computer – Terrorists use computers. Do you know someone who visits terrorist-related websites?

Uh-oh, that’s me that is:

The evolution of virtual environments is of fundamental interest to this blog and one aspect that is certain to become of structural relevance to their development is that of law. Benjamin Duranske of Virtually Blind has an excellent post on this issue, framed as a Q&A between the virtual lawyer and a newbie to this topic. . The relevance of this article to Ubiwar is multi-faceted but perhaps one strand of thought should address the normalisation of human activity within virtual worlds, including both the practice of war and the legal framework for its commission. Whether virtual law will reflect the laws here in ‘meatspace’ or embark upon a trajectory of its own can only be speculative at present, but it will inevitably be grounded in existing laws at the outset.

What follows is a heavily edited version of his post and I recommend reading the original article here.

What is a virtual world?

In modern, first person 3D computer games, you move a character — an “avatar” — on the screen. That avatar represents you. In a lot of these now, there are other real people there too at the same time. The whole thing is hosted on a server somewhere, not on your individual computer, so people can participate from all over the world at the same time.

Collectively, these places are referred to as “virtual worlds” or “3D networked environments.” In game-based 3D environments, you’re usually fighting monsters, casting spells, picking locks, or shooting bad guys.

If you get rid of all of the game stuff and add in tools that let users build things, you get a “social virtual world.” You can find literally anything you can imagine in these places. Real money — sometimes lots — changes hands. Besides a lot of residents who are making some portion of their real life living in these places renting land, selling virtual products, and offering services, there is also a large contingent of real-life lawyers, executives, doctors, law professors, and even congresspeople who use virtual worlds for education, training, advertising, networking, communication, and more.

The most popular free-form social virtual world for adults at the moment is Second Life, but there are others too, and there are dozens for kids that have even larger subscriber bases. Altogether, there are hundreds of social virtual worlds and games; the industry is booming, but is in a real state of flux.

Okay, but legal issues? Seriously?

Many people, including me, believe that we aren’t just seeing a bunch of play and social places, but the emergence of the 3D internet. Basically, we think that the internet is going to look more like an interactive movie than a newspaper in 5-10 years. If this is right, whatever legal issues you see involving web sites now, you’re going to see involving 3D spaces in the future.

It’s not just the future we’re talking about though — the legal issues, even now, are very real. The reason is mainly that there’s money involved — a lot of money. One estimate puts the market for “virtual stuff” in games and social virtual worlds at well over $2 billion annually already. The property law questions alone are enough to keep a lot of people scratching their heads. There are also potential issues around defamation, intellectual property infringement, fraud, stalking, contract law, and much more. There have even been some lawsuits over this stuff already.

Didn’t somebody say 3D games and virtual worlds are swamps of sexual content and brain-rotting badness?

There’s definitely adult-level violence in some games (less so in social virtual worlds) and parents should take an interest in what their kids are playing — just like they should take an interest in what they’re watching on television. As much press as there is on this issue, the U.S. game and virtual world industry actually does a reasonably good job policing itself, and the government is actually pretty good about letting the industry sort itself out. It could be worse: Germany requires that online game companies appoint a “youth protection officer”.

Are there really intellectual property issues in virtual worlds?

You bet there are. If you think the recent copyright case over the Harry Potter Lexicon shows the extent to which J.K. Rowling can get upset about copyrights, I wonder how she — or Warner Brothers — would feel about an entire Second Life recreation of the key locations from the books and movies where people are selling wands, robes, and even complete “skin” and “shape” combinations that make one’s avatar look exactly like a character from the movies. There’s even a video floating around that features Harry Potter and Ron Weasley avatars visiting a Second Life strip club and then performing sexual acts on each other.

Besides Harry Potter, there are whole areas selling unlicensed products based on the Star Wars movies, on Anne Rice novels, and on dozens of other books, films, and television shows. Straightforward trademark infringement is rampant too; there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Second Life users selling knock-off brand name products — like Nike shoes — for avatars.

Why aren’t Warner Brothers, J.K. Rowling’s lawyers, Lucasfilm, and the lawyers for Nike trying to shut this down? Mostly because they, like most mainstream companies whose copyrights and trademarks are being infringed in open-creation virtual worlds like Second Life, have no idea it is happening yet — but that is changing as more and more mainstream companies move into these spaces. Apple is staking out some patent space here, which could signal an interest in taking its Apple Stores virtual. A lot of companies have already opened virtual world outposts too, including Herman Miller, Showtime, Dell, AOL, and more than 100 others.

There were even two lawsuits last year over theft of intellectual property between virtual world users, neither of whom was associated with a brick-and-mortar business.

What about Alternative Dispute Resolution?

Some virtual world organizations are trying to set up justice systems, and the government of Portugal has already set up an ADR facility that takes mediation cases. And many lawyers have found that mediation is, generally, a good idea.

Of course, ethical negotiation in mediation is a big issue in the real world, and adding a layer of anonymity and the complexities of international disputes should raise even bigger concerns in virtual world mediation. Happily, though, programming tools available in virtual worlds allow the creation of tools like virtual notary services which can help solve some of these problems in ways that just aren’t available in the real world.

Did you say some people are trying to set up justice systems in virtual worlds? Doesn’t that raise constitutional law issues?

“[G]overnance” and “constitutional” issues in virtual worlds — where we are basically talking about a private company renting server space to users — pale in comparison [next to recent U.S. constitutional wrangling]. There are a few efforts out there to create microgovernments in virtual worlds, complete with constitutions, justice systems, and, typically, some kind of democracy. Usually, voting rights are tied to renting “virtual land” (really, server resources that let users keep their houses, stores, and miscellaneous stuff available to other users even when the owner is not logged in) from the microgovernment which, in turn, rents these resources from the virtual world provider.

Basically, a group of people who all choose to share space in the virtual world can vote to make that space look a certain way, to exclude certain groups, to allow or disallow adult content, or whatever.

In the end, though, there’s a lot of trust involved because the guy who rents the land from the provider can basically do whatever he or she wants — and the provider can pull the plug anytime too. At least it’s easier to control voter fraud. Though positive ID for voters is hard in the real world, it is fairly easy in the virtual world, at least as far as only letting certain avatars vote — and for in-world governance, that’s all that matters.

A few examples of microgovernments in Second Life are Extropia, the Confederation of Democratic Simulators, and the Al Andalus Caliphate. There are others too; they all offer greater or lesser degrees of participatory democracy depending on their individual model. One that is hoping to create a justice system that works across the whole virtual world (not just on land owned by its creators) is the Metaverse Republic.

Any employment law issues in these places?

There sure are. People are routinely hiring each other in virtual worlds as greeters, receptionists, bouncers, dancers, and more — often for rates far lower than U.S. minimum wage. There are possibilities for real world groups to use virtual worlds for employment related tasks too, as they allow long-distance meetings with a sense of presence that exceeds phone, and even video conferencing. One wonders if virtual “face to face” meetings could facilitate the resolution of difficult situations, such as those described in an article on The Pope and Employment Law. Another benefit of semi-anonymous employment could be fair pay for women and the curtailment of other job-related biases.

Any other legal issues in these places?

Did you hear how a woman posted a YouTube video blasting her soon-to-be ex-husband for all sorts of transgressions? How people are trawling the internet for material for custody fights? Imagine what they’ll be able to dig up in a semi-anonymous virtual world where one of the most popular purchases is a set of detachable genitals and where about a third of the top 20 Second Life locations are explicitly sexual in nature.

Duranske is the author of Virtual Law: Navigating the Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds, recently published in the U.S. Apologies to Benjamin if I’ve misrepresented any of his ideas here. I also hope he doesn’t mind me quoting so extensively from his original article …

Update:

Benjamin kindly informs us that the ToC and Chapter One of his book can be downloaded from here.

(via Second Life Herald)

A new griefing group, DiSSENTi0N, has released the following communique aimed at Linden Labs, owners of Second Life:

Attention Linden Labs, DiSSENTi0N has been watching you silently as you have become increasingly bold, ignoring the pleas of your customers while slowly destroying the platform known as Second Life.

We have emerged from the chaos as a result of growing fury among the masses. Your unveiling of the new Corporate SL combined with the sudden emergence of so called “Trademark Guidelines” has prompted the founding of a new organization.

DiSSENTi0N has come forth to bear the burden of unleashing utter chaos across the grid. How events unfold from here is up to you.

You will abolish said trademark guidelines and make a public statement apologizing to your customers for your ineptitude within seven days, or else we will release our malicious code to the masses ushering in a new era of chaos.

Furthermore, you will abort your plans to close Second Life to the public. We know of these plans to make SL exclusive to real world businesses and we are revealing them publicly here today and in the attacks that will proceed this message.

At this very moment DiSSENTI0N programmers are developing new code to attack your asset servers and exploit numerous vulnerabilities in your platform. Furthermore, we will make the infamous program known as Copybot public to the masses in effect devastating your economy.

This is your one and only warning. You will learn the error of your ways or DiSSENTi0N will launch a massive campaign systematically dismantling the virtual world known as Second Life.

You can watch the over-dramatic press release video here, complete with Stephen Hawking-style electronic voice synthesiser voiceover.

I shouldn’t imagine Linden Labs are quaking in their boots at this, and it remains to be seen if and how DiSSENTi0N make good their threats. This video shows their previous attempt to disrupt SL through the coding of ’self-replicating megacubes’ sporting their moniker. Undoubtedly disruptive but whether they have the capacity to actually attack the SL infrastructure effectively is open to question.