I found this call for papers on Dusan Writer’s Metaverse blog:

Charles Wankel and Shaun Malleck have put out a call for scholarly articles for a book they are editing on the topic of ethics in virtual worlds.

The topics they are interested in include: privacy, identity, values and ethics in design, standards of integrity, and ethics and values within online social groups. More information and a longer description of the topic areas can be found at the Internet: Marketing and Messages blog.

Proposals are due August 15, 2008.

Whether or not one is inclined to propose some scholarly paper on those subjects, it is interesting to note that ehtical issues in virtual worlds are being taken seriously.

The Marketing and Messages blog explains:

Among the virtual world issues explicitly invited are:
privacy, monitoring and eavesdropping, the fear of being exploited, the loss of identity, ethical impacts of aesthetic decisions, values and ethics manifested in the social processes and their relevance for activities such as design there, professional ethics, standards of integrity given identity issues and practices, malevolence and altruism, legal and ethical doctrines of confidential and privileged information, ethics for students and instructors, ethical development stages and issues, vandalism, harassment and crime, how ethics and values are inscribed in the discourse and practices of social groups, and how they can change and emerge in the midst of pragmatic concerns, such as collective tasks.

All these subjects deserve further attention, not only by scholars, but by all those who care about the development of virtual environments and the Metaverse. A lot of those issues could be covered also from a Virtual Law perspective, but I think that an ethical and philosophical approach could be worthwhile and even necessary in itself.

Roland Legrand

SECOND LIFE, July 24 (Reuters) - OpenSim looks and feels very much like Linden Lab’s Second Life. But top OpenSim developers see a future in which their software is a generic platform for 3D software, hopefully interoperable with the Second Life Grid but not necessarily resembling it.

Speaking at the Metaverse Meetup in New York City on Wednesday night, two of the most prominent programmers working on OpenSim — IBM’s David Levine (middle) and DeepThink’s Adam Frisby (left) — plotted a course that diverges further and further from Linden’s Second Life as time goes on.

Levine, an IBM employee known in Second Life as Zha Ewry, was instrumental in coordinating the first Second Life to OpenSim teleport last month. Frisby, while adamant that OpenSim has no formal leaders (consistent with the project’s decentralized, open source ethos), has emerged over the past year as one of the most prominent developers working on the project. The Perth, Australia-based programmer frequently travels the globe to evangelize OpenSim at meetings and conferences.

Last night, Frisby described OpenSim as a product very different from Second Life, capable of being customized to support a wide range of virtual worlds. He said he hoped the parts of OpenSim that emulate Second Life will be removed from the code’s core package and made an optional add-on within OpenSim’s modular configuration.

Levine agreed. “OpenSim is a platform. And by intent, a fairly malleable platform,” he said.

Levine said his vision for OpenSim was a vast array of interconnected worlds, where some provide game-based experiences like Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, but others are social hangouts for avatars similar to Second Life.

“Success in this space means killing a dragon and taking its head to another grid, slapping it down in a nightclub and having a disco,” he said.

That disco — and its cover charge — may have nothing to do with Linden Lab. “What if I want to hook up to an economy outside the Second Life Grid? That’s something I think a lot of people find exciting,” Levine said.

Frisby and Levine also backed an intellectual property scheme for OpenSim very different from Second Life’s. In Second Life, objects can be set with flags like “no-copy” by their creators, which Linden’s servers enforce. But numerous exploits to Second Life’s copy-protection model are known, and brazen theft abounds in Second Life.

In OpenSim, by default, no copy protection will exist at all. “You cannot know what a foreign piece of software will do with a piece of digital content once it receives it,” Levine said. To insert a digital rights management tool into OpenSim is to invite criminal hackers to find ways to circumvent it and undermine the credibility of the software, he argued.

“These things have to be legally enforced, there’s no technical way to make it foolproof,” Frisby said.

When the panel was opened to questions from the crowd, OpenSim’s lack of content protection tools was challenged by Catherine Fitzpatrick, better known in Second Life as the prolific blogger Prokofy Neva. “You mentioned the recipe of calling a lawyer, but most avatars can’t afford lawyers and don’t have access to them,” Fitzpatrick [...]

My friend Rhodesy and I were wandering around the Port Seraphine SIM (Home of Pixel Dolls) the other night and wandered into a store called Dominus Motor Company. I immediately recognized that this was not your average clothing store. The first thing that caught my eye were some super cute boots that came in a pack of nine. Nine different pairs of boots…for 50L. You can bet I snagged those right away. It did not take us long to discover how much fun stuff was priced so low. Nothing I bought was over 100L and the quality is quite good. The best part is the amount of options you get with each piece. Each shirt I bought has several pieces. You can wear one piece, or all three. And it changes the look of the outfit dramatically. I love outfits like that. Rhodesy and I snagged tons of stuff. Now it’s obvious from the name of the store that this is meant to be used as racing gear but instead, I decided to channel my inner Angelina Jolie and head out to The Wastelands SIM to take some photos. 

First up is the Velocity Femme outfit, which I paired with the Heel boots, option #3. I’m wearing the jacket and the undershirt here, but you can wear it with one or the other. It also comes with the options of skirt:

And short shorts:

The gloves come with it, but the leg dagger does not. You have to go to Magika for that.

Angelina Jolie, eat your heart out.

The second outfit is actually several pieces from Dominus Motor Company, starting with the Torque Femme top in red. This is just the undershirt. You can add the jacket and the shirt layers for a more covered look. I bought the Bottoms Set which comes with several options for hot pants, ruffle skirts, and mini skirts. This first photo is of the ruffle skirt. The second photo is the slim mini, which is uber sexy. Again, I paired it with the Heel Boots, option #3 and I got these fun driving gloves too. Nine different colors for 50L.

 

The back of this outfit is really fun too. I love the line of material that goes down the back. And the silver on the waistband of the skirt is a nice touch.

 

 

 So race (yes, bad pun intended) over to Dominus Motor Company and snag some of this crazy fun racing gear. And if, like me, cars aren’t really your thing, snag it anyway and let your inner bad ass chick come out and play.

And speaking of play, I’d like to mention that [...]

by Arcadia Nightfire at July 24, 2008 09:26 PM