Law & Games Seminar

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Below are the readings that I found beneficial. Where appropriate, I commented on why I decided to include a particular work on this list.

I found it helpful to begin the course with the readings:
Lastowka & Hunter, Virtual Worlds: A Primer, in Balkin & Noveck at p. 13-28 and
Castronova, Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier, available via link from SSRN.

Law in Virtual Worlds: (I enjoyed Balkin and Lastowka & Hunter especially - more quality cases and statutes are needed here)

* Balkin, Law and Liberty in Virtual Worlds, in Balkin & Noveck pp 86-117
* Lastowka & Hunter, Virtual Crimes, in Balkin & Noveck, pp. 121-136
* Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition 535 U.S. 234, 122 S.Ct. 1389 (2002), http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-795.ZO.html
* Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 USC § 1030

EULAs etceteras

* Andrew Jankowich, Eulaw: the Complex Web of Corporate Rule-Making in Virtual Worlds, 8 Tul. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop. 1 (2006)
* World of Warcraft and Second Life EULAs

Players and Game Developers: (This is a particularly big topic and the readings are all over the place. However, Bartles and Castronova and Koster contribute some of the more philosophically resonating writings of the course.)

* Bartle, Virtual Worldliness, in Balkin & Noveck pp 31-54
* Koster, Declaring the Rights of Players, in Balkin & Noveck pp 55-67
* Castronova, The Right to Play, in Balkin & Noveck pp 68-85
* Raph Koster, The lifecycles of a player (June 16, 2006) (I did not like this. I didn’t buy any of Koster’s ideas on this.)

* Edward Castronova, Synthetic Worlds : the Business and Culture of Online Games 29-144 (2005)
* Dmitri Williams, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Zhang Yuanyuan, Xiong Li, Nick Yee & Eric Nickell, From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft, 1 Games & Culture 338-361 (Issue 4) (2006)
* Mike Musgrove, Far-Flung Families Unite in Cyberspace — And Kill Monsters, Washington Post (Apr. 20, 2006)

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Weds. Jan. 24 Real and Financial Property

* Joshua Fairfield, Virtual Property, 85 Boston L. Rev. 1047 (2005) (available via SSRN) (I relied on this paper quite a bit when I formulated my own paper. I think this is a pretty important paper and you should definitely keep it.)
* Julian Dibbell, Dragon Slayers or Tax Evaders?, Legal Affairs (Jan/Feb 2006) (Ditto.)
* Second Life Land Deal Goes Sour, Wired.com (May 18, 2006)
* Peter Pollack, Online “banker” runs off with cash, avatars cry foul (Aug. 28, 2006)
* Andrew E. Jankowich, Property and Democracy in Virtual Worlds, 11 B.U. J. Sci. & Tech. L. 173 (2005)
* Complaint in Bragg v. Linden (.pdf)

Intellectual Property (I thought these readings were adequate but I felt that I could’ve used more.)

* Steve Jones, Reality © and Virtual Reality ©: When Virtual and Real Worlds Collide, 20 Cultural Studies 211 (2006)
* Mia Garlick, Player, Pirate or Conducer? A Consideration of the Rights of Online Gamers, 7 Yale J. L. & Tech. 1 (Spring 2004-2005)
* Archinaco, Jason A., Virtual Worlds, Real Damages: The Odd Case of American Hero, the Greatest Horse that May Have Lived (May 28, 2006). (Available at SSRN)

* Matthew Brett Freedman, Machinima and Copyright Law, 13 J. Intell. Prop. L. 235 (2005).
* Madhavi Sunder, IP3, 59 Stan. L. Rev. 257 (2006)

Privacy, Identity, Community (This was an area where I felt the quality of assigned readings varied considerably)

* Tracy Spaight, Who Killed Miss Norway, in Balkin & Noveck pp189-197 (I loved this. This piece facilitated a nice class discussion.)
* Nick Yee, The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur the Boundaries of Work and Play, 1 Games and Culture 68-71 (2006)
* Bruckman, Amy. Gender Swapping on the Internet. Procedures of the International Networking Conference (1993)
* Gunther Teubner, Rights of Non-Humans? Electronic Agents and Animals as New Actors in Politics and Law, 33 J. L & Soc 497 (2006)
* Sherry Turkle, Always-on/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self, in Handbook of Mobile Communications and Social Change, James Katz (ed.)(forthcoming).