Well…as promised, I have started my two prong attack on the ol’ website thief. We have contacted an IP lawyer and gotten him started with the relevant details. I’ve also started doing a little research of my own. More later on the outcome of things with the lawyer. What I can say upfront is that I never cease to be amazed with what one can turn up on a person with a little ingenuity and a lot of Google…especially when one’s quarry is a moron.

Since the infringing publication is a website, I started with a sensible and utterly unglamorous whois check. As might be expected of an individual or a web design company that steals web designs, the pest had registered his domain anonymously. This was, however, his only sensible move. 2 or 3 Google searches later and I’ve got the guy’s name, former websites, examples of contracts, and other websites. I’ve also got his myspace account…so I’ve got his picture, his hobbies, contact info for his friends and his “friends”, his social schedule, and his advertisements and bragging statements about the business he has built on a purloined website. In all, I’ve got quite a window on this self styled DJ and party guy and his his life. We’ll see what all I turn up…

The tally so far: 20 mins to gather relevant info to get the lawyer on the case. 8 minutes for an email. 4 minutes for whois, netcraft, and Google searches. 10 minutes reading up on the thief. 7 minutes laughing at a ridiculous photo of this joker swilling a bottle of Cristal like an unpopular, untalented Jay-Z (pre-dispute, of course). Anyway…back to it. More later.

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So Second Life creator Philip Rosedale says that virtual worlds will be bigger than the Internet in 10 years. Whatever. The fact is that they’re big…and getting bigger. But what will happen as these MUDs continue to mature into something more than late night nerd playgrounds? It’s already happening: Second Life is quickly becoming a remarkable proxy for our first world — home to cultural events, thriving businesses, in game and out of game services, and even its own Reuters Bureau. As more people rely on virtual characters, virtual real estate, virtual products, and virtual services to make real money, serious policy questions will come to bear — and serious policies will need to be formed. And we all know how good policy makers are at keeping up with technology and lifestyle developments…

The issue is too big to work through or even properly introduce in one post, but I’ll go ahead and try to put it in a nutshell. Property rights form the foundation of Anglo-American law. Our rights in property and the settled expectations that come with them form the basis of our lives, our economy, our system of laws, and our interactions and transactions others. The question, then, is what kind of rights do we have in this new property. The answer, it seems, is not much. Treatment of this new property, which is neither physical nor intellectual, has virtually no guidance from statutory or case law, and it seems that fitting analogies to existing property rights regimes may be of little use. For the time being, it appears that all rights in this type of property, to the extent that they exist at all, are derived from the contracts required for account set up (We’ll be looking at these later). This may or may not be a viable solution. Up until now, government has largely avoided dealing with the huge host of issues that activity and commerce in these worlds has brought up. This will no doubt change as the revenuers turn to these worlds for new ways to squeeze people…and the moralizers strike out at these realms of iniquity. Mostly this will change because if Rosedale’s bold vision of the future is to find any degree of fulfillment, there will be a dramatic increase in productive use of these worlds — read: commerce. This means increased exchange between virtual property and real world property, making virtual property portfolios every bit as real as traditional financial portfolios — and in-world reputations every bit as important and valuable as real world goodwill. Even if governmental forces don’t nose in and try to ruin it for everyone (which they will), those users engaged in commerce will demand a greater degree of protection for the reputations, and virtual currency and property that they accumulate in the worlds than can be provided by the arbitrary and ever shifting contracts offered by the purveyors of these services. A recent financial downturn in the world of Second Life shows that these concerns are very real. Virtual worlds are no longer just games–they are communities and markets and economies. I don’t think that there’s any need for a complex, top heavy, expensive scheme of government regulation…just a way to get to a settled understanding or rights to in-world property sufficient to allow these economic engines to develop.

Lots more to come…

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Well, it’s finally happened - after years of following Internet property issues from the comfort of the sidelines, today I found myself right in the middle of a juicy Internet IP issue of my own.

Turns out some guy has…ahem…infringed…on intellectual property contained in my employer’s website. “Infringed” is perhaps too genteel a term: this was a real beaut — design, images, copy, claims on trademarked terms and proprietary business method — all completely stolen…and displayed with a shocking (and sort of enviable) lack of shame.

So anyway, I think there’s an interesting opportunity here. Having watched a number of matters of this nature, I have a pretty good idea of what I need to do to get this resolved. I am, however, in a position where I have access to the services of another attorney, and I’d really like to see how this works from the perspective of the standard website owner — so here’s what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna do a little research of my own here…then I’m gonna get on the line with our IP lawyer and see how the process works…This oughta be interesting…

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