danielperry.com | law of online communities, P2P and social networks

Tell me what you want to discuss

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I am fascinated by the many legal implications of online communities and peer-to-peer/social networking. But what do you want a lawyer to discuss with you? Do you even want a lawyer to discuss these issues with you? Here some topics in which I am interested:

Community
What is a community? Can a weblog or a wiki be a community? Many online projects, such as the phenomenally successful Wikipedia and the innovative Linden Labs’ SecondLife or Blizzard Software’s immersive World of Warcraft, resemble and function as communities. Are these online communities subject to the same basic legal requirements of physical world communities? Some courts have applied physical world legal concepts such as jurisdiction, liability, privacy, and, most recently, accessibility. How should these legal concepts be applied to online communities or synthetic worlds? Can the designers, operators, and participants sue and be sued for libel or defamation, privacy violations, criminal activities, or intellectual property infringement? What kind of electronic discovery precautions must a community undertake in anticipation of such litigation?

Collaborative technologies
How will collaborative technologies, like wikis, video conferencing, VoIP, blogs, and massively multiplayer online games (MMOG), change the way laws are written or applied? Should the government publicly fund synthetic virtual worlds like SecondLife or Ultima Online? The Netherlands provide public funding to designers of these worlds. Have collaborative technologies disrupted the traditional business view that consumers are simply passive? Do collaborators still need the same or more consumer protection? What has been the impact of open source software and commons-based projects? Should there be open source law or legal information? Is there a need for universal contracts?

Identity
What rights do we have to own our identity? Can we broker our identity? Can we monetize our attention and preferences? Can we have multiple identities or personas? Should online communities or synthetic worlds enable participants to move their identities (along with their virtual funds or assets) from one world to the next? Can an avatar or game character have its own identity rights? Does encryption offer us true anonymity? How do reputation and trust-based systems interoperate with identity?