SACRED SPACES IN THE METAVERSE

This red rock formation is Uluru in The Pond, an Australian-themed continent in Second Life created by Oz telecom giant Telstra.  It's a recreation of a famed outcropping of the same name (also known as Ayers Rock), and when you try to climb it, you're blocked by a force field, and forbidden from walking any further.  "Cannot enter parcel, not member of the group."  This is a fairly common message, invoked by SL landowners who want to bar their property to outsiders; in this case, however, the underlying meaning of "group" is more profound.

Because in this case, it refers to the Anangu aborigine tribe, and the Telstra corporation is blocking entrance to virtual Uluru in an attempt to respect their indigenous intellectual property rights-- as applied to an online world.  Read here:

Designers of the BigPond site included a scaled down Uluru, with a barrier to stop people walking or flying over the sacred site. However, representatives of the traditional owners, the Anangu people, warned that even with the restrictions it may be possible to view sacred sites around Uluru, although they were continuing to investigate the issue.

Read it all here.  Via Australian-based NWN contributor Tateru Nino, who asks, trenchantly, "How do you copyright a rock?", and, "New generation technologies raise new questions. Questions we have not necessarily yet answered for previous generation technologies."  To say the least.

Comments

[Laetizia Coronet]

Here's a problem for Telstra (and others): what if the Sidney Opera House itself decides to build an island in Second Life? Or the landowners of Uluru? With SL growing as it is, you can expect more of these issues.
There's a virtual Brandaris lighthouse (original on the island of Terschelling, Holland) which is, to the best of my knowledge, privately owned. Brandaris is also a tobacco brand, using the image of the lighthouse as their logo. A pretty complex issue. The town council of Terschelling, the tobacco company, the Dutch tourism board, the province of Friesland, all can claim rights to representations of the famous tower in SL.