Lessig in a 2006 mixed reality appearance in Second Life
Harvard professor and former US Presidential candidate Larry Lessig is helping develop the in-world politics for Seed, an upcoming virtual world running on Improbable, which is fast becoming the go-to platform for next gen virtual worlds. As Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat reports:
Seed is a continuous, persistent simulation where players are tasked with colonizing an exoplanet through collaboration, conflict, and other player-to-player interaction. Using unique gameplay based on managing multiple characters in real-time, communities are built even when players are logged off, allowing the world of Seed to be a living, breathing entity.
“We’re building a virtual world filled with vast, player-created communities where every player-action has a repercussion in the game world,” Vondi said in a statement. “For example, a player might chop down a tree, which affects the planet’s ecosystem. This wood can then be sold on, which has an impact on the economy, and if the player chooses to, use the money to bribe another player, which affects the balance of power. We create and provide the tools and incentives to build these communities…the rest is up to the players.”
I've seen some game developers scratching their heads about the choice of Professor Lessig as a design consultant, but longtime readers know he was instrumental in the growth of Second Life back in the day, hired by Linden Lab as a consultant in 2003. As I [PLUG] wrote in my book The Making of Second Life [/PLUG]:
Lessig, who had once argued on liberalizing copyright before the Supreme Court, pressed most passionately.
“I asked the question about who got the rights,” as Lessig recalls it. “My sense was that no one had really thought much about it, and so were simply following the normal lawyer rule—take everything. But when I suggested the opposite—give the creators the rights, and encourage sharing of the rights—everyone was completely open to the idea.” It was also a competitive move, something no other virtual world was offering. “Everyone understood [the change] as a way to differentiate Second Life, and also encourage a wider range of creativity.”
In this insight, Lessig effectively became SL’s Thomas Jefferson. And though Linden’s upper management was receptive to his vision, Linden’s lawyers (as Lessig might have predicted) were not.
“That was a real battle with our lawyers,” Cory Ondrejka remembers. “They didn’t get why, they didn’t get the sort of long term implications of it.”
No other corporate-owned MMO or online world had ever added such a clause into their Terms of Agreement, which traditionally expect subscribers to suspend all rights.
As we've seen just this month, in a lawsuit between third part SL developers, the long term implications have often been drastic, and unexpected. That said, I'm much more interested in watching what grows from his contributions to Seed.
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