3pointD.com

About a month ago, I posted about a meeting of the American Bar Association’s Cyberspace Law Committee, where a fellow named Henry Judy, who currently co-chairs that committee’s Internet Law Subcommittee, made some interesting remarks to the effect that cyberspace — a concept encompassing more or less everything that happens on the Internet — “was better explained through a property law analysis than the long-standing presumption that there is such a thing as a ‘virtual’ world.” While this may rub some virtual world residents the wrong way, it seemed to me that there was real weight behind it; Judy comes to many of the same conclusions as portions of the geek community (on things like open-source software and privacy, for instance), but gets their through the lens of established law, rather than having to invent new methods. In any case, why should the virtual world be any different from the real one? The virtual world is part of the real world, after all.

Judy explains it better, and has sent along a draft paper of his ideas, which I’m more than pleased to present after the jump. Many thanks to him for getting in touch. (more…)

Prototype 3D display from Toshiba

Glitchy sends along a story on Gamespot about a new generation of 3D monitors that don’t require users to wear those stupid glasses. Many have been on display at the Society for Information Display conference going on in San Francisco this week. Good news for gamers, and opens up even more possibilities for virtual worlds. Talk about the “3D Web.”

Corey Bridges of Multiverse was an amusing presence at the Metaverse Roadmap summit: a tall, wisecracking guy in cowboy boots who’s confident he’s changing the world of gaming, and maybe the wider wired world itself. An ex-Netscape product manager from the company’s pre-IPO days, Bridges has brought a few other Netscapers together in a small group of developers who are creating a platform that will let anyone create their own virtual world — for free. John Swords and I got him on the phone the other day for our latest Metaverse Session, in which we chat about the constellation of worlds that can be created with Multiverse, how they might fit into the broader metaverse, and whether filmmaker James Cameron, who sits on the Multiverse advisory board, might consider using the software in an upcoming film.