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Loading... Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worldsby Greg Lastowka
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This is an interesting and easy-to-read survey of legal issues pertaining to virtual worlds. Lastowka wisely saves intellectual property for last and starts by examining other issues such as jurisdiction and virtual property. He also examines a number of virtual worlds that are, in my experience, underrepresented in the academic literature. ( ) Hi -- I'm the author so I shouldn't post a review, but rivkat's description of the contents is accurate. The only thing I want to add is that if you have an e-reader (or don't mind reading from a monitor) the book is available for free under a Creative Commons license. You can download it for free at http://bit.ly/virtualjustice I'd be happy if you could pass along the link to others -- I'm more interested in having people read this than in getting people to buy copies. (And I won't add a rating -- I'm biased -- but it is true that this is a book that doesn't come to many conclusions.) Lastowka provides a brief and accessible introduction to the legal issues surrounding online games, and argues that their status as games matters: where play and pleasure are important, constraints matter at least as much as freedoms, and law generally has something to say about constraints, just as game designers do. He covers contract, property, “hacking,” and intellectual property (mostly copyright). He doesn’t come to many conclusions—law will be important; law will probably come to recognize more than it does now that games can produce valuable property; it will be hard to regulate game makers’ use of contracts to operate essentially as feudal lords, meaning that when push comes to shove players are vassals.
In “Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worlds,” Greg Lastowka argues that the legal system can no longer afford to ignore virtual worlds, places where people spend time, do real work, and earn real money. Far from a "dry academic" tome I'm finding it interesting, thought provoking and educational.
Sensational trials obsessively televised and reported by news media have led many Americans to question the effectiveness of their criminal justice system. Do police have the laws they need-or the competence-to do their job? Can juries recognize the truth in the tangle of evidence presented to them? What do lawyers actually contribute to the quest for justice in the criminal court? In this fascinating book a distinguished legal authority examines the flaws, contradictions, and weaknesses in our American justice system. The gripping stories he tells about the investigation and trial of criminal cases reveal what's really going on and demonstrate how the system often fails to deliver true justice.H. Richard Uviller deftly covers major aspects of the criminal justice process, from the gathering of evidence, capture and custody, and eyewitness identification to plea bargaining, selecting the jury, and the role of the judge. He illuminates each aspect of the process by creating and then analyzing a scenario drawn from the daily business of the courtrooms of the nation, a scenario in which police or judges may find themselves frustrated or immobilized, often by the law itself. Uviller explains the legal quandaries that often bedevil the process and shows how decisions by the Supreme Court have relieved or aggravated perplexity. He concludes that the prohibitions limiting investigation, the pervasive combat mentality between defense and prosecution lawyers, and, in particular, the power vested in a random collection of ordinary people gathered together as a jury all contribute to a criminal justice system that produces virtual-rather than actual-justice. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)343.09Social sciences Law Military, defense, public property, public finance, tax, commerce {trade}, industrial law International Control of public utilitiesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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