Sony fined 1M for collecting Child Data

Last week I blogged on an article in the Dutch Technology magazine Emerce on a plea to clean personal data from databases in the article "Personal Data Expiry", and today I came across an article with more or less the same implications.

The article reports Sony Music getting fined 1 million dollar for collecting and using personal data of minors without parental permission. As the automated Google translation as usual is kind of crappy, here's my translation of the highlights.

The music company was indicted by the U.S. regulator FTC on tuesday and agreed to a settlement of 1 million dollars on thursday. In this settlement. Sony Music admits that it has violated privacy rules against minors.

Sony Music has collected sensitive personal data without parental consent since 2004. Through 196 websites from artists like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera the company acquired names, addresses, mobile phone numbers and birth dates from 30.000 children aged under 13. This data was reused at other websites and sometimes even published.

The 1 million dollar fine breaks up into a $33 penalty per child, but it is unclear how much profit Sony makes of minors. The record company now is obliged to have its databases cleared of all unlawfully gained personal data.

In collecting this data Sony has violated the socalled Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a law which must protect children under 13 (ed. probably best known from the Coppa declaration you have to fill in with every forum you register with). All bodies that collect personal information and process it must comply to a fixed set of measures. They are, for example, obliged to do 'a reasonable'
attempt to do the age check.

Sticky thing here is, what do you consider to be a reasonable attempt to verify? We do not have a signing authority for surfers, like we have VeriSign for website owners. You don't have to be really really smart to surf around the web pretty anonymously and spoof whatever data is required. Age Verification, Geoblocking and other protective measures we've put on the web are usually nothing more than a farce, an extra feature to make you feel secure.

• Read the original article in Dutch here
• Read the Google translation here.

Court Ruling in the RuneScape Case (2)

I thought I was pretty fluent in English, and my Dutch beyond question as I'm a native speaker. However, when digging into the actual court ruling in the RuneScape case as a follow up to the brief summary I posted last week, I had a lot of trouble understanding the contents in Dutch, not being legally educated and at times had even more trouble finding a suitable translation.

I did give it a try though, as the Google translation of the original document, which now circulates various blogs does not make sense at times. As it is a very lengthy document I've left out a number of things, these are:

• Proof Recital
• Evidence Recital
• Proof Declaration
• Quantification
• Verdict Motivation

If so desired, I'll take a shot on those as well.

Court Ruling

COURT LEEUWARDEN

Criminal Division
Prosecutor number 17/676123-07 VEV

Verdict of the full court for the treatment of the case of the declarant against the accused dated October 21, 2008

[suspect],
born on [birth date] 1992 [birthplace],
residing at [address suspect]

The court has paid notice to the investigation presented at the hearing held on October 7, 2008. The suspect appeared, assisted by RA Schütz, lawyer in Leeuwarden.

Criminal Charge

A photocopy, certified by the Registrar, of the subpoena is attached to this ruling from which the content of the charge should be considered in this ruling. Clerical errors in the verdict will be corrected in reading. These errors will not hurt the suspects' interests.

Prosecutor's Claim

The prosecutor has argued at the hearing

1. Conviction for the primary charge
2. Assignment of Civil Service for the duration of 180 hours or 90 days youth detention alternatively as well as conditional youth detention for four weeks with a probationary period of two years;

Consideration regarding the request of the counsel to the hearing of witnesses.

The counsel called for the case to be held at the hearing, as provided for in Article 328 in conjunction with Article 315 of the Code of Criminal Procedure as it has become a necessity that the principal, the co-defendant and the interrogators of the suspects will be heard as witnesses. The court quotes the argumentation by the counsel.

Client strongly denies the alleged conduct. He claims not to have used any violence and has not seen the co-defendent use violence as appeared on the charges. The violence and threats comitted by the [suspect] as the declarant claims does not correspond with the profile of [suspect] obtained from the report of the Council for Child Protection.. It is inconceivable that someone like [suspect] , as we have got to know him through various recommendations, would conduct such violent behavior all of a sudden. According to [suspect] the declarant has erroneously connected the acts the [co-defendant] allegedly comitted with those of [suspect] . Possibly the declarant was confused by the acts of [co-defendant] in such a way that the criminal charge may give a wrong interpretation of the facts. The file clearly shows the declarant was quite upset. The fact that [co-defendant] also incriminated [suspect] , can be explained from the fact that [co-defendant] hoped to get a better deal if he would lay off part of the charges with [suspect] according to [suspect] .

[suspect] states that he has denied all involvement at the police in a first interrogation, but when the police made clear they did not believe him and told him he would possibly have to stay much longer at the police office, he acknowledged the accusations. The charge does not reflect this first denial of [suspect] .

Concluding from the previous arguments [suspect] thinks it is necessary that the declarant, [co-defendant] and interrogators will be heard to find the truth. The declarant and [co-defendant] to review the accuracy of the charge and interrogation concerning the incriminating facts to [suspect]; the interrogators to verify if [suspect] indeed was in denial at first and whether [suspect] has spontaneously told the story as it appears in the charge or if parts in the interrogation report or the charge have been adopted from the declaration of [co-defendant] which [suspect] may have acknowlegded.

Since due to a typographical error in the address on the letters which I sent to [suspect] these letters were returned to sender (in a late stage) and did not reach [suspect] , this case could not be discussed with him before friday september 26, 2008, being 10 days prior to this hearing which was the reason for not calling for the aforementioned withnesses 10 days prior to the hearing.

The court is considering as follows. In short, the counsel has argued the reliability of the charge and statements in his request. According to the judgement of this court this request is insufficiently substantiated according to legal standards and the documents and the argumentation at the hearing, also considering ther argumentation of the suspect , no indication has risen to further hear these persons as witnesses.

The constituent 'good' as provided for in Article 310 of the Penal Code

The Public Prosecutor has, in short, argued in court that the virtual amulet and the virtual mask are goods which fall under the constituent 'good' as provided for in Article 310 of the Penal code, whereas the counsel has argued the opposite during the hearing.

The court is considering as follows. In this case we have to deal with virtual goods, namely a virtual amulet and a virtual mask from the online game "RuneScape". The following is known ex officio to the court about "RuneScape". "RuneScape is one of the larger online games and especially popular among the youth. Millions of players, socalled online gamers, from all over the world play the game "RuneScape". "RuneScape is set in a virtual world in which the players can participate with their carachters. Players may fullfill assignments ( 'quests'), fight other players and deploy other activities. To this end players can procure 'items' such as a mask or amulet. The items each have a value. This value is expressed in this game in 'coins', fluctiating on the basis of supply and demand of these items.With those 'coins' a player can train skills. The more 'coins' a player posesses, the stronger he is in the game "RuneScape".

Declarant, suspect and co-defendant each had an account, which gave access to playing "RuneScape" and were also active players of this game. Declarant had in his posesssion a virtual amulet and a virtual mask.

Article 310 of the Penal Code aims to protect the property of citizens In answering the question whether or not virtual goods are 'goods' in the meaning of that article, this aim has to be taken into consideration. There are a number of criteria that must be met for these virtual goods to considered 'goods' in the meaning of this article.

First of all, it is important if a good has value to the posessor. This value does not need to be expressed in money. In today's society, the virtual goods from the online computer game "RuneScape" have become of significance. To large numbers of online players these goods have value. The more virtual goods a player has, the stronger he is in the game.Moreover, the virtual goods are bought and sold with money, e.g. through the internet or schoolyard. From this case it also shows that the mask and amulet had value to both the declarand and the suspect and co-defendant.

Of interest is that a 'good' need not be material. It has been determined by case law that non-material goods, such as electricity and giro transfers, are labelled 'goods' as well in a criminal sense. The virtual amulet and the virtual mask as considered in the case at hand are not material goods, albeith they are noticable. Regarding case law this is no prohibition to declare these as 'goods' under the meaning of Article 310 of the Penal Code.

Furthermore, jurisprudence shows it is an important feature of a 'good' in a criminal sense that the taker receives control over the goods in theft and the victim loses actual control of these goods. The posession of a good must be transferrable from one to another. When speaking of posession in a criminal sense, it means having actual power. Case law has previously determined the foregoing is not applicable in case of a PIN number, computer data and phone call minutes in a subscription bundle. In this case the virtual goods, namely a virtual amulet and a virtual mask, were in posession of the declarant. Only he had actual control over these goods. The posession of virtual goods can be transferred, e.g. by moving these goods from one account to another.

In the case at hand these goods have transferred, namely from the actual control of the declarant to that of suspect and co-defendant. Suspect and co-defendant have transferred the goods from the account of the declarant to the account of the suspect. In this act the declarant has lost actual control over these goods and suspect and co-defendant have obtained actual control over these goods.

As the virtual amulet and virtual mask as defined in the case at hand meet the aforementioned criteria, the court is of the opinion that these virtual goods are to be included in the concept of 'goods' as provided for in Artcile 310 of the Penal Code and belonged to the declarant.

Application of laws

The court has taken into consideration articles 77a, 77g (old), 77i, 77m (old), 77n, 77x (old), 77y (old), 77z (old), 310 and 312 of the Penal Code.

THE VERDICT OF THE COURT

Denies the request of counsel to hear further witnesses

Declares the primary charge proven, qunatifyable and punishable

Convicts suspect in this case to

Civil Service consisting of 160 hours of unpaid labor. Labor has to be done within a 12 months.

Orders, in case the convict does not carry out his civil service in good manner, alternative youth detention will be applied for the length of 80 days.

Youth detention for four weeks.

Determines this youth detention wil not be executed, unless the judge may rule otherwise in a later stadium, based on a probation period, which hereby is set at two years, if convict has commited a fellony.

Decalres not proven which is charged to suspect more or other than the proven and dismisses charges against suspect.

This verdict is ruled by mr. BJ de Jong, president, mr. MJ Dijkstra and mr. A. de Jong, judges, assisted by mr. G. Sannes, Registrar, and pronounced at the public hearing in this court on October 21, 2008.

Will Dutch Court prosecute virtual theft?

Dutch prosecutors have demanded 180 hours of community service and conditional youth detention with a 2 year probation in case of theft of virtual goods in Runescape. This is the first time a Dutch Judge will have to say something on the value of virtual goods.

The suspects, two boys aged 14 and 15 alledgedly forced a 13 year old to transfer virtual items to their account in september 2007. Aside from physical abuse, the main issue in this case will be to judge wether or not virtual items can be considered goods which can be stolen and this can be considered a crime. If these goods have value to the owner, and he can no longer use them, then by traditional law this is judged theft. We'll have to see if this classifies in the same way.

It's not the first time a Virtual World makes it to Dutch court, last year a Dutchmen was apprehended for stealing furniture from Habbo hotel worth 4.000 Euro. By hacking accounts the Dutchmen could transfer these objects. Because Habbo Credits were bought with real money, the man was charged with hacking and theft. Uptill now, no conviction followed though.

The judge is expected to make a ruling in the Runescape case next week.

BannerBingo: Breakthrough in Internet Marketing

Don't you get annoyed with all the banners poppin up all over the web when you're trying to find some information? Marketing departments really have explored every corner of the web to put up their ads and you'll hardly find a site that isn't bannerized...

Usually I don't pay too much attention to banners. Usually they're not inline with the things I need when I see them, so there's hardly a banner I actually click to see what's behind it. Today I got triggered though and started thinking about internet marketing.

Today I registered the domains http://www.bannerbingo.eu/ and http://www.bannerbingo.nl/ for a new experiment. What usually happens when you've got a great idea is that you go through great lengths in detailed description of your idea / invention and try to trademark it or register the formula to protect your intellectual property, spending tons of hard earned money only to find out the idea has been submitted long before you saw the light. This usually dawns when you've already put in months of effort to find a producer or buyer for the concept.

It happened to me a number of times, so I won't go through the hassle again. I just decided to blog it. Let the date of my domain registration and blog be proof of the date of conception and formula. Truth be told, I just thought of the idea and name today, but the domain www.bannerbingo.com has been registered in august 07, but as of now, there's no site there yet and a quick scan has revealed no idea similar to this one.

What BannerBingo is about is that a company advertises all across the web, trying to get in touch with as much customers as possible -pretty much based upon IP adresses and ISP selection. As a customer I occasionally come across one of the many banners of corporation X and don't pay attention. In BannerBingo you register as a customer and collect BannerPoints. Let's say each banner you come across will get you 5% discount. If you surf across the web and find 5 of these banners by the same company, you'll earn yourself a 25% discount. (amount of banners and percentages subject to change off course)

The basic idea is that when you encounter more than one of the company's banners they know are succesfull in targeting their intended audience / a certain profile and the audience is challenged to click the banner to earn discount. Let's make advertising a game ;)

Second Life Artists Rightfully Upset Over “SLART” Trademark Registration

Guest Commentary: Second Life Artists Rightfully Upset Over “SLART” Trademark Registration
January 25th, 2008 by Thayer Preece

Outrage recently erupted among Second Life users, particularly those involved in the art scene, regarding the fact that artist Richard Minsky (Second Life’s ‘ArtWorld Market’) has registered the trademark “SLART” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. (See Vint Falken and Massively, among others.)

Not only has Minsky registered the mark (for which a notice of allowance recently issued) but he has also allegedly been speaking with people who use the terms “SLART,” “slart,” and “SLart” to refer to art in Second Life in order to accuse them of trademark infringement and threaten them with legal action. Minsky is using the SLART trademark in-world and in connection with his magazine — a publication concerning virtual art, particularly art in Second Life. His trademark registration covers the publication of various types of works, art exhibitions, and educational programs concerning art.

Read full article here at Virtually Blind.

Put yer Trust in Second Life

There's tons of new goodies coming to Second Life. Windlight, Voice, Gambling Ban an now Age Verification. Okay, now I'm making friends....

Gambling Ban a good thing? Yes it is actually. Without it, there wouldn't be any Second Life left I think. In past issues of the Avastar and on many blogs there has been a row over Linden suddenly imposing a ban on gambling.

This ban saw an enormous dip in the SL economy, especially when it coincided with several banking scandals. It was unavoidable though as US law has very strict lines on gambling.

Anyway, these past hectic months may have been leading up to Linden Lab moving for Age Verification in Second Life in an attempt to steer the community into calmer waters.

"Trust is the foundation of any community. And one cornerstone of trust is identity. You’ve got to know something about the person you are dealing with before you can trust them. Knowing who to trust in an online environment presents unique challenges. Traditionally Second Life users have based their trust on relationships built over time, and often on some basic verification such as ‘Payment Info on File’," says Robin Linden.

Basically there are supposed to be two advantages:

"The IDV system aims to deliver two things. First, for Residents, it gives them the chance to independently verify certain aspects of their identity (their name, age, location and sex for instance) if they choose to. This will help establish trust by removing a layer of anonymity for those they interact with. It’s much easier to trust someone who puts their name behind their words and actions.

The second benefit of the IDV system is to help land owners and content publishers be sure that minors do not get access to inappropriate material. Again this is voluntary, but we wanted to provide the tools for estate owners to restrict access to content of a sexual or violent nature to those they are sure are over 18. They’ll do this by flagging the content as ‘Restricted’ which will only allow avatars verified as over 18 to access the land. Visitors to Restricted areas can also be reassured that all other visitors are over 18 as well."

I wholeheartedly agree to the second benefit, but the first one has me wondering. Where's the benefit in that? Here's the whole Identity Management discussion again. Where's privacy going in Web 2.0?

Dutch Law wont Block Second Life

Dutch tech webzine Tweakers.net reports that the Dutch Minister of Justice won't force ISP's to block childpornography sites. A special note is made that the Justice department wont fix laws on 'virtual childporn' in Second Life either.

Earlier this it was reported that provider UPC would block a number of websites, in accordance with a list supplied by the KLPD, the national Police departments. Not much later KPN went along too. In March there were questions asked on virtual (child) pornography in the Dutch parliament.

Now the minister said that the providers have shown to be social consious and he does not deem it necessary to come up with regulation.

Woodburied

Early april Aleister Kronos blogged on the University of Woodbury entering Second Life (he does keep up with Universities). I've meant to go over there to take a look for some time, but haven't gotten around to it.

Let's start with a quote from Al's blog:

"First stop, the brand new island of Woodbury University, also called, by a lucky happenstance, "Woodbury University". The build is only in its infancy, but since I could TP in there I thought it worth a mention. I was particularly taken with the Millennium Falcon - but I don't suppose that will survive to the final stage of the build. "Woodbury University is committed to providing the highest level of professional and liberal arts education." It is in Burbank, California, and has just over 1500 students."

Soon it became evident that their arts education may have been somewhat too liberal

By the end of april Prokofy Neva reported in the Second Life Herald on a Griefer attack of Woodbury island.

The Linden police blotter reports the following:

Date: Thursday, April 12, 2007

Violation: Community Standards: Harassment, Soliciting Abuse

Region: Woodbury University

Description: Organizing abusive attacks on regions.

Action taken: Suspended 3 days.

Well, Griefer attacks (annoying buggers starting scripts on your island such as particlescripts or floating nude images) may happen. It is a nuisance to most serious Secondlifers and more so to people investing in land, but usually it is no big deal - disturbing the peace for just a few minutes usually.

Second Life Herald reporters seem to have been monitoring this sim afterwards and

pried into this as Woodbury University was closed by Linden Labs at the start of July on account of violating the Terms of Service.

Below is a short piece from the Herald (July 3 2007):

"Sometime Saturday, Woodbury University’s Second Life island dropped off the map of the virtual world. Second Life players have grown accustomed to intermittent outages from their metaverse service provider, sometimes spinning fanciful stories about tsunami and seismic activity as part of in-world roleplay. A virtual catastrophe does not appear to have been the cause of Woodbury’s demise, however..."

[Read the full article at the Herald]

Below is the notice received by one of the island admins:

Tizzers Foxchase: (Saved Sun Jul 1 12:19:36 2007) Linden Lab has continued to find inappropriate uses of the Second Life region "Woodbury University" under your control. On the 16th of April, you were informed of problems with the activities taking place in the region. Many members of the Woodbury University group (which controls the region) have been detected before and after that date causing severe problems in Second Life, in violation of the terms of service. These problems include incidents of grid attacks, racism and intolerance, persistent harassment of other residents, and crashing the Woodbury University region itself while testing their abusive scripts. Due to the ongoing problems, Linden Lab has no option but to immediately close the Woodbury University region. If you believe that this notice has been sent in error, or that the details of this incident have not been adequately examined, please address your concerns in an e-mail to abuse-manager@lindenlab.com Sincerely yours, Customer Support Linden Lab 945 Battery Street San Francisco, CA

Mark Wallace at 3pointD reports:

"What do you do when a group of troublemakers is disrupting the operation of your virtual world? If you’re Linden Lab, which runs Second Life, you ignore the griefers themselves and simply go after the owners of the land they happen to be operating from. Big props to our managing editor over at the Second Life Herald, Pixeleen Mistral, for catching the story of southern California’s Woodbury University, which had its private region in SL deleted a couple of days ago. Why would the Lab wipe Woodbury’s investment? Because a group of SL residents who were not part of the university and who have long been accused of causing trouble have apparently been using the Woodbury land to build and test their disruptive devices. There’s definitely culpability on the part of both the griefers and the university, but LL has shown some really poor judgment in the way they’ve handled the situation thus far."

From Woodbury's point of view:

"I think it is unreasonable to invite universities into the world and then ask them to stop acting like a university. I am deeply repulsed by the eagerness of otherwise smart, well-intentioned people to try to solve all the underlying tensions of SL by banning residents or entire islands at the drop of the dime. This strategy needs to stop at the doors of academe whose whole existence is founded on the idea of educating others (presumed a priori to be lacking in the knowledge they seek) and exploring new ideas together in the open communication forum known as the classroom.

We created a living campus in Second Life where people of all stripes got together, shared ideas, and learned from each other. An art gallery had just been built that was going to house a student show on homelessness in LA and powerpoint lectures on Darfur were planned. Metaverses are a burgeoning phenomenon, and rightly so, but their controllers will need to assume a more relaxed stance before users give them full credibility. I see them in the future functioning much more like a utility or internet hosting company as more people become accustomed to living out their fantasies-- and realities-- in these worlds."

said Dr. Edward Clift, Deputy Director, School of Media, Culture, & Design and Chair & Associate Professor, Dept. of Communication at Woodbury University to the reporters of the Herald

The story continues on the Second Life Herald in a piece by Pixeleen Mistral and extensive commenting by Prokofy Neva:

"Where is the academic activity? Where are the other academic groups in SL standing up for this sim? Unless somebody is willing to really, really stretch it, I fail to see how griefing posses and fooling around with builds that they themselves destroyed or were supposedly infiltrated and had distroyed (very murky story there) can be construed as academic. Self-expression perhaps, but then the kind of self-expression that fails to realize that your right to swing your fist ends at someone else's nose."

Finally the row made it even into serious Real Life press as the Chronicle of Higher Education reports:

"The company (Linden Labs) took the drastic step, officials said, after administrators for the university's area ignored warnings to stop avatars -- digital characters -- affiliated with its region from engaging in disruptive and hostile behavior."

The story is shrouded in many ways, but here's my two penny thought:

Fact: There has been Griefer activity on Woodbury Island

Fact: The activities are a violation of the Linden Terms of Service and spread into the region surrounding the Woodbury sim.

Linden: Woodbury has provided space for Griefers

Woodbury: We are victims

The truth is hard to find out, but there are several issues that lead me to believe that Woodbury is not entirely clean in this matter, and Mark Wallace's remark "LL has shown some really poor judgment in the way they’ve handled the situation thus far" seems a little premature.

In fact I do tend to agree with the ever critic Prokofy Neva that Linden is taking the right steps, though a little more sensitive communication would have been in place.

Quotes and Related articles are linked for further reading.

Linden Labs Legal Stuff

In a week that most citizens are getting annoyed over the SLCC code of conduct, Linden Labs themselves are working hard on Legal suits.

Reuters reports that a French court dismissed a complaint against Linden Lab on Tuesday that was filed by a French group opposed to adult content within the virtual world.

"Linden Lab said in a statement: “The Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris dismissed the complaint filed by the French association Familles de France against Linden Lab, holding that the evidence brought by the association was unduly biased and should be thrown out.”

Linden Labs themselves is explaining their point of view in the Case Linden vs. Bragg":

"In his complaint, Bragg attempts to cast this as a case with broad implications about whether ‘virtual land’ – actually, access to computing resources that enable a virtual representation of land in a three-dimensional online digital ‘world’ – is subject to the laws governing real property. That is not what this case is about. It is a dispute about whether an online service may suspend a user from that service for engaging in a fraudulent scheme to obtain money, to the detriment of the service and its user community.”

and Linden Lab also alleged that

“The objective of Bragg’s scheme was to obtain access to ‘virtual land’ that was scheduled to be auctioned by Linden in the future and thus before it was available to any other users, and to acquire it for as little as one U.S. dollar rather than whatever winning bid (in excess of the minimum opening bid of U.S. $1,000.00) might have resulted from a legitimate auction” and that “After acquiring the ‘virtual land’ through this fraudulent scheme, Bragg intended to subdivide it, sell it to other Second Life users, and potentially obtain thousands of dollars in U.S. funds in ill-gotten profit.”

Coca Cola releases Trademark in SL

From Metaversed:

"Though there's no mention of any kind of legal document to support it, and the information is coming from a third party, it does appear at least that Coca Cola, who's virtual thirst campaign in Second Life asks residents to create a vending experience in the virtual world that captures the "spirit" of the brand, have released their trademark to residents.

My friend Vint Falken reports that she received the following message from SLX, a web based shopping engine for the Second Life: "We have spoken to Coca-Cola and they have released their trademark to SL Merchants. Therefore, any of your items that were disabled on June 7, 2007 have been retrieved….". The email was in follow up to a take down of a "coke suit" Vint had made and put up for sale on the site."

Once again this proves that Second Life has a strong impact in the world of big business. The Coca Cola company has been untouchable in the Real World, but it seems they have to follow the laws laid out in Second Life as well. This might be a very interesting case-study for business-law and Intellectual Property.

Dutch laywers pursue Second Life

The Dutch lawfirm Faassen & Partners is to open shop in Second Life. It's not accessible right now, but appears to be in an advanced state of development.

"Faasen & Partners is an independent law firm with offices in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Faasen & Partners has a practice directed at listed or non-listed companies, public sector enterprises and governments. With a strong foundation in the Dutch domestic market, Faasen & Partners is considered a quality boutique firm amongst the large law firms. Our firm focuses on business advisory and transaction management, though we have also strong developed litigation skills in all areas of our practice. Our firm has a specific focus on two practice groups; (i) Labour and Employee Participation law and (ii) Corporate, Commercial and Finance law, which includes European and Competition law"

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Faasen%20en%20Partners/124/115/44

Another SLUC update:

Seems like Red Bull is ready to spread its wings in Second Life as well and I've just spotted a sim called Mercedes Benz Vans.

Virtual Classes

Shortly after the Second Life seminar at Media Plaza, earlier this month, I visited the virtual campus of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The sim was build in just a couple of weeks by a team of 4 students. The main structure is quite similar to the Real Life campus, but the college room hovering at an altidtude of 10 m. certainly is not.

The classroom is used for actuall classes. One of the courses given in SL is Law, which is a real happening. Groups of students observe (odd and frequent indecent) behaviour in SL and describe the legal implications of the observed actions.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/VU%20University%20NL/47/152/25

Other Dutch Colleges and Universities:

• College InHolland http://slurl.com/secondlife/Inholland/128/128/0
• Technical University Delft http://slurl.com/secondlife/TUDelft/128/128/0
• Rotterdam University: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rotterdam%20University/122/115/27

[most still in development mode]