Congressional Hearing on Virtual Worlds

There will be a hearing on virtual worlds on Tuesday, April 1 at 9:30 a.m. (no, this isn’t a joke). The topic of the hearing is “Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium” and it will be chaired by U.S. Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.). There will be a webcast online (see here). The hearing is being held by the Telecommunications & the Internet Subcommittee (of which Markey is chairman), which is one of six subcommittees under the powerful Energy & Commerce Committee. This will be the first Congressional hearing on virtual worlds.

The hearing has been described to me as primarily an effort to exhibit the features and applications of virtual worlds, as well as to introduce the concepts behind virtual worlds to Members of Congress not yet familiar with them. The hearing will focus specifically on Second Life.

There are four witnesses scheduled:

1. Philip Rosedale, Founder and CEO of Linden Lab, the company that owns and runs Second Life.
2. Colin Parris, vice president for digital convergence at IBM Research (as well as a keynote speaker at Virtual Worlds 2007), will discuss IBM's efforts in and use of Second Life, such as here and here.
   
3. Susan Tenby, Online Community Manager for TechSoup, will explore the potential of Second Life for nonprofits and charities.
4. Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, will address educational opportunities in Second Life.

Virtual Worlds Conferences Next Week

Next week are the Virtual Worlds Conference and Virtual Law Conference, held in New York City. The two conferences are hosted by the same organization and run concurrently, so I expect to attend sessions in each. They run April 3 and 4 at the Jacob Javits Center. By the latest count, there will be 950 attendees and 519 companies represented. I will be there, as will a great many people with academic and business interests. The 2007 conference was an informative event, and I expect this year’s to be more so. Here is the unified schedule for the conferences.

I will be speaking on the panel “Legal Issues in Virtual Property” on Thursday, April 3, 4:00 - 5:00 pm. I’m not sure how a non-lawyer ended up on that particular panel, but it will be good so be sure to check it out.