I’ve been thinking a lot about cyberpunk recently for various reasons. Not only have I been re-reading some old classics such as Neuromancer and Snow Crash, but I am starting to see many worrying trends depicted in dystopian novels in everyday life. But perhaps one of the biggest misses from Read more…
A Commercial Court in Barcelona has made a ruling in a novel copyright dispute between fashion shop Mango and the Spanish collective society for artists VEGAP (text of the decision in Spanish here). The dispute involves the adaptation of a number of works by prominent Spanish artists into garments displayed Read more…
There aint’ such a thing as the Metaverse. At least not in the sense that most people think about it. It’s a marketing ploy, a way to try to change the fortunes of a dwindling social media empire. Virtual reality is a niche medium, and that is not about to Read more…
Courtesy of the Commercial Law Court in Barcelona (Juzgado de lo Mercantil), we are getting one of the very first rulings dealing with the interface between intellectual property, NFTs, and the metaverse (previous decisions have been about property itself). In other words, perfect Technollama territory (text of the decision here). Read more…
One of the few bragging rights that we have here at Llama Towers is that this blog has gained a reputation as a place where new legal issues get a discussion before they hit the academic mainstream. Virtual worlds, open source, software patents, cryptocurrencies, blockchains, AI, and NFTs, all have Read more…
I am a big believer in the power of stories. In 1993, journalist Julian Dibbell wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled “A Rape in Cyperspace“, in which he described a series of moderating decisions that were taken at an early virtual community called LambdaMOO. The online shenanigans are Read more…
Amongst many other things, writer Neal Stephenson is famous for having coined the term “Metaverse” in his 1992 cyberpunk novel “Snow Crash”, but he has also written a lot about virtual worlds in some of his later work, particularly the novel “Reamde“, which is a techno-political thriller which introduces a Read more…