Topic: Government

Lawrence Lessig leads the Law session at Bloggercon III. Audio from IT Conversations.

Audio from "The Importance of the Law and IT" series on IT Conversations: Games aren't just for gamers any more. The legal issues surrounding intellectual property in virtual worlds has implications beyond GameBoys and PlayStations. What's the relationship between real and virtual-world economies? What can these virtual worlds teach us about democracy? Will regulation leak into (or out of) virtual worlds? Who owns avatars avatars and game scenarios in Internet-based games?

These are among the topics discussed at The State of Play, an annual conference sponsored by the Institute for Law & Policy at New York Law School and the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Ernest Miller interviews two of the conference's organizers.

Knock-Off Printer Cartridges (Lexmark v. Static Control). Lexmark, the printer manufacturer, attempted to use copyright law and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent companies like Static Control Components from making compatible toner cartridges or refilling used cartridges. A district court agreed with Lexmark, which would mean that nearly any company that made replacement devices, such as oil filters for cars, could very easily be sued under copyright law. Luckily, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected those arguments. This case is loaded with implications for virtually all IT professionals. ["The Importance of Law and IT" with Ernest Miller on IT Conversations.]

Pop!Tech was about much more than just technology, and the agenda didn't skirt controversy. Thomas Barnett calls globalization "this country's gift to history" and explains why its wide dissemination is critical to the security of not only America but the entire world. As a senior military analyst for the U.S. Naval War College, Barnett is intimately familiar with the culture of the Pentagon and the State Department (both of which he believes are due for significant overhauls). He explains how the Pentagon, still in shock at the rapid dissolution of the once evil empire, spent the 1990s grasping for a long-term strategy to replace containment. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Barnett argues, revealed the gap between an outdated Cold War-era military and a radically different one needed to deal with emerging threats.