Avatars at House hearing on virtual world

Tue Apr 1, 2008 5:24pm
By Peter Kaplan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The founder of virtual world Second Life sought to reassure U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday that the online community is able to police itself.

Second Life founder Philip Rosedale and a handful of other virtual reality experts, testified at a House of Representatives hearing that was also attended by on-line personas, or avatars, portrayed on a video screen in the hearing room.

"It is likely that virtual world activities are somewhat more policeable and the law somewhat more maintainable within virtual worlds," said Rosedale, chief executive of Linden Lab, the company that runs Second Life.

Some lawmakers raised questions about what operators of virtual worlds are doing to stop them being used to stage real-world crimes such as terrorism, money-laundering and the exploitation of children.

"I am not advocating censorship. But I am asking what we can to make certain that these glorious tools are not ... changed into tools that facilitate the use of terror attacks on innocent civilians around the world," said Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, of California.

Harman cited a British newspaper report last year saying that Islamic extremists were suspected of using Second Life to recruit and mimic real-life terrorism.

"We have never seen any evidence that there is any such activity going on," Rosedale told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications.

Second Life is an online community with several hundred thousand users who create their own avatar identities and can fly around the virtual world at will. Continued...

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0129847720080401