I recently entered the virtual world Second Life, in large part to check it out and do a bit of research, but also to see who was "there". I've participated in online virtual environments for well over a decade, ranging from 3d graphical games, to 2d textual games, to educational environments, and pure chat. Part of the reason second life attracts me is the explicit commercial and economic nature, but also as with all online environments, out of a curiosity of who else is in the virtual world.

I chose the second life name McLuhan Innis, and if you're ever in second life, do look me up. I chose that name after I saw the last name Innis was available, and when I discovered that Harold was taken, I felt that McLuhan as a first name was appropriate. After all, Marshall used to say he was just a footnote to Harold Innis, and now in second life, he's a first name to Innis. :)

Anyhow, one of the first places I wondered off to while in Second Life was the Reuters island setup for the news agency by The Electric Sheep Company. They're a design firm that focuses in large part on second life, and in the case of Reuters, created the avatars, architecture, and add-ons that the news organization is using to extend its brand into this new medium.

I'm quite the news consumer/producer and figured if anything in the virtual world would catch my interest it would be seeing how such an old company like Reuters was adapting to virtuality.

Luckily enough when I logged in today I saw Edgar Bronfman Jr. seated on the auditorium stage in preparation for an interview with Adam Reuters and those gathered.

This event is a regular in a series put on by Reuters in collaboration with The Electric Sheep Company. Given that it was my first SL event I enjoyed it quite a bit, and was able to ask Edgar a question about mash-ups and his feelings on how they could be acceptable towards copyright holders such as Warner Music:

AP: Taking a question from the audience, McLuhan Innis asks: “Can you give a description of the what you describe as middle ground? Say, within the context of a mash-up, what would be an example of fair use?”

EB: It’s our hope we can find a way to generally license much or all of our content for users to adapt in any way they see fit. We want people to use their creativity to take our content and do what they think is an interesting thing.

The people in attendance were also interesting, and the conversation after Edgar left was quite charged, with many of the people present representing the pro-creative commons movement.

One of the people I met at the event, Tao Takashi, also wrote about it, and took some photos including this one of Edgar Bronfman Jr.:

Unfortunately these events are still scheduled semi-regularly, and the next one may not be until the new year, but hopefully they'll have one more in December.

Afterwards I couldn't help thinking it would be neat if there was a Liberal Leadership hangout in second life for those of us watching on the sidelines this weekend, however after doing some searching I couldn't find anything. I guess Canadian politics has yet to find a home in second life...

Here's a pic of me as McLuhan Innis on the roof of Reuters in second life: