Financial Cryptography: Where the US Congress is going on virtual regulation

October 10, 2007

Where the US Congress is going on virtual regulation

I listened to an entire Second Life interview with Dan Miller from the Joint Economic Council, a thinktank for the USA government. Interesting stuff, because virtual world governance gives us a window on all-of-Internet governance.

US Congress isn't likely to pass laws, and indeed the JEC prefers less regulation;
But agencies might issue rules;
UST will probably treat trade in virtual games under the barter provisions. Also see Reuters article.
Laws on currency were written in post-civil war and post-Fed periods, and did not consider issues today;
Fed & SEC are less likely to be issuing any rules soon, they are busy elsewhere?;
terrorists might use games to conduct dry runs;
ML hasn't really taken off in virtual communities as the more round-eyed members of the press keep suggesting;
SL isn't the big player, WoW is much bigger;
Big corporations have this expectation that there will exist many platforms, all inter-communicating, and all equally available for global commerce. Can you take assets from world to another? (My view: dream on while others build on. Here's another view.)
youth will be totally comfortable having meetings in the game-space, whereas old people like elected politicians have trouble understanding the basics...;
a white paper is being written within JEC to prepare the ground for the future, but no promises;
anyone can send a comment to the JEC (dan underscore miller at JEC dot senate dot gov) or their member of congress.

On a slightly related question, I have one question on the efficiency of the new generation of podcasts and interviews and so forth. These new tools are seeking to simulate the old world of radio and TV as the channel of preference, but to my mind they are terribly inefficient. I had to spend an entire hour or so listening to the scratchy sound, with a drop out in a critical part, when I could have skimmed the same written content in about 2 minutes. The nice way of putting this is that it's not ready for recommendation to my business partners as yet, and a slightly less nice way is "who has time for that?"

Does anyone have any alternate experience in these podcasts, etc, that indicates it is finding a market place in real business?

(Addendum: cross-over to TV.)

Posted by iang at October 10, 2007 07:08 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Hi Ian,

> > Does anyone have any alternate experience in these podcasts, etc, that
> > indicates it is finding a market place in real business?

You aren´t the market.

There are several different markets:

People that drive their own car to work
People that go by train
People that go by bus
...

Each of those market has their specific products. Radio works for people that go by car. Podcasts, Blackberry, IPod ... are for people that go by train/bus. (There is even a distinction between the train and the bus, but I don´t remember the details at the moment. It´s mostly about devices that need 2 hands, and devices that need just one hand.)

Podcasts are adressing a specific market, and I am quite sure that they actually work in their market. But they don´t work at all outside that market. So if you don´t go by bus/train, Podcasts aren´t made for you.

Posted by: Best regards, Philipp Gühring at October 10, 2007 10:58 AM

iang wrote:

> > had to spend an entire hour or so listening to the scratchy sound, with
> > a drop out in a critical part, when I could have skimmed the same
> > written content in about 2 minutes. The nice way of putting this is

No mp3/ogg download?

> > that it's not ready for recommendation to my business partners as yet,
> > and a slightly less nice way is "who has time for that?"

As for who has time, lots of people spend lots of time commuting to/from work in most major cities, pre-download mp3 podcasts and listen while commuting.

> > Does anyone have any alternate experience in these podcasts, etc, that
> > indicates it is finding a market place in real business?

talkshoe.com has an interesting business model, or at least the foundation part, sort of like a radio/talk show in an interview format, but with a whole bunch of integration so the "show" control can easily be controlled by anyone/anywhere and it automatically becomes available as a download in ogg/mp3 once the conference finishes.

They fail in a number of other areas such as promises of advertising pay-outs and lots of ticked off users going else where.

They also fail to build a much larger international community via VoIP as they're too busy trying to get tiny fractions of pennies per minute per listener. Rather then rejecting any VoIP calls above their preset limit they just drop packets which leaves people wondering if they are
having other issues yada yada.

Posted by: Duane at October 10, 2007 11:04 AM

The presentation of characters for prospective production generally is available for those that might be interested in podcast to a limited number of people to keep the information private but available for animations. The synopsis with demo type pictures and voice allow people that write checks to view it prior to wasting their time. Small casting of daily rushes are common and involve a limited virtual reality because they are dealing with real productions.

Posted by: Jim at October 10, 2007 06:24 PM