A paper co-authored by Elizabeth Townsend-Gard of Tulane and Rachel Goda a Seattle University School of Law grad, “The Fizzy Experiment: Second Life, Virtual Property and a 1L Property Course,” has been listed on SSRN’s Top Ten download list for Cyberspace Law. The paper was published at Santa Clara High Tech Journal in the Spring 2008. The rankings and the paper are available at the Top Ten Cyberlaw List.

Here is the abstract:

This work is an attempt to sort out the relationship between virtual property and common law property. How are we to understand the relationship between a virtual table and an actual table? What does property in this context mean exactly? While many have written about this topic from a myriad of perspectives, we took a slightly different approach. We wanted to see what property elements were being used inside one virtual space – Second Life. We sought to understand the relationship between common law property and virtual property by combining our knowledge as a property professor with a cultural history background with an avid gamer turned law student. We called it the Fizzy Experiment.

I recommend downloading the paper and reading it. Townsend-Gard is a great professor with a a vision of where cyberlaw is going. She was my first copyright professor, I audited her copyright class my 1L year, it was one of the most progressive classes I have had at law school.

Cross-posted to lex exposita