- - Geography
Virtual Worlds under the Americans with Disabilities Act
On the 8th of February 2010 Judge Percy Anderson of the United States District Central Court of California ruled in the case of Alexander Stern v. Sony Corp., et al (CV 09-7710 PA (FFMx)).
In summary Judge Anderson ruled that the American’s with Disabilities Act does not oblige Sony’s to facility access to their MMO EverQuest for those with Disabilities and specifically Sony does not have to provide any “auxiliary aids and services” to facilitate such access.
The case turned on whether EverQuest constituted a “place of public accommodation” as the American’s with Disabilities act only obliges access to such places, as the ruling states:
“Title III of the ADA prevents discrimination against the disabled in places of public accommodation:
No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to) or operates a place of public accommodation.”
The ruling notes that courts have established that this Title III applies only to certain physical spaces i.e. ‘bricks and mortar’; or to services that have some close link.
The case of access to Target.com (Nat’l Fed’n of the Blind v. Target Corp., 452 F. Supp. 2d 946, 951 (N.D. Cal. 2006)) was reference in the ruling but it was noted that this case fell under the act as there was a strong link between the services offred on the site and those in stores such that not having access to the web site could be seen as impeding access to some ‘goods, services […]’.
tVPN Links
External Links
American’s with Disabilities Act 42 U.S.C. § 12101
DotGovLabs: Games & Government Workshops
DotGovLabs is an R&D project co-funded by Directgov, NHS Choices and Business Link have commissioned tVPN to run a series of workshops. The aims of the workshop are to gather feedback on how the UK Government should (and should not) use games to interact with citizens, businesses and other stakeholder groups.
The feedback from the workshop will feed into a government report that will support future funding decisions. Workshop attendees include: games developers, academics and officials from the three sites, and the Technology Strategy Board.
The spirit of the workshops is to share ideas and steer government thinking in ways that will benefit the UK and use tax money wisely.
Topics covered are likely to include:
• Opportunities for presence in platform menus/dashboards
• How can we get government in the space where gamers are?
• Partnerships and placement with 3rd parties
• Online communities
• Being involved in storyline
• Likely costs
London evening workshop
2nd March 18:30 – 20:30
Event supported by London South Bank University’s BA in Game Cultures, and held at London South Bank University and facilitated by Feeding Edge.
London day workshop
3rd March 14:00 – 16:00
Event supported by and held at London Knowledge Lab (just off Theobald’s Road) and facilitated by Feeding Edge.
Brighton workshop
Details TBD
Scotland workshop
Details TBD
For more information and to request a place email info [at] virtualpolicy [dot] net.
tVPN supports UK’s DotGovLabs R&D project
tVPN is supporting the UK’s DotGovLabs with it’s engagement with academics and the games industry as part of the ‘Games’ R&D project.
DotGovLabs is “is a shared R&D programme backed by Directgov, Businesslink.gov (including the RDA face-to-face arm of Businesslink) and NHS Choices. DotGovLabs looks to identify, explore and test areas of innovation to determine what benefits they could offer to provide better services to businesses, patients and citizens.”
The Games project is summaries as ” This DotGovLabs project is exploring whether there are any opportunities, in the games medium, that the government could be exploiting. The remit is wider than just building games in that the project is looking to gain input from industry experts into all elements of this medium. For example can the technologies of games (in terms of how it visualises context through computer graphics or virtual worlds) be exploited outside of a games scenario to allow us to communicate particular concepts better? Are there opportunities around gaming platforms to access different users groups?”
Internet Governance – A Brief Timeline
In this context the term ‘Internet Governance’ or IG as it is often termed denotes the on-going global discussion about how various aspects of the internet should be run and buy whom. There is no agreed scope of Internet Governance. Narrow interpretations suggest that it is confined to matters such as IP addresses, whereas wide interpretations suggest it should be a multi-stakeholder process and encompasses issues such as free speech and other Human Rights.
UN IGF: Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age
The UK Government’s Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) has proposed a workshop on virtual worlds and public diplomacy to be held as part of the 2009 United Nations’ Internet Governance Forum meeting being held between 15 and 18 of November 2009 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
Wednesday 18th (Day 4) 15:30 – 17:00 Room 9 – Siwa Room.
tVPN / UK Government 2009 IGF workshop on virtual worlds – Official Workshop Summary (.pdf)(.doc)
Tax breaks, Game Ratings & the UK Game Dev
24 September 2009 LSE: tVPN in conjunction with the IGDA (Independent Game Developers Association) hosted a policy evening at the London School of Economics.
UN IGF 2008 Workshop Proposal: Virtual Worlds for Delivering Public Service & Innovation
For the 2008 UN Internet Governance Forum meeting in Hyderabad India the UK Government proposed the workshop detailed here. The workshop did not occur due to the disturbances in India at the time.
The official workshop proposal can be found in the IGF site here: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/workshops_08/showmelist.php?mem=46
A summary of the workshop is as follows:
The workshop will showcase Virtual Worlds as a way of providing an innovative and effective way of delivering public services, engaging with citizens and society, inclusively discussing the fact that there may be a number of possible legal/investment barriers to the achievement of the benefits of Virtual Worlds. The aim will be to facilitate the exchange of information and best practices, making full use of the academic, scientific and technical communities; showing how stakeholders have helped to find solutions and have used virtual worlds as an effective way of delivering public services.
US FTC: Report on access and content of virtual worlds
The H.R. 1105 Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 which became Public Law No: 111-8 on 11 th March 2009 states in the notes to ‘DIVISION D-FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2009′ the following:
US FTC: Marketing of Violent Entertainment to Children
Since 2000 the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has provided reports to Congress on ‘Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children’. These report cover the Motion Picture, Music Recording and Electronic Game Industries.
EU Kids Online
The EU Kids Online research network concluded their work with a one day conference in London on 11 June 2009. The network also published a Final Report provides a unique summary of EU-Based research on children online.
The Final Report and other resources can be found on the network website here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/EUKidsOnline/
Your attention is drawn in particular to the Online Database of European Research (Repository) collated by the network.
