It is the conventional wisdom of the virtual worlds industry that interoperability is a Good Thing. Indeed, its promise of a single, persistent avatar which works the same in all worlds and the ability to move between worlds offers a real way to achieve a true, universal metaverse. Linden Lab's work on interoperability continues apace, with teleport between Second Life and OpenSim now possible, and the recent launch of the Second Life Open Grid beta.
Not everyone is quite so excited, however. Prominent Second Life user Prokofy has written a post in which she argues that moves to interoperability are happening too fast and risk creating not the utopian metaverse but a world in which intellectual property is not respected and there can be no enforcement of laws.
Well, that's one of the reasons you don't rush to interoperability! That's why most people aren't asking for this; not even most games and worlds are asking for this! Hello! Under the guise of making "universal standards" (called in this scenario "open standards") which enable "everybody to connect all different ways," they are creating openness without any kind responsibility....
There's another way, and that is *not have the roads*. Until you need them. Until FIRST you work out the agreement, THEN you connect. This creation of a web of connectivity pressuring each "service provider" to Balkanize their choices strikes me as destructive. I don't think it really follows the model of the web. The web had hyperlinks that took you to other pages to read stuff or look at pictures. It didn't take you there to chat, interact, communicate, feel, have sex on poseballs and furniture that people wish to sell, to put it bluntly. Different!
Clearly this is a difficult area. I'm not sure that the 'agreement, then technology' framework which Prokofy suggests is scalable- it wouldn't lead to universal interoperability, with competitive business concerns inevitably becoming a factor in VWs' decisions as to whether to connect to each other. I would point out, though, that infringement of IP on the web, irritating as it is, is endemic and it has yet to break the web. Put simply, this post will no doubt appear on a number of splogs, but that doesn't materially reduce the business case for this blog to exist. People make money from content on the web despite IP infringement, and I suspect that something similar will happen in virtual worlds.
0 comments