Free Speech meets Tourism meets MMORPG

I can’t resist sharing this little news item about a pending suit. It reveals many things that are potentially wrong–or right, depending on what happens–about our world. British Game company Evony is suing an American blogger for defamation in an Australian court. The blogger calls it “libel tourism”– and although it’s perhaps surprising, it’s hardly new given the difference in libel rulings in different nations. Then there is the fact that Evony appears to be a kind of bottom-feeding trailer-trash MMPORG… which as anthropologists we should be immediately drawn to. What would “Coming of Age in Evony” look like? More like Dorothy Allison than Margaret Mead I suspect, but I am not the expert.