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.

Christopher Kelty does anthropological and historical research on science and technology, free and open source software, intellectual property and open access, the history of software, and the ethics and politics of nanotechnology. He also teaches classes about all of these things. From 2001 to 2008 he was assistant professor of anthropology at Rice University, in Houston, TX. He know teaches at UCLA and splits his time between the Information Studies department, the Anthropology Department and the Center for Society and Genetics.