Is Second Life an example of cultural convergence? Critically evaluate
Proving that new media will not simply replace old media, but rather will learn to interact with it in a complex relationship which Henry Jenkins calls "convergence culture. Convergence is currently impacting the relationship among media audiences, producers and content. Jenkins says, “there will be no magical black box that puts everything in order again.” [i]He argued that the industry leaders see opportunities to direct content across many channels to increase revenue and broaden markets, and at the same time, consumers envision a liberated public sphere, free of network controls, in a decentralized media environment. These specially appeared in the game industry.
In the recent years, a range of on-line computer games exposed. Players can build their own communities, be the person who they want to be, even earn money through online games. In the game Second Life which published online in 2003, players can create the virtual characters which called avatars, they can change the any details on the face of their avatars, the hair style, or the clothes avatars wearing. In Second Life, players also can get money by the products which they created online. They can sell all the virtual things to other players, raising questions about what the relations between the producers and consumers.
RENEGOTIATING RELATIONS BETWEEN PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS
The players are playing a more and more important role in games industry. Jesper Juul[ii] argued that there is a trend towards games with much more open or emergent structures, where player direction is more loosely determined by the affordances (coding, rules and goals) in the game and where the creativity of the player leads to new and unpredictable outcomes each time the game is played. Sal Humphreys also noted that “computer games bring players into a productive relationship.”[iii]
With the fast developing technology, producers and consumers start to change their positions. According to Jenkins, “So far, the recording industry has responded to the emergence of peer-to-peer technologies through legal action and name-calling rather than developing new business plans or reconceiving consumer relations. In the games industry, on the other hand, the major successes have come within franchises that have courted feedback from consumers during the product development process, endorsed grassroots appropriation of their content and technology and that have showcased the best user-generated content.”[iv] So consumers’ opinions decided the game industry development. Fan communities use the game companies’ products also can build a relationship with consumers.
Producers normally provide goods and earn the benefits from consumers, but now, consumers also can do these things as producers did. In the Second Life, it provided an exciting new venue for collaboration, training, distance learning, new media studies and marketing. Residents are the users of Second Life, and their appearance is their avatar (often abbreviated to av or ava). The basic avatar is human in appearance, but avatars may be of either sex, have a wide range of physical attributes, and may be clothed or otherwise customized to produce a wide variety of humanoid and other forms.[v]
Players can hold a virtual meeting with their sales managers located in Europe and Asia. They also can present the new sales initiatives and discuss them with their team real-time. Build a new world that allows Second Life users to interact with their products or services and enables the users to test out new designs and concepts before introducing them to the real world. It allows to selling all the products in Second Life. The players can sell and buy any virtual products in the game, for examples: the furniture, the house, and the land. Players also can plan an event to promote their product: a concert, a class, a famous speaker, a party, a contest. If players want people to be able to buy their real-world service or product in Second Life and deliver it in the real world, Linden Scripting Language (LSL) can help with it. It includes interaction with HTTP, enabling the players to interact with web content from within Second Life, including initiating purchase via the web.[vi] The most benefit thing in Second Life which is not need to pay the tax, because it is not suspend the laws of the real world.
On the other hand, in Second Life, there's something new around every corner. The world is filled with hundreds of games, from multi-player RPG's to puzzles and grid-wide contests. There are also casinos, dance clubs, shopping malls, space stations, vampire castles and movie theatres. Players can find something to do at any time by simply open the Search menu and click on Events. They would see a listing of Discussions, Sports, Commercial, Entertainment, Games, Pagaents, Education, Arts and Culture and Charity/Support Groups. As its official website noted, “with Second Life, you are only limited by your imagination.” [vii]
The new technologies and cultural convergence change the game industry a lot. Game companies run by the feedback from consumers. Consumers build their more and more complete communities in the computer games. In the old computer games, the tools or equipments only can provided by the producers, but now, consumers also can do this kind of business in Second Life. The users of Second Life can created everything by their imagination and get benefits from their products. So, with the technology developing and the society changing, game consumers will also become the game producers. Compare with the old computer games, Second Life creates a new form of intellectual property rights.
REDEFINING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
In Second Life, the creators allow to retain the intellectual property rights to their content. This means, if consumers own a copyright to content they bring into or create in Second Life, they can protect their content through copyright law. They may have trademark, trade secret, or other enforceable intellectual property rights as well. Yochai Benkler noted that copyright is one of these; it relies on the idea of an author and a finished text, which is a “fixed” expression of ideas subject to rules of property (although these rules are somewhat different from laws that adhere to more “material”, property such as manufactured goods.)[viii] In most of the games, not the players keep the copyrights, or players can keep the property rights, but they could not get money back through their products. Humphreys concerns that “Publishers and developers own copyrights and Intellectual Property in a work, while the workers paid to create it often give up those rights in return for wages, Players give up those rights as well (and pay for the privilege) but in return for access to the environment and the play.” [ix]
Jenkins used the case of Harry Potter to describe the redefining intellectual property rights in the cultural convergence. He concerns the two rights separated in an era of read-write culture which are the right of children to read the Harry Potter books, and the right to write about them. David Beer argued the relationship between the music and internet, he concerns that “distribution, copyright and democracy, contains papers that focus upon the movement and exchange of music across the Internet and the subsequent implications for control and ownership.”[x] Properties questions rise by the music online whether obey the copyrights, and also many other questions appeared release to the copyrights online. Humphreys also gave the examples of the game EverQuest, and End User Licence Agreement (EULA) to explore how property framework has been utilized by both publishers and players. [xi] He measures that the copyrights law seems to give more advantage to the corporations than authors. But however, the multiplayer online games structured different from the ‘old media’, it generated new cycles of production and new kinds of relationships.
Poland V, Bettig take the view of the internet property rights from the political side, he noted “Political economists underscore the point that ownership and control of the means of communication also significantly augment the ideological power of this class, furthermore, the dominant class, with its superior resources and communications networks is generally be able to organize its hegemony within the political system.”[xii] Computer can be used by anyone, and everyone has a chance to be a publisher. So the people who know how to use the computer would face the problems of intellectual rights. Jessica Litman pointed that “Digital technology changed the marketplace. It’s a cliché that digital technology permits everyone to become a publisher.”[xiii] Property rights need to be redefined in the new media convergence culture while modern crazes like hip-hop sampling and MP3 file sharing are not direct violations of copyright law but instead offer harsh illuminations of the gaps and inconsistencies in that law.
REDESIGNING THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
The internet can connect between people and people, this kind of communication can influence the digital technology and economic develop. According to Flew, one of the most interesting elements of the development of the internet as a global communications network has been the rise of virtual communities, or virtual cultures, based around ongoing interactions among those participating in computer-mediated communication (CMC).[xiv] CMC is a very important part to push the virtual communities focus on the interpersonal messaging. Steve Jones and Stephanie Kucker concerns that one assumption has been that CMC is in essence a medium of transmission, furthermore, it is taken for granted that the point of CMC is interpersonal messaging, whether multiple persons receive the message or not. Users of CMC are thus abstracted from the contexts within which they use CMC technology.[xv] The communication of the information has already been the main sector of the digital economy. According to Stephen Klein, Nich Dyer-Witherford and Greig de-Peuter, “in the post-industrial economy the production, processing and communication of information in services and cultural commodities replaced the production and distribution of natural resources and industrial goods as the key sector of the economy.”[xvi] They also pointed out the technology, which has come of age and is a social phenomenon.
In the game industries, Second Life has its own economy and a currency referred to as Linden Dollars (L$). Though the exchange rate fluctuates, as of February 2007 it is reasonably stable at around L$ 270 to one US dollar. Linden Lab reports that the Second Life economy generated US$3,596,674 in economic activity during the month of September 2005, and as of September 2006 Second Life was reported to have a GDP of $64 Million.[xvii] The residents create new goods and services, and buy and sell them in the Second Life virtual world. A small percentage of Residents derive net incomes from this economy, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand US$ per month, while a larger percentage derive a gross income large enough to offset most of their expenditures in L$. The currency has become the subject of concern in economic circles in regard to possible taxation. The Second Life give a very direct example for how digital economy working in the real society.
All the computer users can join in the digital economy to make the benefits for themselves. Richard Barbrook suggested that “a minority of the population can use the Net to inform, educate and play together outside both the state and the market. Once a broadband network is built, everyone will have the opportunity to join this hi-tech gift economy.”[xviii] Information technology will bring us into a new commercial world, where can support the digital economy. According to Don Tapscott, “We are at the dawn of an Age of Networked Intelligence—an age that is giving birth to a new economy, a new politics, and a new society. Businesses will be transformed, governments will be renewed, and individuals will be able to reinvent themselves—all with the help of the new information technology.”[xix] Digital economy will increase incredible during the information age.
OVERVIEW
The computer games are example of convergence culture. Producers and consumers are changing their positions in the game industry, which consumers can provide the goods and services as producers did. For example, in Second Life, players create their own virtual goods and allow sell their products to others. The intellectual property rights concerns to protect the copyrights of authors. In Second Life, players may have trademark, trade secret, or other enforceable intellectual property rights to protect their products. Digital economy issues are rise from the changing producers and consumers relations and the intellectual property rights. The players of Second Life can do the trades through internet communication. It is a new innovation in the digital economy. All of these can show how cultural convergence expended in the game industries, and games industries influence the world to become a more digital world. In this new economy, Efraim Turban, Dorothy Leidner, Ephraim McLean and James Wetherbe[xx] valued that digital networking and communication infrastructures provide a global platform over which people and organizations devise strategies, interact, communication, collaborate, and search for information. The digital economy are refers to the convergence of computing and resulting flow of information and technology.
On the other hand, computer games also become a globalized industry. Many transnational games are very popular in different countries. Aphra Kerr and Roddy Flynn concerns that “rather than demonstrated, that the film and more latterly digital games industries can be regarded as drivers of globalization, that both display increasing vertical concentration particularly between publishing, distribution and exhibition stages of production, increasing horizontal concentration across media sectors and the extension of operations across national boundaries.”[xxi] The user base of Second Life in China is growing very fast, but the Second Life still not official movement into Chinese internet.[xxii] The Chinese Second Life - HiPiHi.com has recently announced that its first Virtual Reality world will be open to public soon.
[i] Jenkins, H. Convergence Cultural: Where Old and New Media Collide, (New York University Press. 2006).
[ii] Jesper Juul, ‘The Open and Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of Pregression’ in Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings, ed. Frans Mayra, (Tampere, Finland: Tanpere University Press. 2002)
[iii] Humphreys, S. ‘Productive Players: Online Computer Games’ Challenge to Conventional Media Forms. In Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (2005).
[iv] Jenkins, H. ‘The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence’ in International Journal of Cultural Studies. (London, Thousand Osaks, CA and New Delhi. 2004)
[v] Second Life in wikipedia, available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life (accessed 10 May 2007)
[vi] Second Life Official Website, available at:
http://secondlife.com/businesseducation/ (accessed 10 May 2007)
[vii]Second Life Official Website, available at:
http://secondlife.com/ (accessed 10 May 2007)
[viii] Yochai Benkler, “The Political Economy of Commons.” Upgrade IV 13 (2003) online at:
http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2003/3/upgrade-vIV-3.html (accessed 10 May 2007)
[ix] Humphreys, S. ‘Productive Players: Online Computer Games’ Challenge to Conventional Media Forms. In Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (2005).
[x] David Beer, ed., First Monday Special Issue #1: Music and the Internet, 2005; available online at:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/special10_7/ (accessed 9 May 2007)
[xi] Humphreys, S. ‘Productive Players: Online Computer Games’ Challenge to Conventional Media Forms. In Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (2005).
[xii] Roland V, Bettig. Copyrighting Culture: The Political Economy of Intellectual Property. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. 1996)
[xiii] Litman, J. Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 2001)
[xiv] Flew, T. Virtual Cultures in New Media: An Introduction (2nd Edition). (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 2005)
[xv] Jones, S and Kucher, S. ‘Computers, the Internet, and Virtual Cultures’ in Culture in the Communication Age, ed, Lull, James, (London: Routledge. 2001)
[xvi] Klein, S. Dyer-Witherford, N. and de-Peuter, G. Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture and Marketing, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2003)
[xvii] Second Life in wikipedia, available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life (accessed 10 May 2007)
[xviii] Barbrook, R, The Digital Economy, available at:
http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/digitalfordism/fordism_materials/barbrook1.htm (accessed 10 May 2007)
[xix] Tapscott, D. The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril In The Age of Networked Intelligence, pp2 (New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies. Inc, 1996)
[xx] Turban, E. Leidner, D. McLean, E. and Wetherbe, J. Information Technology for Management: Transforming Organizations in the Digital Economy, (John Willey & Sons, Inc. 2006.)
[xxi] Kerr, A and Flynn, R. ‘Revisiting globalization through the movie and digital games industries’, Convergence, 9:1 Spring 2003.
[xxii] Chinese Second Life
http://www.mobinode.com/?p=151 (accessed 12 May 2007)
Proving that new media will not simply replace old media, but rather will learn to interact with it in a complex relationship which Henry Jenkins calls "convergence culture. Convergence is currently impacting the relationship among media audiences, producers and content. Jenkins says, “there will be no magical black box that puts everything in order again.” [i]He argued that the industry leaders see opportunities to direct content across many channels to increase revenue and broaden markets, and at the same time, consumers envision a liberated public sphere, free of network controls, in a decentralized media environment. These specially appeared in the game industry.
In the recent years, a range of on-line computer games exposed. Players can build their own communities, be the person who they want to be, even earn money through online games. In the game Second Life which published online in 2003, players can create the virtual characters which called avatars, they can change the any details on the face of their avatars, the hair style, or the clothes avatars wearing. In Second Life, players also can get money by the products which they created online. They can sell all the virtual things to other players, raising questions about what the relations between the producers and consumers.
RENEGOTIATING RELATIONS BETWEEN PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS
The players are playing a more and more important role in games industry. Jesper Juul[ii] argued that there is a trend towards games with much more open or emergent structures, where player direction is more loosely determined by the affordances (coding, rules and goals) in the game and where the creativity of the player leads to new and unpredictable outcomes each time the game is played. Sal Humphreys also noted that “computer games bring players into a productive relationship.”[iii]
With the fast developing technology, producers and consumers start to change their positions. According to Jenkins, “So far, the recording industry has responded to the emergence of peer-to-peer technologies through legal action and name-calling rather than developing new business plans or reconceiving consumer relations. In the games industry, on the other hand, the major successes have come within franchises that have courted feedback from consumers during the product development process, endorsed grassroots appropriation of their content and technology and that have showcased the best user-generated content.”[iv] So consumers’ opinions decided the game industry development. Fan communities use the game companies’ products also can build a relationship with consumers.
Producers normally provide goods and earn the benefits from consumers, but now, consumers also can do these things as producers did. In the Second Life, it provided an exciting new venue for collaboration, training, distance learning, new media studies and marketing. Residents are the users of Second Life, and their appearance is their avatar (often abbreviated to av or ava). The basic avatar is human in appearance, but avatars may be of either sex, have a wide range of physical attributes, and may be clothed or otherwise customized to produce a wide variety of humanoid and other forms.[v]
Players can hold a virtual meeting with their sales managers located in Europe and Asia. They also can present the new sales initiatives and discuss them with their team real-time. Build a new world that allows Second Life users to interact with their products or services and enables the users to test out new designs and concepts before introducing them to the real world. It allows to selling all the products in Second Life. The players can sell and buy any virtual products in the game, for examples: the furniture, the house, and the land. Players also can plan an event to promote their product: a concert, a class, a famous speaker, a party, a contest. If players want people to be able to buy their real-world service or product in Second Life and deliver it in the real world, Linden Scripting Language (LSL) can help with it. It includes interaction with HTTP, enabling the players to interact with web content from within Second Life, including initiating purchase via the web.[vi] The most benefit thing in Second Life which is not need to pay the tax, because it is not suspend the laws of the real world.On the other hand, in Second Life, there's something new around every corner. The world is filled with hundreds of games, from multi-player RPG's to puzzles and grid-wide contests. There are also casinos, dance clubs, shopping malls, space stations, vampire castles and movie theatres. Players can find something to do at any time by simply open the Search menu and click on Events. They would see a listing of Discussions, Sports, Commercial, Entertainment, Games, Pagaents, Education, Arts and Culture and Charity/Support Groups. As its official website noted, “with Second Life, you are only limited by your imagination.” [vii]
The new technologies and cultural convergence change the game industry a lot. Game companies run by the feedback from consumers. Consumers build their more and more complete communities in the computer games. In the old computer games, the tools or equipments only can provided by the producers, but now, consumers also can do this kind of business in Second Life. The users of Second Life can created everything by their imagination and get benefits from their products. So, with the technology developing and the society changing, game consumers will also become the game producers. Compare with the old computer games, Second Life creates a new form of intellectual property rights.
REDEFINING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
In Second Life, the creators allow to retain the intellectual property rights to their content. This means, if consumers own a copyright to content they bring into or create in Second Life, they can protect their content through copyright law. They may have trademark, trade secret, or other enforceable intellectual property rights as well. Yochai Benkler noted that copyright is one of these; it relies on the idea of an author and a finished text, which is a “fixed” expression of ideas subject to rules of property (although these rules are somewhat different from laws that adhere to more “material”, property such as manufactured goods.)[viii] In most of the games, not the players keep the copyrights, or players can keep the property rights, but they could not get money back through their products. Humphreys concerns that “Publishers and developers own copyrights and Intellectual Property in a work, while the workers paid to create it often give up those rights in return for wages, Players give up those rights as well (and pay for the privilege) but in return for access to the environment and the play.” [ix]
Jenkins used the case of Harry Potter to describe the redefining intellectual property rights in the cultural convergence. He concerns the two rights separated in an era of read-write culture which are the right of children to read the Harry Potter books, and the right to write about them. David Beer argued the relationship between the music and internet, he concerns that “distribution, copyright and democracy, contains papers that focus upon the movement and exchange of music across the Internet and the subsequent implications for control and ownership.”[x] Properties questions rise by the music online whether obey the copyrights, and also many other questions appeared release to the copyrights online. Humphreys also gave the examples of the game EverQuest, and End User Licence Agreement (EULA) to explore how property framework has been utilized by both publishers and players. [xi] He measures that the copyrights law seems to give more advantage to the corporations than authors. But however, the multiplayer online games structured different from the ‘old media’, it generated new cycles of production and new kinds of relationships.
Poland V, Bettig take the view of the internet property rights from the political side, he noted “Political economists underscore the point that ownership and control of the means of communication also significantly augment the ideological power of this class, furthermore, the dominant class, with its superior resources and communications networks is generally be able to organize its hegemony within the political system.”[xii] Computer can be used by anyone, and everyone has a chance to be a publisher. So the people who know how to use the computer would face the problems of intellectual rights. Jessica Litman pointed that “Digital technology changed the marketplace. It’s a cliché that digital technology permits everyone to become a publisher.”[xiii] Property rights need to be redefined in the new media convergence culture while modern crazes like hip-hop sampling and MP3 file sharing are not direct violations of copyright law but instead offer harsh illuminations of the gaps and inconsistencies in that law.
REDESIGNING THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
The internet can connect between people and people, this kind of communication can influence the digital technology and economic develop. According to Flew, one of the most interesting elements of the development of the internet as a global communications network has been the rise of virtual communities, or virtual cultures, based around ongoing interactions among those participating in computer-mediated communication (CMC).[xiv] CMC is a very important part to push the virtual communities focus on the interpersonal messaging. Steve Jones and Stephanie Kucker concerns that one assumption has been that CMC is in essence a medium of transmission, furthermore, it is taken for granted that the point of CMC is interpersonal messaging, whether multiple persons receive the message or not. Users of CMC are thus abstracted from the contexts within which they use CMC technology.[xv] The communication of the information has already been the main sector of the digital economy. According to Stephen Klein, Nich Dyer-Witherford and Greig de-Peuter, “in the post-industrial economy the production, processing and communication of information in services and cultural commodities replaced the production and distribution of natural resources and industrial goods as the key sector of the economy.”[xvi] They also pointed out the technology, which has come of age and is a social phenomenon.
In the game industries, Second Life has its own economy and a currency referred to as Linden Dollars (L$). Though the exchange rate fluctuates, as of February 2007 it is reasonably stable at around L$ 270 to one US dollar. Linden Lab reports that the Second Life economy generated US$3,596,674 in economic activity during the month of September 2005, and as of September 2006 Second Life was reported to have a GDP of $64 Million.[xvii] The residents create new goods and services, and buy and sell them in the Second Life virtual world. A small percentage of Residents derive net incomes from this economy, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand US$ per month, while a larger percentage derive a gross income large enough to offset most of their expenditures in L$. The currency has become the subject of concern in economic circles in regard to possible taxation. The Second Life give a very direct example for how digital economy working in the real society.
All the computer users can join in the digital economy to make the benefits for themselves. Richard Barbrook suggested that “a minority of the population can use the Net to inform, educate and play together outside both the state and the market. Once a broadband network is built, everyone will have the opportunity to join this hi-tech gift economy.”[xviii] Information technology will bring us into a new commercial world, where can support the digital economy. According to Don Tapscott, “We are at the dawn of an Age of Networked Intelligence—an age that is giving birth to a new economy, a new politics, and a new society. Businesses will be transformed, governments will be renewed, and individuals will be able to reinvent themselves—all with the help of the new information technology.”[xix] Digital economy will increase incredible during the information age.
OVERVIEW
The computer games are example of convergence culture. Producers and consumers are changing their positions in the game industry, which consumers can provide the goods and services as producers did. For example, in Second Life, players create their own virtual goods and allow sell their products to others. The intellectual property rights concerns to protect the copyrights of authors. In Second Life, players may have trademark, trade secret, or other enforceable intellectual property rights to protect their products. Digital economy issues are rise from the changing producers and consumers relations and the intellectual property rights. The players of Second Life can do the trades through internet communication. It is a new innovation in the digital economy. All of these can show how cultural convergence expended in the game industries, and games industries influence the world to become a more digital world. In this new economy, Efraim Turban, Dorothy Leidner, Ephraim McLean and James Wetherbe[xx] valued that digital networking and communication infrastructures provide a global platform over which people and organizations devise strategies, interact, communication, collaborate, and search for information. The digital economy are refers to the convergence of computing and resulting flow of information and technology.
On the other hand, computer games also become a globalized industry. Many transnational games are very popular in different countries. Aphra Kerr and Roddy Flynn concerns that “rather than demonstrated, that the film and more latterly digital games industries can be regarded as drivers of globalization, that both display increasing vertical concentration particularly between publishing, distribution and exhibition stages of production, increasing horizontal concentration across media sectors and the extension of operations across national boundaries.”[xxi] The user base of Second Life in China is growing very fast, but the Second Life still not official movement into Chinese internet.[xxii] The Chinese Second Life - HiPiHi.com has recently announced that its first Virtual Reality world will be open to public soon.
[i] Jenkins, H. Convergence Cultural: Where Old and New Media Collide, (New York University Press. 2006).
[ii] Jesper Juul, ‘The Open and Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of Pregression’ in Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings, ed. Frans Mayra, (Tampere, Finland: Tanpere University Press. 2002)
[iii] Humphreys, S. ‘Productive Players: Online Computer Games’ Challenge to Conventional Media Forms. In Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (2005).
[iv] Jenkins, H. ‘The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence’ in International Journal of Cultural Studies. (London, Thousand Osaks, CA and New Delhi. 2004)
[v] Second Life in wikipedia, available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life (accessed 10 May 2007)
[vi] Second Life Official Website, available at:
http://secondlife.com/businesseducation/ (accessed 10 May 2007)
[vii]Second Life Official Website, available at:
http://secondlife.com/ (accessed 10 May 2007)
[viii] Yochai Benkler, “The Political Economy of Commons.” Upgrade IV 13 (2003) online at:
http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2003/3/upgrade-vIV-3.html (accessed 10 May 2007)
[ix] Humphreys, S. ‘Productive Players: Online Computer Games’ Challenge to Conventional Media Forms. In Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (2005).
[x] David Beer, ed., First Monday Special Issue #1: Music and the Internet, 2005; available online at:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/special10_7/ (accessed 9 May 2007)
[xi] Humphreys, S. ‘Productive Players: Online Computer Games’ Challenge to Conventional Media Forms. In Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (2005).
[xii] Roland V, Bettig. Copyrighting Culture: The Political Economy of Intellectual Property. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. 1996)
[xiii] Litman, J. Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 2001)
[xiv] Flew, T. Virtual Cultures in New Media: An Introduction (2nd Edition). (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 2005)
[xv] Jones, S and Kucher, S. ‘Computers, the Internet, and Virtual Cultures’ in Culture in the Communication Age, ed, Lull, James, (London: Routledge. 2001)
[xvi] Klein, S. Dyer-Witherford, N. and de-Peuter, G. Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture and Marketing, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2003)
[xvii] Second Life in wikipedia, available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life (accessed 10 May 2007)
[xviii] Barbrook, R, The Digital Economy, available at:
http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/digitalfordism/fordism_materials/barbrook1.htm (accessed 10 May 2007)
[xix] Tapscott, D. The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril In The Age of Networked Intelligence, pp2 (New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies. Inc, 1996)
[xx] Turban, E. Leidner, D. McLean, E. and Wetherbe, J. Information Technology for Management: Transforming Organizations in the Digital Economy, (John Willey & Sons, Inc. 2006.)
[xxi] Kerr, A and Flynn, R. ‘Revisiting globalization through the movie and digital games industries’, Convergence, 9:1 Spring 2003.
[xxii] Chinese Second Life
http://www.mobinode.com/?p=151 (accessed 12 May 2007)
