Digital Urban is a blog I wouldn't have normal come across, but it showed up on my radar today, with an article, at least in part, about branding issues and the likelihood of prosecutions for breaking them. There is a nice link out to the original piece in Retail Bulletin too, which covers some of the potential issues of bringing a suit - finding the name of the avatar doing it, jurisdictional issues and the cost of bringing the case against the probable returns.

Digital Urban is worth a look as well. It's the blog of a UCL project to map urban environments in digital media. That might be somewhat tangential to us you think, but have you visited Manchester, Liverpool, the Sistine Chapel, Amsterdam, etc? That's the kind of thing the blog looks at. Oh, and if you map places in the UK, you're breaking the Ordinance Survey's copyright guys, so be careful! Now, to the best of my knowledge, a UK government sponsored part of Manchester Council built the Manchester sims. Surely they've got to be easy enough to find and sue, if the OS are so inclined?

The Big Chip Awards, Manchester, England's Digital Industry awards ceremony, will be taking place tomorrow, May 24th, both in RL and SL. The ceremony will be streamed from the New Century Hall, but it's not said exactly when this will occur. The champagne reception starts at 7 PM (in Manchester), but the actual awards ceremony begins at 9:45.

At the same time, this event will mark the launch of SL Manchester, the virtual recreation of the city itself.

This seems to be happening with more frequency, the building of RL locations in SL. What do you all think: good idea or bad idea?

(Via how-do.co.uk)