FCC Transition Team co-chairs are virtual worlds nuts, too

Wagner James Au sez, "Not only are [Obama's FCC Transition Team leaders] Kevin Werbach and Susan Crawford great Net Neutrality advocates, they're also into online games/virtual worlds-- Werbach belongs to not one but *two* WoW guilds, and Crawford calls herself a "big fan" of Second Life. Agreeing with his guildmaster Joi Ito, Werbach's also a big supporter of WoW as a model for the future of work and software development."

“What [Warcraft] does,” he continued in that post, “is provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production. Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think MMOGs will be, at a minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things.”

Unsurprisingly, this perspective extends to virtual worlds like Second Life, which has been an important component in Werbach’s Supernova technology conference. On her own blog, Professor Crawford, a board member at ICANN, also counts herself “a huge fan of Second Life” for the way it lets users retain IP rights to their content (though she confesses to difficulty when it comes to moving her SL avatar around.)

Obama’s FCC Transition Team Co-chair a WoW Player

See also: Net Neutrality fighters to head Obama's FCC transition team

• [Nelson.C]

  Presidential address on YouTube? That is so last week. I’m looking forward to the first presidential address in WoW.

• [Takuan]

  oh dear, Obama’s lost the al Qaeda endorsement!

• [franko]

  WTB prez transition team ganking noobs in WSG. pst

• [Cool Products]

  It wouldn’t surprise me if Obama secretly spent his time owning at WoW, in fact, it was probably his training for the presidential race.

• [Takuan]

  heh!
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/obamas-use-of-complete-se_b_144642.html

• [Halloween Jack]

  Pwnership society?

• [PoisonedV]

  He’s trying to model policies around World of Warcraft?
  OH god, we’re all fucked! So much for lowering obesity.

• [FoetusNail]

  Takuan, did you click the short Joe the Plumber interview at Huffington Post?

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/19/joe-the-plumber-interview_n_144841.html

• [FoetusNail]

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  Obama for America

• [Takuan]

  http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20081026

• [Roy Trumbull]

  The present FCC makes a political decision and then back-fills with studies using cherry picked data.
  If we can get them to stop trying to repeal physical laws that would be nice. How about at least one engineer on the Commission? What a concept.