A First Amendment for Second Life: What Virtual Worlds Mean for the Law of Video Games

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, video games have finally taken their place alongside movies, comic books, and drawings as a form of protected First Amendment speech. Since the Seventh Circuit\u27s 2001 decision in American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick, court after court has struck down ordinances and statutes aimed at restricting violent video games--on the grounds that such violate game designers\u27 and players\u27 First Amendment speech rights. This series of rulings marks a stark change from courts\u27 previous stance on video games, which consigned them to the same realm of unprotected non-speech conduct as games like tennis, chess, or checkers. Video games were able to escape from this unprotected realm--and become First Amendment expression--largely because advances in computer graphics and design made them more and more like interactive movies and television shows, and less and less like digitized board games and pinball machines. But instead of simply forging ahead in this jurisprudential evolution, as video games evolve from personal forms of recreation to virtual worlds, this Article suggests that virtual worlds should make us rethink the First Amendment theory that got us to this point. This is because, while video games may have become First Amendment speech by becoming intricate movie-like stories, many virtual worlds are decidedly not scripted stories. They are rather stages for a multitude of expressive activity, some of which is an electronic analogue of the chess-playing, tennis-playing, car racing, or aimless lounging and wandering, that the courts excluded from the realm of First Amendment speech in an earlier era. This Article argues that this exclusion was a mistake. Virtual worlds are realms of First Amendment expression not because of the stories and role play they make possible, but rather because they provide a setting for giving form to imagination in sounds and imagery, a setting that can be walled off from the business of civil government and thus reserved for more unconstrained exercises of individual freedom. Stories and messages are an optional part of this setting and are not a necessary ingredient of First Amendment speech. This is not to say that government has no role to play in regulating virtual worlds: where individuals bring harm-threatening activity into virtual worlds involving acts that abuse others\u27 money or reputation, for example, government might have to regulate such worlds. But such regulation must take place alongside of, and not simply displace, the First Amendment\u27s application to virtual worlds

OH yields from the CH3CO+O-2 reaction using an internal standard

Laser flash photolysis of CH3C(O)OH at 248 nm was used to create equal zero time yields of CH3CO and OH. The absolute OH yield from the CH3CO + O2 (+M) reaction was determined by following the OH temporal profile using the zero time OH concentration as an internal standard. The OH yield from CH3CO + O2 (+M) was observed to decrease with increasing pressure with an extrapolated zero pressure yield close to unity (1.1 ± 0.2, quoted uncertainties correspond to 95% confidence limits). The results are in quantitative agreement with those obtained from 248 nm acetone photolysis in the presence of O2

Experimental Modeling of Eddy Current Inspection Capabilities

An experimental modeling technique based on the use of liquid mercury samples containing artificial discontinuities has been examined to establish the applicability of this approach to the assessment of eddy current inspection capabilities. Results show that the mercury modeling concept provides an accurate, rapid and inexpensive approach to the calibration and characterization of eddy current inspection techniques. Data are presented which clearly show the impact of defect size, type and location on the eddy current response developed with a surface riding “pancake” probe. The potential of mercury modeling to enhance the understanding of eddy current inspection techniques and also to guide the development of rational analytical modeling is discussed

The infant-feeding practices of mothers enrolled in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV programme at a primary health care clinic in the Mpumalanga province, South Africa

Purpose: To determine whether mothers attending a primary health care (PHC) clinic in the Mpumalanga province, South Africa for post-deliveryprevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) follow-up care were adhering to the recommendationof exclusive infant-feeding practices, and to identify possible areas for improvement of the PMTCT of HIV services at the clinic.Setting: A municipal PHC clinic in White River, a semi-urban town in Mpumalanga, South Africa.Design: A cross-sectional descriptive study using a structured infant-feeding questionnaire.Subjects: All mothers attending the clinic for post-delivery PMTCT of HIV follow-up care during a four-month period from 1 November 2007 to29 February 2008.Results: A total of 33 mothers with infants attended the clinic during the period. All 33 mothers took part in the questionnaire study. Thirtyquestionnaires were subsequently found suitable for analysis. The mothers were predominantly rural, with low levels of education and no formalemployment. Their ages ranged from 22 to 42 years, with a mean of 30.7 years. Fifteen (50%) of the 30 mothers practised exclusive replacementfeeding (ERF), 8 (27%) practised exclusive breast-feeding (EBF), and 7 (23%) practised mixed feeding.Conclusion: More than three-quarters of the mothers practised the recommended exclusive infant-feeding methods for PMTCT of HIV, with ERF asthe most popular choice. However, the infant-feeding practices could not be generalised as the attendance of mothers for post-delivery follow-upcare at the clinic was very poor during the study period. This poor attendance was attributed to frequent non-availability of free formula milk for theprogramme. Better quality counselling is needed to further increase the adherence to exclusive infant-feeding practices, and to improve the uptakeof post-delivery follow-up care

Interaction of laser generated ultrasonic waves with wedge-shaped samples

Wedge-shaped samples can be used as a model of acoustic interactions with samples ranging from ocean wedges, to angled defects such as rolling contact fatigue, to thickness measurements of samples with non-parallel faces. We present work on laser generated ultrasonic waves on metal samples; one can measure the dominant Rayleigh-wave mode, but longitudinal and shear waves are also generated. We present calculations, models, and measurements giving the dependence of the arrival times and amplitudes of these modes on the wedge apex angle and the separation of generation and detection points, and hence give a measure of the wedge characteristics