Washington and Lee law professor Joshua Fairfield will present his work on virtual currency and virtual property, as part of a panel discussing Virtual Items, at the Second Stanford-Peking University Conference on Internet Law and Policy 2013 hosted by Stanford Law School on May 3d and 4th (registration link: http://blogs.law.stanford.edu/ilpp2013/).
The conference is co-sponsored by Stanford Law School and Peking University, and draws together internationally-recognized scholars from the United States, China, and across the world. The conference addresses issues of cutting edge intellectual property and e-commercial law, including the growing trade in virtual items and currency.
Professor Fairfield’s work, entitled “Virtual Gravity,” will address the emergence of virtual items, virtual currencies, and microtransactions as a major means of financing internet services. For example, the virtual currency BitCoin has recently risen to prominence as parties seeking to shield money from the Cypriot banking crisis invest in the online money. Professor Fairfield’s research explores the differences between Europe, the United States, and China in addressing the rise of virtual items. It also explores the gravitational pull that the technology of digital objects exerts on the form and shape of the law.
