PANEL: Intellectual Properties of Virtual Worlds Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference, Istanbul, 20-23 July 2006 Cultural commodities in the age of information capitalism are increasingly produced and circulated primarily as bits and bytes of digital code corporately owned under various regimes of intellectual property. The increasing value of cultural goods rests upon an ever-expansive regime of intellectual property rights -- embodied in copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, and publicity rights * that enables the cultural industries to exploit the value of their intangible assets in an increasingly global marketplace. One of the most profitable intangible assets of the cultural industries are way may be termed "virtual worlds. " Such worlds are digitally constituted immersive social environments, such as massive multiplayer on-line games and other forms of simulation such as Google Earth, that are produced and sustained through distributed networks of collaboration. This panel will explore the ways in which the networked social relations of digitally mediated interactivity of such virtual worlds call into being distinctive forms of virtual property that transgress tradition boundaries between production and consumption, work and play, authorship and ownership, as well as real and virtual property, that challenge dominant forms and practices of intellectual property regimes in informational capitalism. Please send a 150 word abstract to the session organizers by February 1, 2006 to the session organizers: Andrew Herman, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA (aherman@wlu.ca) Rosemary J. Coombe, Canada Research Chair in Law, Communication and Cultural Studies, York University, Toronto, CANADA (rcoombe@yorku.ca) Andrew Herman, Ph. D. Associate Professor Department of Communication Studies Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5 CANADA 519 884-1970 x3693