Congressional Hearing on Virtual Worlds

I just stumbled on news of a hearing that started today (April 1^st) in Washington:

Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium

Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
Tuesday, April 1, 2008, 9:30 a.m.
2123 Rayburn House Office Building

There is a page set up at the Energy and Commerce website to track this hearing. On that page is a link to a webcast of the hearing that can be streamed or downloaded.

All of the listed witnesses from day one at the page are Second Life centric (click on each name for their prepared statements):

Mr. Philip Rosedale
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Linden Lab
945 Battery Street
San Francisco, CA 94111

Ms. Susan Tenby
Senior Manager
Community Development
TechSoup
435 Brannan Street, Suite 100
San Francisco, CA 94107

Larry Johnson, Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer
The New Media Consortium
Building One, Suite 100
6101 West Courtyard Drive
Austin, TX 78730

Colin J. Parris, Ph.D.
Vice President
Digital Convergence
IBM Research
IBM Corporation
Somers, NY 10589

I’ve not had an opportunity yet to listen to these proceedings, so I will have to post my impressions in a few days. It should make for some interesting listening.

Update: There are some unedited notes over on Fleep’s Deep Thoughts blog.