VG 2010

8^th International Workshop for Technical, Economic and Legal Aspects of Business Models for Virtual Goods incorporating the 6^th Intl. ODRL Workshop.

With the rise of new digital music portals, the development of copyright laws world-wide and the increasing success of alternative models, the discussion on digital rights management is even more intense than ever before. Digital content, e.g., MP3 music, flash films, or electronic books, is coming up more and more in the Internet, and doubts that technical protection alone will suffice are increasing. Existing technical approaches to digital rights protection are proprietary and mutual incompatible, they establish closed user groups. Moreover, they overestimate the technical chances to transfer usage rules of physical goods to the digital world by control of end-user devices.

Any business model of virtual goods must include not only the virtual objects and their technical control functions, but also the human actors and their personal and economic interest. What is needed is a simple and safe technology which supports a balance of interests between creators, providers and consumers of digital goods. Current technology does not give satisfactory answers.

The goal of this conference is to bring together experts from scientific and practical fields, researchers from different disciplines, developers, and users interested in electronic commerce of virtual goods. We will assess current methodologies and bring forward new research directions.

We expressly welcome research contributions from different fields, including computer sciences, economics, business, law, human sciences and other relevant disciplines.