Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Night Gyr (talk | contribs) at 17:41, 22 January 2007 (Your revert removed information, I'm readding). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Anshe Chung is one of several avatars or online personalities created by Ailin Graef in the online world Second Life. Referred to as the "Rockefeller of Second Life" by a CNN journalist, she has built an online business that engages in development, brokerage, and arbitrage of virtual land, items, and currencies, and has been featured in a number of prominent magazines such as Business Week , Fortune and Red Herring.

Background

According to Chung, she already created fortunes in purely virtual currency on other MMORPGs such as Asheron's Call, Star Wars Galaxies and Shadowbane, but never converted to real tender. However, this changed when she entered Second Life, where the in-game currency, "Linden Dollars" (L$), can be officially exchanged for real money. The name "Anshe" was originally coined in Asheron's Call in December 1999.

In her early Second Life days, prior to founding the business that made her famous, Anshe Chung had a goal of using virtual wealth to support an orphaned boy in a developing country in the real world. With her first Linden dollars she was able to sponsor a boy named Geo from the Philipines through a German church organization. Some of the activities that allowed her to raise funds for these non-profit purposes included event hosting, escorting ., teaching and fashion design.

According to Chung, in June 2004 she began selling and creating custom animations and then used this money to buy and develop virtual land. This is also considered the beginning of her business where, for the first time, she kept and reinvested funds instead of giving them away. Chung currently owns hundreds of servers worth of land, most of which are sold or rented to other users as a part of her 'Dreamland' areas. Within Dreamland various levels of zoning rules are enforced; most other land in Second Life is unzoned, where multiple different types of business or housing are located in adjacent areas. Philip Rosedale, the CEO of Linden Lab - the company that produces Second Life - has referred to Anshe as "the government" when referring to the role she plays managing her regions .

According to Dr. James Cook of Linden Lab "Anshe adds significant value to Second Life".

In February 2006 the creator of the avatar, Ailin Graef, legally incorporated "Anshe Chung Studios, Ltd." in Hubei, China along with her husband and business partner, Guntram Graef, who goes by the pseudonym "Guni Greenstein" in Second Life.

In November 2006 Chung announced that she had "become the first online personality to achieve a net worth exceeding one million US dollars from profits entirely earned inside a virtual world"

Target of griefing

In December 2006, while conducting an interview for CNET with Daniel Terdiman on her economic assets, the virtual studio in which the interview took place was bombarded by flying animated penises and copies of a photo of Graef modified to show her holding a giant penis in her arms. The griefers managed to disrupt the interview sufficiently that Chung was forced to move to another location and ultimately crashed the simulator entirely. Video and images of the incident were posted to the "Second Life Safari" section of Something Awful, and the incident received international notice via blogs including Boing Boing and the online edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. Two weeks later, Anshe's husband, Guntram Graef, issued takedown notices under the DMCA, demanding that newspapers and websites remove photos and videos of the incident and claiming that they violated Graef's copyright in her avatar and other virtual creations. YouTube pulled the videos of the incident as a DMCA violation and banned the account of Second Life Safari, bringing objections from legal experts who considered the work fair use. A Linden Labs spokesperson suggested that the taking of videos and photos in Second Life should be governed by the same rules as in real life, and an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation compared it to Armani attempting to restrict news photos of a car crash where one of the drivers was wearing an Armani suit.

After news of these events and the legal objections spread across a number of sites including Slashdot, YouTube changed its rationale for removing copies of the video to "terms of use violation," and in an interview Guntram Graef said that issuing the takedown notices had been a mistake. He referred to the images as "pornographic material" and said "The video and pictures are clearly defaming and constitute a sexual assault." He stated that he had originally tried to have the videos removed as a personal attack and infringement on rights, but later changed to a copyright claim when that didn't produce a response. When he realized the issues of censorship, he dropped the copyright claim. Stephen Hutcheon, writer of the original story for the Sydney Morning Herald's blog, who had also recieved an email saying he violated copyright, followed the next day with a piece, "Anshe's Kinky Past Revealed," which confirmed rumors that Anshe Chung had originally been a virtual prostitute and sold erotic services for in-game currency.

See also

• Second Life
• Resident (Second Life)
• Linden Lab

References

1. Sloan, Paul (December 1, 2006). "The Virtual Rockefeller". CNN. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
2. "My Virtual Life". Business Week. May 1, 2006. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
3. ^ Parloff, Roger (November 28, 2005). "FROM MEGS TO RICHES". CNN. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
4. http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=19927&hed=Second+Life%25e2%2580%2599s+First+Millionaire
5. ^ "Press Kit - Anshe Chung". Anshe Chung Studios. November 27, 2006. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
6. "Economy". Linden Lab. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
7. "LindeX Market Data". Linden Lab. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
8. The Herald Profile: Anshe Chung Walker Spaight, The Second Life Herald, 2005-01-25. Retrieved 2007-01-17.
9. ^ "Anshe's kinky past revealed". The Age. Retrieved 2007-01-20. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
10. Diaz, Cristiano (aka Cristiano Midnight) (November 28, 2004). "Introducing The Chat History Interview - Anshe Chung". SL Universe. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
11. Why Anshe Chung is a Millionaire
12. The Virtual Rockefeller
13. Virtual goods, real income
14. ^ "Anshe Chung Becomes First Virtual World Millionaire". Anshe Chung Studios. November 26, 2006. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
15. Terdiman, Daniel (December 20, 2006). "Virtual magnate shares secrets of success". CNET. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
16. ^ Behind the Anshe Chung DMCA complaint
17. Reuters, Adam (January 5, 2007). "Anshe Chung Studios cracks down on griefing photos". Reuters. Retrieved 2007-01-06. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
18. ^ The legal rights to your 'Second Life' avatar

External links

• ANSHECHUNG Studios website
• BusinessWeek title story and magazine cover
• CNN: "Anshe Chung - First Virtual Millionaire"
• Second Life Safari - Room 101 v. Anshe Chung Something Awful's coverage of the griefing incident
• The video pulled from YouTube, on Google Video

• Second Life
• Second Life Residents