Occasionally when I’m speaking to another investigator about possible illicit activities that can occur in virtual item markets or RMT I get the question “but why would anybody pay money for a virtual item?” My usual answer is “well, in a sense it doesn’t matter why, the point is that they do and that is why there is a market for these things.”

The truth is that I didn’t really have a great answer, but I’m starting finding some sources that have provided some very good insight. The first place I would suggest any reader to stop is an article on the Virtual Economy Research Network called “Community dynamics that create demand for virtual goods: case Habbo” written by Vili Lehdonvirta. After that, download the article called “Virtual Consumerism: Case Habbo Hotel” written by Mr. Lehdonvirta, Terhi-Anna Wilska, and Mikael Johnson. This is a pre-print version of the article and it is expected to be in the journal Information, Communication & Society vol. 12 no. 7.

The article is good because well, the article is just good. But the article is also very good because of the numerous sources cited. If you want to continue digging on the subject, there are sources there

Here is the problem I’m trying to solve. Lately I have had numerous cases where evidence is found in online video and in audio podcasts. I needed a way to archive and analyze this material, at least the verbal part of it.

My proposed solution is to use a speech to text software to transcribe the audio portion of the video (or the podcast…obviously) to text.

Hopefully this will allow me to provide my clients with text to accompany the video or audio recording. I can also take portions of the transcript and use it in my reports/briefs, etc. Furthermore where certain keywords are of interest I can do keyword searches on them.

I’m expecting some hiccups. The software’s ability to do the transcription is going to depend on the audio quality. If I’m spending a lot of time doing corrections on the transcript then it kind of defeats at least part of the purpose.

If the community has any better ideas, I’m certainly open to them. Please post or send me a note offline.

Corporations wishing to examine their current anti-corruption policies may want to review the latest issue of Management Ethics, produced by the Canadian Centre for Ethics and Corporate Policy. The cover story reminds readers that “bribing foreign public officials in order to obtain or retain an advantage in the course of business was made a criminal offence on February 14, 1999″.

The six “test” questions are simple but important considerations for any corporation that does business with Government, anywhere. I would encourage you to give this one page article a read. Further resources on the subject can be found on the Centre’s website as well as the website for Transparency International which provides ratings on corruption levels in various countries.

In December of 2008 an Australian court allowed the service of legal papers through Facebook. It looks like the trend has now extended to Twitter.

According to an article in Reuters a UK court has served an injunction to stop a blogger from impersonating a lawyer in the UK. The “tweetist” remains anonymous at this time, which is why the court determined that this was the best venue to reach him or her.

With Facebook you have a significant amount of evidence to indicate that the person that you are intending to serve is the person behind the profile. You may have identifiers such as a picture, a name, known associates…possibly an opinion or two that would give you confidence that you are dealing with the appropriate person.

I’m no lawyer, and an injunction is obviously different than servicing papers; however, in this case the Twitterist is 1) anonymous and 2) impersonating someone. What is to stop the person from setting up another account under a different pseudonym and get up to the same thing? Does the injunction against www.twitter.com/blaneysblarney cover the individual’s actions on all other Twitter accounts or just that one? Will the court then have to issue a second against a different account? Who is to say that the account is not controlled by more than one person, is the injunction written to the person or persons behind the account? Who is the injunction actually against?

I would think that the court or the solicitors might wish to contact Twitter to do some extra research on the account such an IP address that is connected to other Twitter accounts or an email address, etc. At least that might provide an actual person to get mad at rather than just a profile. These are the kinds of situations that keep Internet investigators busy.

I do however applaud the court and the solicitors for thinking outside the box. The changing technologies do require modified approaches and this is an impressive step. It will be interesting to see how the matter is resolved in the end.