House Telecom & Internet Hearing Gets Second Life

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/31/2008 2:00:00 PM

The House Telecommunications & Internet subcommittee Monday said its hearing Tuesday on the use of avatars in user-generated online worlds like Second Life will, itself, be recreated real time in Second Life.

The office of Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) billed it as "the first ever Congressional hearing simulcast in an Internet-based virtual world to address the evolution."

The Subcommittee in an e-mail said that "reporters with avatars" who wish to cover the hearing in the virtual world should contact the committee.

Markey has previously posted video from a hearing on YouTube and used an avatar himself to make a speech when he couldn't attend a meeting in Bali.