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United States lawmakers have spent a year preparing draft legislation for a law that would define and limit privacy for advertisers and Internet companies. The legislation will govern methods of taking information from users online and using that information to target advertisements to them. On Tuesday, they will present the draft legislation . The timing is good for such an announcement given the worry over, among other things, Facebook’s recent changes that have caused fresh worry over privacy. Sponsor According to the Wall Street Journal , two of the representatives working on the bill, Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are posting the bill on their websites Tuesday. The plan is to accept feedback from readers for two months, then revise and submit it. Elements of the draft include the following. Disclosure of what information is collected and how, how it is used and who it is shared with Opt-outs for consumers. Restrictions on collecting financial, medical, government ID information and that of children Internet and advertising companies, meanwhile, argue that any such bill risks damaging the $23 billion online advertising market. Discuss

A group of gamers is suing the creator of Second Life , accusing the company of taking away the plaintiffs’ ownership rights to virtual “land” without reasonable compensation. (Yes, the gamers are suing for something that doesn’t technically exist. But the $5 million lawsuit is very real.) The suit seeks class action status. The complaint, filed in Pennsylvania federal court says that, during the early 2000s, Second Life creator Linden Research and its founder Philip Rosedale promoted commerce and virtual property ownership within Second Life, inducing some 50,000 people to invest as much as $100 million of real money in virtual properties. Citing press releases and media interviews, the suit alleges that the company claimed it would protect members’ rights to their virtual property, and that those properties could be used as a source of revenue for the owners. “What you have in Second Life is real and it’s yours,” the suit quotes Rosedale as saying. “It doesn’t belong to us. We have no claim to it.” (The complaint is peppered with Rosedale quotes, painting the founder and former CEO as the driving force behind the property rights concept.) According to the complaint, Linden distinguished the then-struggling Second Life from other multiplayer role-playing games by trumpeting the idea of ownership. Members paid monthly fees for their holdings that the company likened to property taxes. “Linden made a calculated business decision to depart from the industry standard of denying that participants had any rights to virtual items, land and/or goods,” says the suit. The plaintiffs allege that Linden then quietly changed its contract terms and the language on its website, deleting the ownership concept. For example, a question on the FAQ page that read “Why would I want to own land?” morphed into “Why would I want to have land?” The plaintiffs were never notified of the apparent change in policy – or compensated for the loss of ownership rights. The four plaintiffs are seeking more than $5 million in damages for what they say is fraud and violations of California consumer protection laws. (Why California law? A previous lawsuit against Linden – more on that, later – ruled that Linden’s terms of service are subject to California law.)  The lawsuit comes as the nearly seven-year-old Second Life defied the general trend of decline in virtual worlds, announcing it had a record first quarter this year: Transactions hit $160 million, a 30 percent jump over the same period last year. The company also broke unique user records in March, with 826,000 – up 13 percent compared to last year. A Linden company spokesman was not immediately available for comment. A lawyer from the firm representing the plaintiffs says the case could break new legal ground, defining actual rights in virtual places. “It’s a unique case,” lawyer Robert Bracken of Pribanic Pribanic & Archinaco  told the Los Angeles Times. “It shows how the Internet has come to dominate our lives.” This isn’t Linden’s first time in court over property rights. A much-publicized 2006 case – Bragg v. Linden Research  – was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum (though not before a Pittsburgh judge ruled Linden’s terms of service subject to California law.) In the case, Pennsylvania lawyer – and plaintiff – Marc Bragg claims Linden froze his account and confiscated his assets after a land deal soured. He sought $8,000 in restitution. Second Life – Linden Lab – Philip Rosedale – Law – Los Angeles Times

How can you tell a 1973 Batard Montrachet from a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill? Or a ‘45 Mouton-Rothschild from a box of Franzia? Well, you could taste the difference, presumably. But what if you had to discern between the ‘45 and one of the top years of the Eighties? Few could. And while the difference might be taste, it certainly is money. People collect wines for a number of reasons, but one of the top ones is the fact that a good wine appreciates. If a counterfeiter is good at selling one similar wine as another it can make the difference between $2000 and $200,000. Now some wineries are using RFID to hold the counterfeiters at bay. Sponsor In the wake of junk bonds, the “irrational exuberance” of the Internet and the housing boom, all now nothing more than echoes of collapse, the wine bubble is appealing to the skeezy, of which the wine world has no paucity. So some wineries, like Vinyard 29 in Napa, California, are using small RFID tags, distinct radio frequency signatures buried in the labels. With smart phones gaining more muscle, users can often select one with an RFID reader built in. With such a phone, a consumer can just “phone up” a bottle prior to buying to make sure it’s legitimate. RFID tagging in wine started at least as early as 2004 . In 2005, Italy’s Arnaldo Caprai wineries began using the SmartCorq system. Now, the transmitters can fit in labels and foil. Security is not the only use for RFID in the wine business. eProvenance uses RFID to keep a coherent track of wines as they travel, often globally, from vintner to buyer, ensuring the wine’s safety, but also ensuring it has been kept at ideal temperatures during its voyage. Bàcaro , a high-end retailer, has installed an RFID reader in a table at their Zurich airport kiosk. The customer places a bottle on a table. Its RFID tag is scanned and the scanner instructs an adjacent screen to show information on the wine’s region, vinyard and taste. Things that go for a dime a dozen rarely serve as the proving ground for experiments with technology. But anything as valuable, easily counterfeited and constantly mobile as wine is going to attract many such experiments. RFID seems one that has gained significant purchase in that community. If robots ever do take over the world, you can look forward to an illustrated tour through the wine-making regions of the Mosel valley. Then, of course, well, it’s kill, crush, destroy time, isn’t it? Top photo by Darin Barry Bottom photo by jsgphoto Discuss

Apple plans to shut down Lala , the cloud-based streaming music service it bought in December 2009. Lala stopped accepting new users today and will close on May 31. Thanks to its unlimited music locker and innovative pricing scheme, Lala had long been a favorite of ours. Rumor is that Apple will revive the service is some form under the iTunes.com label, but as with all things Apple, this is just a rumor until Steve Jobs walks on stage and announces it. Sponsor Given the date of the shutdown, we assume that Apple will make an announcement about its plans for Lala/iTunes.com at it’s annual WWDC developer conference, which is set to begin just a week after Lala shuts down. Until then, here are 5 online music services that either allow you to stream your own music collection or give you access to large libraries of streaming music. Some of these even allow mobile streaming, which is something Lala never offered. Streaming Music Locker MP3tunes If you don’t want to be limited to playing the music that the music industry made available for on-demand streaming and you don’t mind paying a monthly fee, MP3tunes is also worth a look. Just like Lala, MP3tunes allows you to upload all your music to an online music locker and then stream it. MP3tunes offers a web interface, mobile apps and support for a range of other devices like the Chumby, Wii and Logitech Squeezebox. As we noted earlier this week , MP3tunes now offers up to 10GB of free storage. Streaming Music Services MOG For $5 a month, MOG’s users get access to more than 5 million songs on demand. At this year’s SXSW festival in Austin, MOG also announced that it will offer mobile apps for the iPhone and Android platforms in the next few months. The service also offers artist-based radio stations that are similar to Pandora’s and Slacker’s offerings. Napster and Rhapsody While the name harks back to the early days of illegal MP3 downloads, Napster is now a pretty standard MP3 store that also allows you to stream any of the 9 million songs in its library. For $7 per month, you can stream all the songs in Napster’s library and download an additional 5 DRM-free MP3 files (more if you sign up for an annual plan). Rhapsody also offers 9 million songs for on-demand streaming ($10/month), but unlike Napster, it also offers mobile apps (iPhone and Android). Do-It-Yourself Sockso You can, of course, also use your own computer at home to stream music over the Internet. Simplify Music used to be our favorite service for doing this, but the company shut down last month. A good alternative to Simplify Media is Sockso , an open source program, that can be installed on any Windows, OSX and Linux machine with very little effort (though you will need to set up the port forwarding on your router). The application gives you total control over your music experience and you can even share your music with anybody else on the Internet if you feel like doing so (and, of course, you have the legal rights to do so). For a simplified version of this, also have a look at Opera Unite , which offers a built-in streaming music server for all Opera users. Discuss

There’s only one week left until the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 , so we invite you to register now . Be a part of high-value, intimate conversations with people working throughout the world of mobile, from garage developers to industry luminaries. The summit will take place May 7, 2010 , in Mountain View, California and will be an exploration of the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications. We are looking forward to some amazing discussion and debate about mobile with participants like : Sponsor Deb Schultz of Altimeter group Patrick Chanezon, Don Dodge & Bob Meese of Google Ted Morgan of Skyhook Wireless Scott Raney and Tom Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures Adam Blum of Rhomobile Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Brent Simmons of Newsgator Technologies Patrick Burns of DASH7 Alliance As with our first event, the Real-Time Web Summit last October, the Mobile Summit will be in the “unconference” format. Laura Fittion, founder of oneforty.com , had these thoughts about ReadWriteWeb’s last summit: “There were a lot of investors there and it was a great dialogue between startups and investors. The unconference format was great because it got away from the bogus who-is in the real-time Web, and made it who-wants-to-be. You didn’t have to be big and influential to get your ideas across – if it was a good idea then it got heard. It wasn’t just Twitter, it was many things real time, defined pretty expansively.” How Unconferences Work What’s an unconference all about? Here’s the idea: Convene an incredible group of people, frame the discussion, ask important questions, then guide participants in building an agenda for the day to maximize the value of the event and minimize hot air. Martin Källström, CEO of the real-time blog and feed tracking service Twingly brought his team over from Sweden for our last event. ” Last year we happened across one of Kaliya Hamlin’s unconference events,” he told us. “We spent a couple of hours there and it was an amazing experience. The unconference format is an amazing way for things to happen; it gets everyone to lower their defenses. By opening peoples’ minds to ‘this is about whatever we want it to be about”, they look at how they can create value. ” Or, as Google’s Brett Slatkin said when using the elite FooCamp events as a way to explain the unconference format: “Foo-style [unconferencing is] always way better than talks.” As with our previous event, the Mobile Summit will be facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin , who in our opinion is the best in the business at this style of event. We’re using the same venue too, the beautiful Computer History Museum. Mobile was one of our top five trends last year and continues to undergo explosive growth , so our aim with this event is to help you navigate the opportunities. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of mobile! Because it will be you – the attendees – who ultimately set the agenda. You can begin adding your suggestions now. We will have two main tracks at this Summit, Development and Business . Here’s a sample of some of the topics we’ll explore in both of these tracks: Geo-location services – what can you do using location as a platform ? Commerce & Marketing – as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel? Content, Publishing & Recommendations – the technologies and best practices. Mobile Social Networking – how to tap into communities on mobile devices. Internet of Things – the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data. Augmented Reality – the technology and business applications of AR. Native App vs. Browser Based – Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian. If you’re a company in the mobile Internet market, you may be interested in becoming a sponsor for this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information about sponsor packages. And a big thank-you to our current event sponsors: CallFire , WorldMate , Alcatel-Lucent and Ipevo . The ReadWriteWeb team is excited about our second event and we can’t wait to discuss the opportunities in Mobile with you on May 7. You can find banners and logos to link to our event here , if you’re so inclined. We hope to see you on May 7! Discuss