Law and Virtual Worlds

Greg Lastowka writes "In light of yesterday's spirited discussion of the Shadowbane hack, I thought folks might be interested in this forthcoming article about the laws of virtual worlds. The article has three parts: 1) a history of virtual worlds (e.g. Space War --> MMORPGs), 2) a theoretical analysis of whether virtual world "property" can/should be treated as legal property, and 3) an analysis of whether virtual worlds can/should give rise to any other legal rights, i.e. rights of avatars -- an idea first floated by Raph Koster. I realize there are plenty of strongly-held and divergent opinions on this, so hopefully this might add to the ongoing conversation. Also, we're revising this for publication over the summer, so we will be reading the comments for any corrections/insights/humor that we can incorporate into our revisions."

Comments

Jesus fucking tapdancing christ

[stratjakt]

Thats all we need, another tangled mess of laws to do with frigging online chatrooms and shit.

Listen.

Your virtual house in the Sims is worth nothing. No more than if I kicked in your sandcastle at the beach, or knocked over your chess board in the park.

I can be charged with mischief, or maybe even assault if I threatened you as I knock all your checkers into the sewer grate.

No more zany computer laws!

Re:Jesus fucking tapdancing christ

[Qzukk]

Your virtual house in the Sims is worth nothing.

Why is it worth nothing? Lets take a look at a progression here.

If I were to build a house in Missouri, would you deny that it has value?

If I were to spend hours building bird houses, would you deny that they have value?

If I were to spend hours making paper roses to sell on a street corner, would you deny that they have value?

- Now that we have identified that objects I produce have value, regardless of the triviality, lets move on.

If I were an author and wrote a book, would you deny that it has value?

If I wrote a book and sold it on a street corner, would you deny that it has value?

If I wrote a book and sold it online, would you deny that it has value?

If I wrote a book and only sold it online, would you deny that it has value?

If I wrote a book and only sold it online, in an electronic format which you downloaded, would you deny that it has value? (in case you're not understanding, this book has no physical manifestation aside from a series of bits in various places.)

-- If you've said No so far, then we've established that lack of a physical manifestation of what I have produced does not prevent it from having value. So, one last question:

If I build a house online, would you deny it has value? If so, why?

Now, lets assume that you said that you denied me my value. At what point was that? Was it the roses? (I have seen a number of nonprofits that employ blind or otherwise handicapped people to produce and sell these or other small trinkets) Was it the electronic version of the book? Even if you did not receive a physical object with "bookness", you obtained the output of many days of the labor of multiple people (the author, the editor(s), and so on...).

Two things

[Bame Flait]

MMORPG's and their ilk are beginning to tread into a world that has long been known to text-based mudders. As a nerd who worked in development on various text muds on and off for the past 10 years, I can see clearly the failures of those who administrate these online communities. By and large, the folks running the games of today are not the ones who have years and years of experience doing it (as most people who played text games still do as a matter of preference).

I have particular concern for those who use published tools (like NWN's Aurora toolset) to create persistent online worlds. Rarely do these individuals seem to have a firm grasp on what they're getting themselves into.. least of all on issues of virtual rights that may or may not present themselves.

Most places I have worked had agreements with builders that virtual property created for the game would become the property of the game and its administrators. As for actual items in the game, it's ludicrous to expect (in spite of the incessant everquest ebay activity) those items to be protected legally. Game administrators need to know their rights, however, to keep the few litigious individuals at bay. (How bored and obsessed do you have to be to sue because the server crashed and you lost your vorpal sword of owning +2?).

It's a thankless job running an online game.

*blinks*

[Zeriel]

Eh, I'm not sure we need any new legalese to deal with this. If you crack a system, you can be liable if that system belongs to someone else. This could easily be construed to include server-side cheats in addition to the time-honored tactic of rooting the server and changing the database (which I had been known to do in Phantasia and a few MUDs/BBSs back in the early '90s, sad to say.)

Why complicate matters further?

Further, damages (in terms of $$$) are easy to calculate...how many hours/months/billable time increments did it take a person to achieve what was destroyed? How much can be got back? Total it out, it's simple math. Perhaps not enough compensation for some basement loser who plays such things 80+ hrs/wk (like my roommate =P), but I think those folks are in the very small minority anyway.