Slashdot Mirror
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."
money can be found on people selling their DAOC, EverQuest, and even Ultima Online characters.
Sometimes I wonder... why not just buy a character and spend the rest of your time doing something more productive. After all, if you take your salary at an hourly rate, you're really losing money by playing games all day/night/forever.
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Free your mind.
For those who don't know...
A bit of relevant history! Social justice, if you will.
DISCUSS!
-Professor B.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Would you like be sitting on the chair for being a PK? Or even fragging an opponent? It's intentional murder, after all (well, that's what some lawyers say at least).
Now, do you still want physical laws applying in MMORPG or other games?
These are only virtual realities. They are not, and shouldn't be protected in the same way as physical properties.
However, if you view the value of things as how many man-hours go into it, then yes, there is some kind of value, and right associated with these characters, and products. However, just because there is time involved, does not inherently imply value, or even many rights.
The company has a say in this more than the Gov't, or the gamer. The company runs the server, the company saves your profiles. If this company were to go under, they have no reason to hold onto those profiles, as they are simply another part of their business, which they own. You have no say, no matter what you think. However, a nice company may do something like transfer their servers, code, or other necessary info to open source, and thus preserving the environment. This does not mean individual properties are saved, which is what people would want to save, most of all.
Really, if your life is so consumed by the internet as to make it a pseudo-physical part of your life, then you need to think about something else for a while. Go into a rehab facillity, something. Please get some sunshine and a tan, we all need it (me especially...).