Gamer Killed For Virtual Property

The BBC has the story of a young Chinese man who was slain over a virtual property dispute. His killer has been sentenced to life imprisonment. The Guardian Gamesblog has a deeper look at the situation with Terra Novan Ren Reynolds. From the article: "We're becoming a service property marketplace. Is this as good as a manufacturing economy? It doesn't have the moral solidity in a way. You can kind of see that shift in ethical terms. People would think that stealing an album in a shop is immoral, but stealing an mp3 isn't. The idea of property has become more intangible."

Comments

Stealing versus Copying

[GJSchaller]

"People would think that stealing an album in a shop is immoral, but stealing an mp3 isn't. The idea of property has become more intangible."

The key difference here is that the MP3 is copied, not removed. The original owner didn't lose his copy of the file / song when the other person took it, whereas in the case of the shop, the owner can no longer sell that physical media. The first is not viewed as theft becasue the owner doesn't lose it, where the second involves actually losing something. (Of course, if the MP3 was erased after it copied, that would be a different story.)

Re:Stealing versus Copying

[stienman]

The key difference here is scarcity. Unless the MP3 copyright holder can control distribution, the MP3 loses any value.

Decades ago the USA was one of the first nations to disconnect money from gold. US currency is now just as intangible as the MP3's bits, and is becoming moreso as transactions go electronic.

The value is due to the scarcity perpetuated by the control the Federal Reserve has over the creation of paper and coin currency, and further by the government "backing" the currency with a guarantee - "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."

It used to be that information was controlled simply by the fact that it was expensive to move it from place to place and process it. Now that information has become almost infinitely liquid, it has lost much of its value because it is no longer inherently difficult or expensive to deal with.

Just as currency no longer is backed by gold, information is no longer held back by cost.

This actually leads to stronger intellectual laws to provide the market with a crutch as we move forward. Obviously this will change over time, but if it were allowed to suddenly change too quickly the markets would suffer a minor collapse, instead of a slow fall that can be checked as people and businesses adjust.

The key difference here is that the MP3 is copied, not removed. The original owner didn't lose his copy of the file / song when the other person took it

The original owner and the purchasers did lose something, just not what some consider important.

A problem is that the sellers want to sell one copy to everyone, and remove any possibility of a secondary market. The buyers want to re-sell their property. This is being worked out by turning everything into a service, and the reason the market is going to a service economy is that the producers want it so badly. I suspect a middle ground will be found, but only after a consumer backlash/bubble.

-Adam

Re:I remember hearing about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just the nature of the human, and has nothing to do with with games.

I loan you something. You sell it. I'm pissed. I'm gonna do something to you because I'm pissed.

His choice of action was no different to stabbing someone due to road rage.

Re:Information is not property.

[Alsee]

Laws [] do indeed confer ownership over the information

FALSE.

You'll find court cases cited in the second half of my post, but first I'll just give general coverage of the subject in my own words.

Whether we look at copyright or patents or trademarks, the law NEVER grants "ownership" of the information entity itself. It is the legal copyright rights which are owned, not the work itself. It is the legal patent rights which are owned, not the invention itself. It the legal trademark rights which are owned, not the word or mark itself. And in every case the law only grants limited monopoly rights, never complete and exclusive control.

All such rights initially and fundamentally lie with the public. To the extent you can call information "property", it is fundamentally public property.

Copy rights, patent rights, and trademark rights are NEVER granted for the rights-holders benefit. They CANNOT be cranted for the rights-holder's benefit. The public collectively chooses to LOAN those rights to the rights-holder for the public's own benefit. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that any benefits or profits to the rights-holder is merely a means to an end, merely a side effect. That the only legally valid purpose for taking such rights from the public and giving them to the rights-holder is for the public's own benefit. Copyrights are a temporary limited bundle of rights as an incentive for an author to create and publish. Patents are a temporary limited bundle of rights as an incentive for an inventor to create and public. Trademarks exist so that the public will not be decieved about who they are doing business with, to encourage businessed to develope a good reputation and for the public to be able to rely on that reputation. Trademarks do not have a time limit, but they only remain valid so long as they actually *are* valid, unique, and useful identifiers in the mind of the public.

There are many many court cases I could cite backing all of this up. One of the best explanations of copyright law and the history of copyright law and the specific issue of "ownership of the information" vs "ownership of the copyright" can be found in SUNTRUST v HOUGHTON MIFFLIN, 2001. I encourage you to read the entire ruling, but I'll paste the most signifigant portion below:

The natural law [theory of] copyright, which is not a part of our system, implied an ownership in the work itself...

...[our] system illustrates that the author's ownership is in the copyright, and not in the work itself, for if the author had an ownership interest in the work itself, she would not lose that right if she published the book without complying with federal statutory copyright requirements. Compliance with the copyright law results in the guarantee of copyright to the author for a limited time, but the author never owns the work itself. 202 ("Ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, is distinct from ownership of any material object in which the work is embodied.").

This has an important impact on modern interpretation of copyright, as it emphasizes the distinction between ownership of the work, which an author does not possess, and ownership of the copyright, which an author enjoys for a limited time. In a society oriented toward property ownership, it is not surprising to find many that erroneously equate the work with the copyright in the work and conclude that if one owns the copyright, they must also own the work. However, the fallacy of that understanding is exposed by the simple fact that the work continues to exist after the term of copyright associated with the work has expired. "The copyright is not a natural right inherent in authorship. If it were, the impact on market values would be irrelevant; any unauthorized taking