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The Law And Virtual Worlds
Via GamePolitics, commentary on the Game Tycoon and Terra Nova sites about how virtual world events and the law can interact. Property rights seem to be the largest sticking point of late, with a recent event in 2L being the focus of the discussion. From the Terra Nova article: "In introducing Point to Point (P2P) movement in Second Life, Linden Lab fundamentally altered the economic structure of the virtual space. In response to protests Linden has offered to buy back land as a form of 'compensation'. Taken together with the recent FBI reports is this the dawn of a liability culture within Second Life heralding a new form of virtual space?"
The fundamental design of SL was meant to be something like a city. You could 'teleport' to telehubs, much like riding a subway, and then you'd have to fly/drive/whatever to your final destination.
This was done on purpose, to give the world a sense of space; with point to point teleport, the entire world collapses into one dimension. Everything is next to everything. With the telehub approach, the world had some 'space' to it... you couldn't instantly arrive just anywhere. (I liked this approach a lot, you got to see things you'd otherwise miss.)
So this made telehub land worth more than other land; you had a chance to advertise and catch the eyes of passers-by. If you had land near a popular telehub, it could be quite profitable...where land out in the boondocks is worth less, from fewer eyeballs.
SL itself has been pushing the idea of virtual property and virtual ownership; they like, very much, the fact that virtual land has value, and that they can sell their virtual currency for real dollars. When they suddenly change the rules on how things work, they damage the value of things that took advantage of the old way of doing things. Changing the rules cost many of these people real money, in some cases a great deal of it.
I'm glad they stepped up to the plate and took responsibility for the damage... when they're the ones pushing the idea of virtual commerce and property, it behooves them to make people whole if they purposely damage some folks' assets.
Dear: Slashdot
I've never tried second life, and really don't get why people spend so much money on it. Is something wrong with me?
Signed: Outofloop.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/07/16
I rest my case.
-- Dan
I'm pretty sure that this is the next step in a long running, logical progression that's been gaining steam as the MMOGs have been increasing in complexity, popularity, and stability.
As for the full article, that list isn't really as complicated as one would think. The only major issue with any of the points (besides harrassment, I guess) is that the game money can be traded for real money. Except in 2L, this is frowned upon by the developers and I think it usually is outlawed in the EULA. With that in mind, it seems that only 2L is actually in any trouble since the other MMOGs' property has no official value.
2L has three potential paths, as far as I can tell at this point:
1. Drop the act: stop marketting it as an extnesion of the real world and make major policy changes regarding the relationship between in game property and real world property. This would probably be met with outrage from the community so I doubt it will happen.
2. Go all out: declare the game a true extension of the real world. This creates a whole new set of problems that are actually even worse than the one's that exist right now. Who has sovereignty over the game? What kinds of taxes are on transactions between game currency and real currency? What about minting money? I dunno about 2L, where does their money come from? There would have to be monitors for inflation to protect RL currency. What f the game crashes? This event, although even more unlikely, would mean that a set of real laws would have to be created addressing all those things, but then one must also consider if the laws affect a real person or just their avatar, etc. This would be a terrible mess and would more likely be the result of a very slow transition that a single decision.
3. Let the lawmakers work it out. This is most likely going to be the case, unfortunately. The old men in congress have absolutely no idea what goes on inside a game and have probably never played a MMOG. Yet chances are, they will be the ones who eventually decide what kind of laws are placed within any given game world. Actually no, they'll create an all encompassing set of laws that affect all game worlds, which is even worse.
Help a student gain some exp. http://www.halovariants.com/touchup/index.php
It doesnt matter what their Terms of Service says, they promoted a world for profit and thus entered contract laws. Terms of Service cant take away your legal rights.
Look how SONY's TOS listed spyware, doesnt legalize spyware to be installed.
This is remarkably akin to what has happened to land along highways that are either bypassed by Interstate freeways or land that is gobbled up to make the freeways.
Transportation and land use are closely linked in the real world with similar effects to what is happening in the simulated world. In some countries property owners can demand and receive compensation if their land is appropriated for transportation purposes. But demanding and receiving compensation because of transportation technology changes that change property values is much rarer.
A lot will depend upon the TOS when it comes to virtual properties. But if it parallels real world law, there may be some interesting problems.
MMORGs and other virtual spaces seems to better work by the rules of Anarcho-Capitalism than by current government regulations. How are lawmakers supposed to enforce common laws into the closed source code that runs the virtual environment?
Internet currently works by agreements between persons, and the "virtual" economy that results would regulate through private enforcement (parentheses because nowadays the "real" economy regulated by governments is really not different for real or virtual items).
Each new virtual world can serve as a testing ground to test the validity of anarcho-capitalist ideas.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
...at one time it _did_ cost $10 for an account.
I have never been a SL user, but it seems to me that they failed to disclose material facts they had at their disposal about an item they were selling. If I bought something under those circumstances, I would at least be miffed and quite possibly considering legal recourse myself
SL also sets itself apart from most virtual worlds in that they themselves sell in game items instead of just selling accounts and access to the world itself. I don't think a claim like this would work in most other virtual worlds, but in a situation where people did not buy an account from the company and then bought other stuff from a third party, but where they actually bought the items devalued directly from the company I think they have a good case.
Incidentally, does anyone know why they decided to do this? Was there a huge outcry against the telehubs and a big demand for Point to point?
What I don't understand, or at least I am having trouble forming it into words...let me see...
In real life (meatspace), we have property, buildings, things, people, and means of transportation, some fast, some not-so-fast, and some slow. Typically, the faster you need to go, and the further the distance, costs more money. If you are rich, you can go fast for long distances (extreme example, think Concorde). If you are poor, you can only go slow for short distances (extreme example, walking your goat to the market). Many people are in the middle somewhere. People can own property, buildings, and things, but these items occupy space, and thus value is placed on them by their location (relative to each other), size, and distance between each other. We end up with real world spaces that are seemingly valued more than other real world spaces (malls, suburbs, airports, downtown offices, etc). Regardless, we end up with distances it takes to travel to these places. Everything is constrained, it is real world. No matter how wealthy you are, you can't travel instantly between two points.
Enter the virtual world that most of us know: the internet. Here, there is no such thing as "space" - ultimately, you are only constrained by bandwidth and the size of a hard drive. The playing field is almost level (and it would be completely level if we had something closer to "peering" with our ISP's as users, instead of the assymetric drivel most of us are stuck with). Yes, there are currently things that make us continue with inequalities - more bandwidth costs more money, larger hard drives cost more, faster servers (or having hosting/colo, whatever - cost even more). Even so, most of us if we wanted to, can and do afford a virtual hosting service with so much bandwidth and a real "presence" on the internet (as a real web site), and it doesn't break the bank. Middle class on the internet is a virtual host (or business DSL and server) and a URL.
There is no concept of space, and travel is instantaneous. A click-to-click "travel" experience. Does this make Google fearful that their web site is no longer worth anything? What about other web site owners? It doesn't seem to. Everyone has a chance, and some are better at marketing themselves than others (a lot of this has to do with meatspace inter-communication as well - and it doesn't even take money - google is known by nearly everyone, but it was all mainly done by word of mouth). On the web, the value of your virtual property doesn't seem to be diminished by the fact that travel is instantaneous (or close enough).
So, why is it bad in Second Life (or other MMORPG games)? Just because things and property and buildings (presence) can now by 3D interactive experiences instead of 2D web pages? Not allowing, or restricting travel in any virtual world is an artificial limitation. Imagine if the only way to get to google was where you had to click through multiple links (imagine getting to any web site like that - it would suck! - imagine not having a URL entry box, or the ability to create bookmarks - it is difficult to imagine, because we have had such a system for so long - and it seems right). Why should there be a concept of space in a virtual world? Virtual worlds should not be constrained by concepts of space, because such a thing is meaningless in the realm of a computer. Think of it this way - in a virtual world, you can have a building the size of a phone booth, but open the door, and go inside, and the interior is the size of a skyscraper! Or up becomes down, left becomes right!
We are being f
Reason is the Path to God - Anon