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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.
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.
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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.