Making the Case That Virtual Property Is a Bad Idea

pacergh writes "Many legal commentaries on virtual property argue that it should exist. Others argue why it can exist. None seem to explicitly spell out what virtual property will look like or how it will affect online worlds. Lost in the technology love-fest are the problems virtual property might bring. The Virtual Property Problem lays out a model for what virtual property might look like and then applies it to various scenarios. This highlights the problems of carving virtual property out of a game developer's rights in his creation. From the abstract: '"Virtual property" is a solution looking for a problem.' The article explains the 'failure of property rights to benefit the users, developers, and virtual resources of virtual worlds.'"

Comments

It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[eldavojohn]

Whether or not you 'own' anything in a game or on a server is already defined on a per game or site basis. Slashdot says I own my comments. Star Wars Galaxies' Terms of Service says Sony owns my items and characters. I have an account but I don't 'own' the virtual things that Sony puts in the game.

The paper starts out with two real world analogies:

Imagine owning Fenway Park. You sell tickets to Red Sox games. These tickets allocate seats in Fenway to individual spectators. Some of these tickets are sold by the entire season â" guaranteeing the same seat to the buyer for each game of the season.
Season ticket holders are able to renew their purchase each year. Some have done so for years and years and years. Others have had their tickets passed down amongst family members. The tickets once owned by a grandfather are now owned by the grandson.
These season ticket holders have put tremendous time and money into being able to sit in these same seats each year for each game. Should these fans be granted a property right in their seats?

If the people who sold them to you signed a contract saying you were building some sort of equity by buying those seats year after year, then you have that. That's not the case and they could probably drop your right to them for next year when they decide to resell everything in a lottery or auction. Tough luck for you if they get greedy. If you don't like it, stop buying Fenway Park tickets. Americans love to have a sense of undeserved entitlement and this is no different. Next analogy:

Now imagine living near a city park. You and a number of residents have taken it upon yourselves to help beautify the park. You plant grass, replenish flower gardens, and repair jungle gyms. The park is now a jewel in your city because of your effort.
The city, however, has decided to sell the land to a property developer. Despite your wishes, and the wishes of your friends who helped beautify the park, there is nothing you can do to stop the sale. Should you have a property right in the park you spent so much time restoring?

Again, you don't have anything in writing so you're out of luck. If you didn't realize what you were doing to begin with, you're a moron. You didn't own the park in the first place and sprucing it up doesn't give you any ownership of it. Cleaning my neighbor's yard doesn't entitle me to it; cleaning public property doesn't entitle you to it. Get a petition or run for election to change things. You don't own it because you cleaned it. Unfortunate how things played out but there it is.

In World of Warcraft, I feel I 'own' Ampere on Thunderlord server but Blizzard's Terms of Use sets me straight:

Ownership. All rights and title in and to the Service (including without limitation any user accounts, titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, "applets" incorporated into the Game Client, transcripts of the chat rooms, character profile information, recordings of games played using the Game Client, and the Game Client and server software) are owned by Blizzard or its licensors. The Game and the Service are protected by United States and international laws, and may contain certain licensed materials in which Blizzard's licensors may enforce their rights in the event of any violation of this Agreement.

(emphasis mine) I know I feel the right to him but Blizzard owns it. This has always been laid out for me and this paper is pointless in arguing for virtual property rights or against them. If you own them, they will say (like Slashdot). If you don't own them and you want to, find another game or site. I don't understand how the paper men

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[CarpetShark]

Slashdot says I own my comments. Star Wars Galaxies' Terms of Service says Sony owns my items and characters.

Personally, I find the entire concept of someone saying they own your stuff to be strange. Or, indeed, someone else saying they don't own your stuff.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[genner]

Slashdot says I own my comments. Star Wars Galaxies' Terms of Service says Sony owns my items and characters.

Personally, I find the entire concept of someone saying they own your stuff to be strange. Or, indeed, someone else saying they don't own your stuff.

It's called a rental. Why do you think you have to send them money on a monthly basis.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[A. B3ttik]

Honestly: Thank you for explaining to me exactly WTF the article was trying to say.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the EULA stated they had the right to harvest your kidneys? Do you think that make it legal? It's still an issue for the courts to decide if that clause is legal and therefore enforceable or not.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Again, you don't have anything in writing so you're out of luck. If you didn't realize what you were doing to begin with, you're a moron. You didn't own the park in the first place and sprucing it up doesn't give you any ownership of it. Cleaning my neighbor's yard doesn't entitle me to it; cleaning public property doesn't entitle you to it. Get a petition or run for election to change things. You don't own it because you cleaned it. Unfortunate how things played out but there it is."

In this case, or in the case of similar analogies, you are correct. However, it is worth noting that in a fair variety of times and legal systems, there has actually been explicit legal recognition of a form of property rights transfer that does occur along these lines.

Adverse possession is perhaps the most notable example, various flavors of homesteading are also similar, as are(in some jurisdictions) laws pertaining to squatters. The case you give seems fairly clear cut; but the broader issue to which it is related has, historically, not been so, nor has it always been decided along the lines you propose.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Pechkin000]

What if the EULA stated they had the right to harvest your kidneys? Do you think that make it legal? It's still an issue for the courts to decide if that clause is legal and therefore enforceable or not.

If you enter in a legal contract that stipulates that someone has the right to harvest your kidneys, then they have that right. Notice I said Legal contract... meaning it has to satisfy the law, therefore if its a legal to sell your kidneys under the conditions stipulated in the contract, then its invalid and yeah it would ultimately be up to the court to decide, otherwise, yeah they can harvest it

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[babywhiz]

Well, what if I pass away, and I want my account/toon to be maintained by someone else...such as a close friend.

Are you saying that in my will I can't say that 'x friend' has full access and can do as they please with my toon? (As opposed to my kids, who will just delete the character and cancel the account)

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[MaerD]

Interesting about the ownership in WoW.. Aren't you a licensor by agreeing to the license?

I don't have any real illusions about who owns things, but it is an interesting legal question...

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[2obvious4u]

Actually... There is something called "squatters rights" or Squatting. So in the case of the residents taking care of the park for years, they would have a legal claim of ownership, at least in some states. There are also property laws in regards to "right of way" or Easement.

The important quote from the article:

In common law, through the legally recognized concept of adverse possession, a squatter can become a bona fide owner of property without compensation to the owner. Adverse possession is the process by which one acquires the title to a piece of land by occupying it for the number of years necessary, dictated differently by each state. A necessary component of this transfer of ownership requires that the landowner is aware of the land occupation and does nothing to put an end to it. If the land use by the new occupant goes unchecked for the said number of years, the new occupant can claim legal rights to the title of the land. The occupant must show that the "possession is actual, open, notorious, exclusive, hostile, under cover of claim or right, and continuous and uninterrupted for the statutory period."[53]As Erin Wiegand notes, the most difficult part of claiming adverse possession on the part of squatters is the continuous part. Squatting is a very transient lifestyle and many are evicted on a frequent basis. [54] In an article regarding recent foreclosures in the United States, a current squatter in Miami stated of her housing, "It's a beautiful castle and it's temporary for me, if I can be here twenty-four hours, I'm thankful."[55] Thus, while adverse possession allows for the legality of a squatter's situation, it is not easy to win a case of adverse possession.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[themib]

I think that the World of Warcraft example really hits home for many people. (Partially due to it's market saturation.) We don't have to like it, but this sort of things is routinely included in EULAs and has been for a long time. Maybe people should learn to read them, and maybe companies should make them less legalese and more readable by the common folk. :)

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Anonymous Coward]

If you enter in a legal contract that stipulates that someone has the right to harvest your kidneys, then they have that right. Notice I said Legal contract... meaning it has to satisfy the law, therefore if its a legal to sell your kidneys under the conditions stipulated in the contract, then its invalid and yeah it would ultimately be up to the court to decide, otherwise, yeah they can harvest it

So you're saying its legal to havest someones kidneys if its legal? I never would have guessed.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[arth1]

Personally, I find the entire concept of someone saying they own your stuff to be strange. Or, indeed, someone else saying they don't own your stuff.

Personally, I find the entire concept of unconditional ownership strange.
Where there is a scarcity of objects to be "owned", ownership should follow usage -- if you don't use it, you should lose it. Society isn't enriched by hoarding.
In a digitial world, however, there is no scarcity of resources as such, and anything can be duplicated effortlessly and for almost free. What does ownership matter then?

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[polar red]

Wonder where the 'original' ownership came from; the first 'owner' of a particular piece of the world ...

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[MeatBag PussRocket]

you would be a licensee, as one to whom use of a license is given. a licensor is one to whom the right of distributing licensing is given. Of course, this could be all smoke and mirrors as the spell checker doesnt recognize licensor as even being a real word

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[inerlogic]

just because it's written in a EULA or TOS, doesn't mean it is legal, or that it would hold up in court...

don't believe everything you read, especially from people trying to make money offa you.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[davester666]

Now imagine living near a city park. You and a number of residents have taken it upon yourselves to help beautify the park. You plant grass, replenish flower gardens, and repair jungle gyms. The park is now a jewel in your city because of your effort.
The city, however, has decided to sell the land to a property developer. Despite your wishes, and the wishes of your friends who helped beautify the park, there is nothing you can do to stop the sale. Should you have a property right in the park you spent so much time restoring?

Again, you don't have anything in writing so you're out of luck. If you didn't realize what you were doing to begin with, you're a moron. You didn't own the park in the first place and sprucing it up doesn't give you any ownership of it. Cleaning my neighbor's yard doesn't entitle me to it; cleaning public property doesn't entitle you to it. Get a petition or run for election to change things. You don't own it because you cleaned it. Unfortunate how things played out but there it is.

I find this part funny. A while ago, the city I live in had a strike by union city workers, and it went on for a while, so the local residents of a neighborhood got together and cleaned up a small patch of earth in a local park with some flowers (pulled weeds, removed dead plants, replaced them with live plants). When the union heard about it, some of their members went there and destroyed that area, and the union claimed it was done because the 'workers' that performed the work were non-union.

Then, after a whole batch of negative press over them doing this, some of their members went back on (supposedly on their own time), and re-planted the area.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Brian Gordon]

It should be pointed out that some of the WoW terms of use aren't enforceable: "transcripts of the chat rooms" "character names" "applets incorporated into the Game Client" "recordings of games played"

Transcripts of the chat rooms seems the easiest to strike down. The argument I'd use is that it's not material to the service, it disproportionately disadvantages the client party for no good technical or business reason, and Blizzard offers no compensation for what may be something of considerable value. It seems especially promising that, unlike the character/game aspect that could fairly be covered by similar terms, chat -basic text communication- is extensively protected by various communication acts.

Character names is ludicrous. You can't own a word, unless you register it as a trademark, which is restricted to actually trading under it.

"applets incorporated into the Game Client" is none of their business. If someone writes a Lua addon and drops that text file into a WoW directory, it doesn't automatically become blizzard's property. This is one of those fine-print contract clauses like "any paint cans you bring into the garage we're building you automatically become ours", which is just ridiculous.

Recording of games played.. hm well they might have a claim to the game's art (maybe even the interface if they really stretch it) but that's a copyright claim (i.e. you can't distribute), it doesn't mean they literally own the video file on your hard drive.

I like this sentence from wikipedia:

Typically, such a contract is held to be unenforceable because the consideration offered is lacking or is so obviously inadequate that to enforce the contract would be unfair to the party seeking to escape the contract

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[oldspewey]

Human civilization has a long and ignoble history of the "entitled class" creating artificial scarcity even where there is no scarcity of resources as such, in order to further enrich themselves and to consolidate power. Why would you expect the digital world be any different?

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[oldspewey]

This was all covered quite some time ago by Monty Python

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In virtual worlds, "game economics" apply. The rules of soccer could, for instance, state that "Each team shall automatically receive infinite points and be declared 'King of all Cosmos and Universal Omniwinner." If that actually were the case, though, the game wouldn't be worth playing. In the virtual context, scarcity is artificially created(for that matter, every property of an object is artificially created) for the purpose of making the virtual environment more entertaining, interesting, or pedagogically useful.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[cpt kangarooski]

So in the case of the residents taking care of the park for years, they would have a legal claim of ownership, at least in some states.

No, I don't think so. They don't appear to be excluding the city from the park, nor do they seem to have ever claimed the park as their own until the very end; they're just donating caretaking services to the city.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[mrisaacs]

Squatters' rights are not universal and vary from place to place. In some locales the test is harder than others. In most squatters' rights can be challenged. None of the examples in the article clearly indicated a case where squatter was involved.

In the case of season tickets - you're essentially a leasee, and subject to the terms of whatever rental contract you have with the actual property owner - you can be "evicted" w/o refund and have privileges revoked for a variety of causes. Read the fine print on the tickets.

In the case of "beautifying" a park - there have been cases where such actions have lead to charges of vandalism and destruction from the property owners - in my home town such unsanctioned beatification has often lead to removal of the modifications or even chain link around the property in order to avoid event the whiff of a squatter case. Even in the event where changes are sanctioned by a locality there is no guarantee the local authorities won't decide to sell or alter the property after you've invested considerable time and effort.. There are usually caveats when the permissions are given. They may allow you to use the property or even alter it, but will not relinquish ownership and disposition rights.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[cmburns69]

Of course squatters are evicted on a regular basis. If they weren't, they'd end up owning the property!

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Anonymous Coward]

IANALY - Here's my take, you need to show "adverse" possession. I would argue that giving someone an effective 20-year license to the seats (for example if they had continued to purchase seasons tickets for 20 years) would not meet the "hostile" requirement that the occupant must show.

I'm sure there are also many other counters to the "Squatters Rights" argument at common law.

I love bending the interpretation of the law as much as I think you might, but I don't think this one will work.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[I'm not really here]

Problem with this:

I don't actively use my electronics in my basement. It's been years since the Atari 2600 has been hooked up, but I'll likely be hooking it up in the next couple of months now that I have moved to a bigger place.

When, exactly, does my ownership of those objects suddenly end due to lack of use, and who comes to take them away from me (and how do they know to take them from my home? What if they take the wrong things?). Absolute ownership is the only thing that works... See: American Indian concept of not owning land versus settlers concept of ownership... American Indians didn't believe anyone owned any land, so when it became difficult to keep others off their hunting grounds, they moved to keep the peace. The settlers ended up pushing them into a corner (yes, oversimplified and missing the gory details, I know!).

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[brkello]

You aren't countering his point. He was saying you don't own something unless you have something in writing that legally says you do. You stated a law that might give some squatters rights in some states. Therefore, they have it in writing that they have some legal rights (just as the GP said). So you are just nitpicking something dumb without adding anything to the conversation.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[CarpetShark]

I think you have Sony's work on their game in mind. We're talking about PLAYER'S contribution to games in general, and USER's contributions to websites in general.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Anonymous Coward]

If the people who sold them to you signed a contract saying you were building some sort of equity by buying those seats year after year, then you have that. That's not the case and they could probably drop your right to them for next year when they decide to resell everything in a lottery or auction. Tough luck for you if they get greedy. If you don't like it, stop buying Fenway Park tickets. Americans love to have a sense of undeserved entitlement and this is no different. Next analogy:

Not next, your last point is stupid. If ballpark owners screwed season ticket holders there would be outrage and rightly so. Few would dispute ownership of the seats. The issue would be pissing off your biggest fans and power brokers in a city that may not only support but also directly subsidize your existence. I can go downstairs at fart at someone's desk LOUDLY. That is my right. Doing such is universally stupid, like your "point". This is a "should not do" issue not a "can not do" issue.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Chibi Merrow]

cleaning public property doesn't entitle you to it.

Actually, in some states this isn't true. The process is called "Homesteading."

In my home state, when property is laid out it is common to leave a "right of way" area to make sure public works can get to things like coulées to maintain them. This "right of way" area is technically owned by the local government, but they usually don't bother to maintain it unless someone complains. If a home-owner cares for the land, after a certain period of time they can extend their property line onto it legally, as long as some allowance was still made to ensure the work crews could still reach the area they needed to. For my grandfather, this meant he mowed the grass there for a few years, then he moved his fence back onto that property and just installed a gate big enough for a truck to drive through.

Now, other than that, I agree with you. It's Blizzard's ball, they can decide to take it and go home, no matter how much effort you put into playing with it or making it "better". It's all spelled out in contract and honestly should be common sense.

The only case I might disagree is if someone like Blizzard started laying claim to creative works that came out of your playing of the game... For instance, some really cool fantasy stories have come out of people's home-grown D&D campaigns. It'd be a real shame if someone took their character concepts from an MMO, developed a storyline from it that obviously took influences from the original work, but didn't actually infringe upon its copyright, and then found said company claiming that they now owned this "derivative" work because of some silliness in the EULA. Luckily for those guys, Blizzard doesn't seem interested in doing that... But I wouldn't put it past SOE, for instance...

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Knuckles]

In virtual worlds, "game economics" apply. The rules of soccer could, for instance, state that "Each team shall automatically receive infinite points and be declared 'King of all Cosmos and Universal Omniwinner." If that actually were the case, though, the game wouldn't be worth playing.

That's nonsense, though. I know that this is how many people feel who grew up in capitalist economies, me sometimes included, but it's still nonsense that won't make you happy. See, the game would be still worth playing because for the actual players it's about playing first and foremost, not winning or making money.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Knuckles]

Seems to me that the Indian system worked better and the settlers' system is the broken one, but that's me.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[roguetrick]

Thats what the Character Transfer Service is for, now you can even transfer your houses in your datapad!

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[dangitman]

Wonder where the 'original' ownership came from; the first 'owner' of a particular piece of the world ...

A big guy with a rock.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear: The hypothetical set of "bad rules" I gave was one that wouldn't facilitate play, both teams would win immediately. That was intended to be why they were bad rules. Good rules are rules that induce "playing"(often, though not always, by means of holding out the promise of winning).

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[conlaw]

Your analysis reads like that of a practicing attorney--succint and well-reasoned--but then you say

How this author went on a 33 page 'analysis' about this, I'll never know.

If you'd suffered through three years of law school, you should know that almost every law school professor can write 33 pages of 'analysis' on just about any subject and if they can find a case or two to cite, they can usually drag it out to fifty or sixty pages.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[pacergh]

Needing to write this paper does seem a bit silly. So why write it? Why go through a lengthy analysis of why it is a bad idea?

Because legal commentators and law students who are fans of virtual worlds have written numerous arguments arguing for some kind of property right in virtual objects. This paper provides a counterweight to those arguments for virtual property rights.

The paper does not ignore EULAs as a governing contract. Rather, it puts those aside in order to apply the theories of those who argue for virtual property rights in order to better understand whether it is a good idea at all.

The conclusion is that even if virtual property advocates had their way, which includes ignoring EULAs as contracts governing ownership, then the imagined benefits won't appear. In other words, all the noble reasons for carving a new 'property right' out of virtual objects will not be satisfied by actually going through with it.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Anonymous Coward]

See, the game would be still worth playing because for the actual players it's about playing first and foremost, not winning or making money.

And this is where the player's ownership comes in. If the player decides to stop playing the game along with many more players then the game is no longer worth playing. Your ownership is in your time of playing the game and nothing else. It fits perfectly into what some people argue as capitalism, "Vote with your wallet."

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Jewbird]

Hence reconciling the existence of an omnipotent god who loves us with human suffering.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Planesdragon]

That's not the case and they could probably drop your right to them for next year when they decide to resell everything in a lottery or auction

Since we're talking Fenway Park, let's go to NY State law. But let's move from Fenway, to a house you own outside of the city.

Your neighbor puts up a fence that overlaps your property. You never follow up on it, and don't get him to admit that, yes, it's your property. (Or even tell him that it's yours.) Ten years pass. Guess what? That sliver of land that his fence is on is now HIS property.

Let's shift away from real property to personal property. You hand me your bat, along with a piece of paper that says "I will not ever throw away, damage, or use eldavojohn's bat." Ten years pass, and I throw away the bat. You, knowing the bat was really worth a million dollars, sue me. I get your case thrown out of court, because (1) I didn't get anything out of it, so that piece of paper isn't a real contract, and (2), it's not your bat anymore.

Heck, let's shift a wee bit further. You run an MMO, and I play it. Only, I play it from a state that doesn't enforce EULA's on MMO's. Guess what? Now the COURT gets to decide what is and isn't my property in that game you run.

Property rights are not now, and never have been, strictly about contracts.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Planesdragon]

Seems to me that the Indian system worked better and the settlers' system is the broken one, but that's me.

the Indians were at the mercy of nature to prevent starvation. If the "settlers" had not come about, they would have either died, been wiped out, or advanced their own civilization by now, anyway.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[genner]

What if the EULA stated they had the right to harvest your kidneys? Do you think that make it legal? It's still an issue for the courts to decide if that clause is legal and therefore enforceable or not.

It's called a donor card and yes it's legal if you agreed to it.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[FooAtWFU]

More like "a big mean fish who found something tasty to eat, and chased someone other fish off" but possibly you could talk about this with single-celled organisms too. Territory is a basic trait of many, many animals. Ever owned dogs, or know someone who does? Ever have them, ah, mark their territory? Or get angry when someone tries to appropriate their favorite stick, bone, or squeaky toy? Cats, too. The only difference with humans is scale.

And some "ownership" concept is necessary for functioning societies in our world. Humans can invest significantly in the improvement of something (plowing a field, making a drainage system, digging up rocks to get metal to refine it and create useful tools) but some concept of ownership is nearly a prerequisite for there to be any meaningful incentive for someone to engage in these activities (lest your neighbor | friendly local barbarian raiding party | wolves come steal it all away leaving you bereft).

We've taken matters to new extremes with Capitalism when making billion-dollar factories for cars and iPods and such. Now, on the other hand, the non-exclusivity experienced by "virtual property" (or even "intellectual property")is a different matter, and calls for different paradigms of responsibility. Patents and copyright attempt (or at least attempted originally, insert your modern interpretation here) to create a hybrid best-of-both-worlds approach: you get to own and exploit some invention or creation for N years so you have an incentive to create it, and then it becomes a free-for-all and everyone benefits.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Knuckles]

the Indians were at the mercy of nature to prevent starvation.

Just like any other farm economies at that time, i.e., more or less everyone. And like we are if your think it through.

If the "settlers" had not come about, they would have either died, been wiped out, or advanced their own civilization by now, anyway.

Why? They survived for thousands of years, until assaulted by a genocidal conqueror. Why would they not have survived a few hundred years more, until "now"? They might have advanced their way of life, probably not fundamentally, but what's wrong with that.

Yeah, you are somewhat right, they were "wiped out", but that's kind of my point: being wiped out by a genocidal enemy does not necessarily make the enemy correct or its culture desirable.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[quadrox]

His point likely being that whether such a thing is legal can be determined in advance by looking at all applicable laws, instead of waiting for a lawsuit to happen.

Part of the point probably also was, that just because something seems horrible to you, that doesn't mean it can't be legal. There may be a law that says that you can claim kidneys in EULAS (probably not with those specific words). In that case it's not so much a matter for the court to decide, as the law (in this hypothetical case) is already clear on the matter.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[quadrox]

Not if he meant an explicit form of contract for that specific property when saying "something in writing". Which is hardly a too far fetched assumption to make.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Anonymous Coward]

Adverse possession takes *a lot* more than that. Seriously, a crap-ton more. It also requires that you adversely possess for a long time. Oh, and you can't adversely possess government property, like a park. And there are a bunch of other exceptions.

In summary, how the fuck did we end up talking about adverse possession in a discussion about virtual property?

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[Throtex]

I think you'll find that the really important quote from the article, as regards residents taking care of a park for years, is:

Adverse possession does not typically work against property owned by a government agency.

Not to mention, even using the quote you gave, that the example probably fails at least the exclusivity requirement.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[mrchaotica]

In America, the British (and other colonial powers) took the land from the indigenous people by force and claimed it in the name of the Crown. The Crown, in turn, granted/leased/sold (not sure of the terminology) it to the colonists (such that colonists had non-alloidal ownership, which they could sell amongst themselves but reverted to the Crown if they failed to pay taxes, died without heirs, etc.). Then the colonists became revolutionaries and took the land from the Crown by force, which works out the same as I just explained before except that the ownership ultimately reverts to either the Federal government or the government of each state (I'm not sure which, and it could vary between states) instead of the British Crown.

There is such a thing as "alloidal title," where property is owned absolutely (in that not even the government has legal authority to take it away, no matter what), but that's extremely rare (at least in the U.S. -- it's more common in "civil law" countries) and, of course, it could still be taken by force.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[mrchaotica]

Damnit. It's "allodial" title, not "alloidal." Dunno why I spelled it wrong; I guess I'm too used to seeing the "-oid" suffix in scientific terms...

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[wall0159]

It's always important to remember that everything that is now 'owned' was once communal, and that at some point in history someone put up a fence around some communal land and said: "This land that was once everyone's is now mine only." Property as a concept is arbitrary and synthetic (though that doesn't, in itself, make it a bad thing).

This is where I think something like squatters' rights comes into play. If someone owns some property, and they are tied so loosely to it that some else can eke out a living there for many years, then they don't in practise actually own it -- the squatter does. I think it's fair for the owner of neglected property to forfeit their right to it - they demonstrate their lack of use for it.

I'm not quite sure how this relates to digital and intellectual property, but to me neither of those really seem any more arbitrary or contrived than physical property..

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[ComaVN]

My take on the EULA is not so much Blizzard trying to sell your precious chat logs for profit, but for preventing some asshole from suing Blizzard for displaying his character's name on their website.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[halber_mensch]

I think the entitled class had mod points. Seriously, troll? This is a valid observation. I'd rectify this if I had mod points today.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[SL Baur]

People who own things take care of them. Private property is a Good Thing.

Actually, no one owns property in the US today. It's only rented, though the rent is called "property taxes". Just decide to stop paying property taxes and see how long you are permitted to keep "your" property.

In California it's a bit worse, because mineral "rights" are retained by the government.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[SL Baur]

I had no idea such a thing existed in the US. Somehow it never got mentioned in my public education. Thanks for the reference and never mind your misspelling, this spelling and grammar nazi forgives you.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[mrchaotica]

It wasn't in my education either; I somehow found it on Wikipedia one day.

Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It

[2obvious4u]

I don't know if any of you go back and read your old posts, however my only point in bringing up squatters rights and easements is the principle behind these laws. I wasn't trying to nit-pick. The idea is that if you let someone use something for a period of time, eventually they own the rights to it. It is a small part of property law that many people don't pay attention to but does exist and does serve a purpose in society. I was just purposing the idea that something like this could exist in intellectual property as well.

B b b but....

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's only a copy

IP

[Threni]

What about "intellectual property" (an unusual choice of words given that most discussion of it these days seems to involve Hollywood movies or the audio output of the likes of Britney Spears).

Re:IP

[mcgrew]

What about "intellectual property" (an unusual choice of words given that most discussion of it these days seems to involve Hollywood movies or the audio output of the likes of Britney Spears).

It's a disingenuous choice of words in the US, where you don't OWN the work you have copyrighted. You merely have a "limied time" monopoly on its distribution before it goes into the public domain, which is the reason put forth for giving Congress the power to grant patents and copyrights.

It also says "authors and inventors", meaning that the copyright laws that say that recorded musical performances are "works for hire" are unconstitutional. John Lee Hooker was the author of "House Rent Blues", not his record label. And nowhere does it say congress has the power to pass a law saying that copyright can be passed on to his heirs.

Copyright is an incentive for authors and inventors to come up with original works that will benefit society. Art, like science, is built on what came before, and the insane copyright lengths and idea that these works are somehow "property" stifle creativity.

Re:IP

[Foobar of Borg]

What about "intellectual property" (an unusual choice of words given that most discussion of it these days seems to involve Hollywood movies or the audio output of the likes of Britney Spears).

Indeed. It's as bad as "South Park" being rated "for Mature Audiences"!

It's existed for a long time

[genner]

All software everywhere is virtual property. All databases are virtual property. All the information on a database is virtual property. Your WOW charatcer is an entry in a database. It belongs to someone. This is not a new idea. There's just a lot of argueing over who owns what.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[Mad Merlin]

Your bank account's balance is an entry in a database.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[Xtravar]

My medical record is under my control despite being in others' databases, but I suppose that's a specially legislated 'virtual property' right.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[maxume]

Paper money is a collective delusion (it is a useful one, but money is only worth anything if you can exchange it for something with intrinsic value).

Re:It's existed for a long time

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It'll be trickier than that, though. A virtual object's value is derived, more or less, from its "scarcity context": that is, within the confines of a given virtual environment(swords in WoW are not worth less just because CoD2 has guns), how many copies of the item exist, how hard it is to make new ones, what percentage of the population has one, or has something better, or has something worse, how likely it is that you will lose your copy, etc.

This isn't too different from real property, which is also affected by scarcity, complementary and substitute goods, etc., except for one crucial detail: In a virtual world, basically all elements of the "scarcity context" are purely matters of choice and under the complete control of somebody. In the real world, the scarcity context can change; but it is possible to make reasonable inferences about how it will change(because changes require scientific advances, political changes, market movements, or the like). In virtual environments, the scarcity context is entirely dictated by the whim and pleasure of whoever controls the virtual environment.

This makes "ownership" more complicated. If, for instance, Ford could change the color, passenger capacity, cargo room, and gas mileage of any car, by any amount, at any time, what it means to "own" a car would be quite different. In the virtual world, every single item is like that.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[inerlogic]

exactly....
and if the bank goes out of business tomorrow, guess what.... "your" money is *poof* gone...

Re:It's existed for a long time

[nine-times]

All software everywhere is virtual property.

Well yes, in a sense, all intellectual property is virtual property, but then look what's happening to intellectual property. It's having to fight to keep its value high by creating artificial scarcity of copies of that IP. There's no natural scarcity anymore, at least not for creating new copies once the first copy is created.

Your WOW character may technically belong to someone, but there's no natural limit to how many times he could be replicated. On the other hand, insofar as scarcity is maintained artificially, there's no assurance that your character won't just evaporate one day and complete cease to exist. How much value do you want to assign to an asset like that?

Re:It's existed for a long time

[servognome]

Intrinsic value is an individual delusion. Value varies from person to person, food is more valuable than shiny gems to somebody who is starving.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[maxume]

Not in the U.S. (under certain limits anyway, large accounts can substantially disappear), all U.S. banks are required to participate in the FDIC, usually the accounts are simply transferred to another institution (under some arrangement with the FDIC).

Re:It's existed for a long time

[maxume]

That's clever, but there is a difference: if I have $5 and you decide that it isn't worth anything anymore, I don't have anything. If I have 5 pounds of grain and you decide that it isn't worth anything anymore, I can still eat it.

(said comparison takes place on a desert island or something, where there aren't a bunch of other people involved. Put down that knife, I am not a tasty meal.)

Re:It's existed for a long time

[Knuckles]

Not in Germany, it would take the state to go bankrupt to void a savings account.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

The physical or even logical amount of money it represents is not.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

My bank account is a specialized type of loan mechanism -- in particular, it's a loan from me TO the bank. It's precisely as "virtual" as is the currency system itself; if I get antsy, I can in short order request my money back, either in physical currency or in a transfer to another instrument or even to another holder entirely.

My WoW character is, by the contract signed when I started playing, non-transferable. I can't ask to get it transferred to a flash drive, nor can I liquidate it in any other fashion. Under contract, I'm obliged not to allow another player to access it (this happens; nevertheless, it's a breach of contract that Blizzard doesn't always follow through on, especially if the new account holders keep paying their bills). Blizzard holds the rights, and they could delete my character profile tomorrow for any arbitrary reason, and I would be SOL, at least according to the EULA. If the bank deleted my account because they didn't like my face (i.e. not because of bankruptcy or some other recognized valid reason), they'd be held liable for the missing money and possibly extra damages in the appropriate legal venue.

Loans, in all their forms, are a long-established type of "thing" that every legal system recognizes as "property." Loans have a suite of basic rights, such that in certain cases, these assumed rights can legally override the fine print in their establishing documents. So far, I'm not aware of courts having done any work to establish a framework for analyzing rights to diverse types of virtual property. It's also worth mentioning that most online communities are operated as service companies; their maintenance of your character data is analogous to a bowling alley or a golf course offering to retain information on past performance, possibly qualifying you for special privileges such as access to tournaments and prizes. It's a nice customer service, but as it happens you don't have a "right" to have your name on the clubhouse wall of fame, and you don't have a "right" to your WoW character in the same sense that you have a "right" to be repaid by the bank you loaned your money to.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[inerlogic]

your money doesn't exist....
it hasn't since we left the gold standard....

it is all virtual....

Re:It's existed for a long time

[inerlogic]

good for germany...

Re:It's existed for a long time

[genner]

Your WOW character may technically belong to someone, but there's no natural limit to how many times he could be replicated. On the other hand, insofar as scarcity is maintained artificially, there's no assurance that your character won't just evaporate one day and complete cease to exist. How much value do you want to assign to an asset like that?

$14.99 a month.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[genner]

Your bank account's balance is an entry in a database.

Technically no. A banks database only keeps track of how much of the green stuff they're holding on to for you. Your bank balance is made up of physical currency. That's why they hand you a little envelope when you make withdrawls and not a floppy disk.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[servognome]

That's clever, but there is a difference: if I have $5 and you decide that it isn't worth anything anymore, I don't have anything. If I have 5 pounds of grain and you decide that it isn't worth anything anymore, I can still eat it

You can always use your $5 to start a fire to keep warm or as a crude water filter. Depending on the conditions, this may be more important to survival than the grain.
Intrinsic value is dependent on a person's imagination.

(If you have MacGuyver skills you can turn the cash into a new boat to escape the island.)

Re:It's existed for a long time

[jellybear]

Yes, and you can perform database operations on that number 5 that's in one of your records. Whee.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[maxume]

Technically, they don't have enough currency on hand to cover their deposits.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[LordLucless]

Have you seen the US' national debt?

Re:It's existed for a long time

[genner]

Technically, they don't have enough currency on hand to cover their deposits.

If you have less than $250000 in a US bank the government insures it.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[maxume]

Yes, but that is different than actually having cash equal to their deposits. "Your bank balance is made up of physical currency" at least implies that they are actually holding cash for you, which they are not. If you had left out 'physical', there would be less room to quibble, but you put it in.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[SL Baur]

This makes "ownership" more complicated. If, for instance, Ford could change the color, passenger capacity, cargo room, and gas mileage of any car, by any amount, at any time, what it means to "own" a car would be quite different. In the virtual world, every single item is like that.

That's an excellent car analogy. Blizzard has done something exactly like that with 3.2. They've cut prices on ground mounts (vehicles) to a tiny fraction of what they used to be. Do I deserve a refund because I can now buy the epic ground mount for under 50g, when some of my characters bought them for 540g? Blizzard doesn't think so and neither do I. I don't currently use any of the regular flying mounts that just had their speed almost tripled, but my wife is happier.

I'm kind of upset with what they did a few months ago with the Kalu'ak fishing pole - nerfed the price to almost free, down from ~100g, and removed all the damage dealing capability. Oh well.

The unintended consequence of "Virtual Property" is probably going to be that none of us get to play any more and I see that as a bad thing - WoW, Second Life, <insert your MMO here>.

Re:It's existed for a long time

[SL Baur]

On the other hand, insofar as scarcity is maintained artificially, there's no assurance that your character won't just evaporate one day and complete cease to exist. How much value do you want to assign to an asset like that?

That kind of sounds like the current crisis in financial derivatives markets, no?

Re:It's existed for a long time

[nine-times]

Well no, not quite, not as far as I understand. Yes, it's true that prices were made artificially high as a result of various things, but not exactly because of artificial scarcity, and those assets didn't exactly evaporate in the sense that a WOW character would if the service shut down. They may have become much less valuable, but they didn't cease to exist.

Metaverse from Snow Crash

[Ksevio]

Of course the value in virtual property by itself is not worth much. It's trivial to add another server to expand the property available. What is more valuable is the property's relation to other properties. In Snow Crash there was the Metaverse with a virtual city. It was mentioned that the most expensive property was at the center where all the hip places to hang out (as well as the geek/wealthy neighborhoods). At the other side of the world there was lots of emptiness - suggesting that the property value, while in supply, was not in demand.

Re:Metaverse from Snow Crash

[Anonymous Coward]

Good example.

Here's another one. Take a site like Google. "Real estate" in high demand/value would be an advertisement on their main search page. It's not so much due to scarcity of resources, but relative position in regards to where people traffic. It bears a lot of similarity to real property, as in the business motto "location, location, location". The big difference is that with virtual property, the ONLY part that matters is its "location", where in real life property has value in of itself.

It's not a failure of property rights

[MikeRT]

It's that traditional property rights law and jurisprudence is overkill. The companies that run these services are more than competent at adjudicating disputes between users, and should be the ones doing it since the "goods and services" neither really leave their company property, nor can exist outside of their property/products.

One of the reasons the law is so fubared is because everyone wants everything laid out in advance, in exacting detail. Well, between that and the unwillingness to accept the arbitration of mediators, elders, family, neighbors, etc. is why society is so litigious. It is now de rigueur to immediately start lawyering up because the only authority that most people will truly accept is the government and its courts.

Re:It's not a failure of property rights

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that people won't accept the authority of anything else, it's that if they don't like the "ruling", they can keep going up the food chain and asking a "higher" authority to settle it. Since the Federal government is the supreme law of the land in the US, it should come as no surprise that things eventually end up at that level. Now, one might argue that people "jump" right to an end-game scenario rather than "try" the more local authorities, but is it truly an unwillingness to deal with them or simply an acknowledgment that the likelihood is that whoever loses will simply up the ante anyway?

Re:It's not a failure of property rights

[SirLanse]

If they dont like the ruling of the Supreme court they still get pissy and look for some where else to sue.

Re:Here's the case:

[Foobar of Borg]

I see what you did there. Have trouble keeping the lint off your black shirt?

Virtual Property is an old concept

[popo]

Stocks, Pension plans, Intellectual property rights, Bank accounts -- all of these things are virtual.

We can try to pretend that they represent something tangible -- but that tangible thing is only a piece of paper which in turn, represents the intangible.

When we talk about "virtual property" today, we're talking about something very similar: a right or access to something intangible which you control.

This is a very old concept. Some might say, "yes, but this property has no bearing on the 'real' world". But this is a shortsighted argument, and one that any insightful person can see will become increasingly blurry with time.

The only thing that makes "in game" property different is that the "right" or "access" exists within a framework and/or platform which in turn is the intellectual property of another/larger entity.

But virtual property has always been a "good" idea, and it isn't anything new.

Re:Virtual Property is an old concept

[nine-times]

But virtual property has always been a "good" idea, and it isn't anything new.

Yes, but in the past, virtual property was generally some kind of representation of real property somehow. Stocks are "virtual property" except that they represent ownership in a real company. If that company goes out of business and they liquidate all their assets, your stocks will still be worth some non-zero amount of money, which represents the value of your share of those liquidated assets. We could shut down the stock exchange and, insofar as you still own shares of ownership of various companies, those stocks are still worth something. If, on the other hand, one of these games shuts down their servers, there's nothing.

Now I'm not saying it's as simple as that. As long as people are perceiving value in "virtual property" and are willing to pay for it, there's going to be some kind of economy about it. But still, it's not quite exactly the same as the "virtual property" that we're used to.

Re:Virtual Property is an old concept

[FiloEleven]

Some might say, "yes, but this property has no bearing on the 'real' world". But this is a shortsighted argument, and one that any insightful person can see will become increasingly blurry with time.

Could somebody mod me insightful so that I will understand?

Alternatively, I will settle for an explanation.

Re:Virtual Property is an old concept

[avandesande]

The simplest example of this is money or check, which is virtual in the sense that it represents a promise.

Re:Virtual Property is an old concept

[brkello]

Umm, my bank account doesn't pretend to represent something tangible. It does represent something tangible. I can go in and get stacks of $100 bills any time I want.

When we are talking virtual property, one example is your MMORPG characters. I can't withdraw anything from Blizzard without violating the ToS since it belongs to them as is clearly stated. In this instance, this property has no bearing on the real world (at least in the sense that I have no rights to it). If it did, then I would be taxed on my loot from Ulduar. That would be stupid. And unless a game is set up to do real world money trade with its consumers, it should stay that way.

It annoys me that you state your arguments as "any insightful person can see". Virtual property is only blurry when you talk about it in a general sense. When you are talking about a specific instance, it shouldn't be blurry. It should be stated in the legal documents what rights you do and don't have.

Re:Virtual Property is an old concept

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Let's throw out the one that's not like the others 'intellectual property rights". Stocks, pension plans, bank accounts all have a defined monetary worth at any period in time and although they are represented by a number on a screen or a piece of paper, they can all be consistently transferred to cash. Even though the title to a car is "virtual", I still own something tangible, the car.

As far as 'intellectual property rights" go you only "own" those because our government defends you ability to make money off of them based on exclusivity. Can you stop me from using your intellectual property rights? Nope. Not if I use it under fair use. There is no "fair use" clause for pension plans (although unions would argue that point).

All I want is one or the other. You want it to be property; you pay taxes on it like everyone else. That's right. You want your "sword of 1000 truths" or "second life" island to be property, expect to claim it for tax season.

Re:Virtual Property is an old concept

[Anonymous Coward]

I can go in and get stacks of $100 bills any time I want.

I can get a piece of paper the size of a $100 bill for way less than 100 dollars. Hell, I could get a piece of paper made out of the same material as that $100 bill with the same ink used to write "money" in big block letters on it for less than 100 dollars. The money in your wallet isn't any more tangible than the balance entry in your bank's database. The only difference is the medium used to represent it.

Re:Virtual Property is an old concept

[SL Baur]

Some might say, "yes, but this property has no bearing on the 'real' world". But this is a shortsighted argument, and one that any insightful person can see will become increasingly blurry with time.

Could somebody mod me insightful so that I will understand?

/target FiloEleven
/cast Spell of Insight

First of all, check out the Grace Commission report - http://www.uhuh.com/taxstuff/gracecom.htm

Income taxes do not fund anything in the budget. It is used to take US$ out of circulation (and thus contain inflation).

Second. No one "owns" corporate stock in the traditional sense of the word unless you have made very special arrangements. Check out DTCC, start here - http://tycoonreport.tycoonresearch.com/articles/498930687/who-really-owns-your-stocks-hint-it-s-not-you
All stock in the US is a Virtual Property unless you have physical stock certificates in hand.

There's more, but that's enough for now. The next place for you to look at is how the "Federal" Reserve (which is privately owned and not Federal) does inter-bank transfers.

Re:Virtual Property is an old concept

[SL Baur]

Umm, my bank account doesn't pretend to represent something tangible. It does represent something tangible. I can go in and get stacks of $100 bills any time I want.

And if the bank isn't open?

Been there done that. You are dangerously naive brother slashdotter. Banks can close at any time and I have suffered through a bank holiday before in Japan when I had *no* access to my hard earned yen.

Your Blizzard comments are spot on though.

May I ask why you think banks and bankers are perfect?

Wrong kind of properties to explore here.

[girlintraining]

Virtual property may have a tangible value in a few circumstances, which are mostly tech-dependent; But rather than list hard rules, let's give some examples where there's a real cost;

The Domain Name System (DNS). The system has the constraint that only certain combinations of words or letters are easily remembered. For example, "www.fjoi323r9023vvnd.com" fails the test, while "www.buy-my-cheap-useless-crap.com" is not. The limits are mostly due to limitations of language, human memory, and legal considerations (ex. trademark and copyright law). As a result of this -- a domain name can have a real, material cost.

IP Address space. ipv4 doesn't have enough available addresses to account for every device that can/will be/is connected to the internet. It's a finite resource. This is a technical constraint caused by early planning decisions and the cost of infrastructure upgrades. Once that limit is met, the laws of supply and demand state that a price-point will be established. The infrastructure won't be upgraded until the cost of those IP addresses exceeds the cost of the upgrade to a different protocol (ipv6) -- despite the fact that most equipment today is capable of transitioning. The real cost is administrative, not technical.

Examples where "virtual property" is entirely or largely artificial; MP3s. Videos. Multimedia. The cost here is in terms of licensing -- the cost of storing and using such intangibles has almost no economic cost. Examples where "virtual property" is explicitly limited to create a cost point; Comcast, bandwidth restrictions, etc.

The problem isn't whether virtual property exists, or if it should exist (or not). The problem is that technical limitations are often used to justify the creation of an artificial market -- and in many cases this isn't due to entrenched infrastructure costs or a marginal need to upgrade or change it to remove those limitations, but rather is rather a deliberate act in order to monetize something that otherwise would have a marginal cost of near zero.

I would argue that virtual property is valid and needs some legal controls; But that laws should be carefully crafted to disallow constraints being intentionally created to create artificial markets. Changes in copyright law would address most of this problem. Changes in how our utilities operate and forcing businesses to set aside a portion of their profits for infrastucture upgrades (and then do so!) would solve most of the rest.

Re:Wrong kind of properties to explore here.

[sayfawa]

I thought almost exactly the same way, but I made the mistake of grouping all physical goods together, and all virtual goods together. With your example of the domain name and IP addresses, I can now see that virtual goods can have real value too, as long as there is real scarcity.

But thinking about it further (and maybe to play devil's advocate); what happens if two people have the same IP or domain name? Somewhere there's going to be conflict, and it's going to affect the real world. And by affect the real world, I mean by physical cause and effect between non-sentient objects. Some signals aren't going to get sent. Maybe I would argue that IP addresses and domain names are less virtual than the "property" on my hard drive which is just an arrangement of bytes. Mabye.

Re:Wrong kind of properties to explore here.

[SL Baur]

Virtual property may have a tangible value in a few circumstances, which are mostly tech-dependent; But rather than list hard rules, let's give some examples where there's a real cost;

By your same arguments and examples your own True Name is Virtual Property, as is your passport number, etc.

It's all just data in a computer (by now) somewhere, so what makes it special?

I would argue that virtual property is valid and needs some legal controls; But that laws should be carefully crafted to disallow constraints being intentionally created to create artificial markets.

Maybe some day pigs will fly. Laws don't deter anyone determined enough. Murder has been illegal basically forever and what has that done? You must be new here (and I don't necessarily mean to /.).

There is a murder crisis in the US. Why are there not any new laws being proposed to get the murder rate down? If it's just so simple to get rid of an activity by banning it, why is there so much drug use after a nearly century long War on (some) Drugs? A century ago, the active ingredient of Coca-cola was cocaine. Where is there a problem now and not then?

Virtual property is no bad idea.

[Hurricane78]

Because it *doesn't exist*!

There. I killed the whole discussion. ;)

Re:Virtual property is no bad idea.

[CannonballHead]

There. I killed the whole discussion. ;)

It was a virtual discussion to begin with.

Why Virtual Property is a bad idea

[Locke2005]

Any time you have good that is infinitely reproducible at negligible cost, it inevitably leads to a bubble, followed by a meltdown. The global economic meltdown just demonstrated that this principle was true for Credit Default Swaps; it was just as true for the Tulip Bubble and Internet Bubble. Any attempt to monetize virtual property will inevitably result in this same boom/bust cycle. That's good if your one of the first to cash out, but very bad if you wait until later in the cycle...

Re:Why Virtual Property is a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's a ponzi scheme.

Re:Why Virtual Property is a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Money and stocks are infinitely reproducible at negligible cost. That's why these things are regulated.

Re:Why Virtual Property is a bad idea

[david_thornley]

I am now eager awaiting the Project Gutenberg bubble, since it is easy to reproduce a good (like an electronic copy of Pride and Prejudice) indefinitely at a negligible cost. The meltdown should be interesting also.

Re:Why Virtual Property is a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

If virtual property truly has negligible cost, why hasn't every MMORPG economy ever skyrocketed, and then crashed due to hyperinflation? The answer is, it's not really free. It takes time that could be spent doing something else. For example, look at Kingdom of Loathing's economy, which has several clever controls on its economy (and I'm familiar enough to discuss it).

*The game imposes a strong restriction on the amount of time a player has available by only giving 40 adventures a day, and a limited supply of ways to increase that count. No way to use bots or whatever to speed up your farming.

*Meat and items, while available in infinite supply, can be *permanently* removed from the game through meatsinks such as the Shore Vacations, the various shops, or pulverization. During one period of hyperinflation due to a glitch that provided *really* infinite meat, faster than any form of farming, several new meatsinks (The Penguin Mafia arc) were introduced to take it out of circulation.

*Items can be exclusive to certain times. If you weren't online when the stars were right, you can't get Crimbo goodies, Spectral Pickles, etc. There is a fixed amount of these items in circulation, so they are extremely expensive.

*Some in-game items cost *real money* to buy! Mr. A's and Mr. Store items are the most expensive items in the game, for good reason. Bigger games like Maple Story have an elaborate system of items available to paying customers. That's the ultimate in limited supply!

Re:Why Virtual Property is a bad idea

[sayfawa]

Isn't the meltdown happening now? That's why there's so much talking (and doing) of making draconian laws to stop people from copying infinitely copyable goods. The people who have imaginary property know their bubble is bursting. And it sure is interesting, if sometimes irritating.

Re:Why Virtual Property is a bad idea

[Locke2005]

Obviously I left out a few other necessary conditions, such as demand for the good, and non-zero valuation. "Meltdown" or bust means that valuations go to zero or very little; Project Gutenberg has been there since day one, so there is no room to fall.

Virtual Property and Online Games

[Adrian Lopez]

I've often wondered what would become of online multiplayer games if Player A were allowed to sue Player B for stealing his items while playing "in character" according to the rules of the game. It occurs to me such a thing would be very bad for the viability of online role-playing. As far as online games are concerned, I feel it's better if disputes over virtual property are left to be resolved within the virtual world itself, according to its own rules.

Re:Virtual Property and Online Games

[Cro Magnon]

I want a virtual lawyer! Or a long, sharp virtual sword.

Re:Virtual Property and Online Games

[lie2me]

Yeah, virtual trial and virtual jail would be neat.

Re:Virtual Property and Online Games

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument is that you knew the risks when you signed up. When you join a boxing gym, you don't get to sue the other guy in the ring for assault when they bash you in the face, so long as they respect the terms under which you agreed to spar (no hitting while down, no kicking/biting/throat jabs/whatever). It's already in the EULA to some degree, and you can bet that if such cases started to get any traction whatsoever, the company would have its lawyers busy beefing up the waiver of liability that you agree to every single time you log in. Read the darn thing; it won't take half as long as a raid, and it's probably not a bad expenditure of time if you're serious about playing the game.

Sue crazy culture...

[space_jake]

Last thing we need in a game is real world laws of ownership. Griefing, poaching kills, pvp, or whatever gets you subpoenaed because you destroyed someone's property.

If you support virtual copyright.

[BlueKitties]

If software companies can copyright software, or images, or 3D models, then I should be able to copyright a game character. Just because one was designed in a 3D Object Designer software, and the other via a game system, does not make one more copyrightable than the other. Of course, I make that as a case-and-point to say that modern copyright needs an overhaul.

What nonsense

[Jack9]

Imagine owning Fenway Park.

Virtual resources, however, do not exist in a state of nature.

At this point, I realized there would be no insight offered here. Just hype.

The idea of "property" is what people seem to completely ignore, choosing to focus on arbitrary topics that have basis in what their concept of ownership is built upon. The ownership of something as imaginary as invisible lines on a map should be broken down and examined, not serve as a starting point, not presented as a black box of assumptions to build baseless conclusions.

"Property" has a number of attributes (none of which conflict with "virtual property")

Property is defined.
Ownership is defined.
Ownership is enforced.
Property Ownership is validated.

The design and implementation of these aspects (the "how") is the only thing that is required to achieve "ownership" of a specific resource.

In the case of such imaginary/transient concepts as physical property lines, there are mechanisms for each. Same with patents. There is a strong case that the mechanisms are essentially subjective and ineffective for "virtual property" like ideas, but this runs contrary to commerical and institutional (laziness and incompetence?) interests, so it is unlikely to change.

Re:What nonsense

[Darkness404]

Property relies on scarcity. Heck, our entire economy relies on scarcity. Ownership can only be effectively enforced when there is only one copy. For example, if I have a watch, it is going to be distinct and different in some ways than another watch, each watch is unique. On the other hand, virtual "property" lacks this quality. For example, you can define a entire virtual character in the following lines:

name: SomeName

attack: 5

defense: 3

hp: 200

level: 40

equipped: sword

Cloak

Staff

Duplicating that character is as simple as copying and pasting those lines, there is no scarcity. Any change to the "property" is simply typing in a new word or number. It is not unique and lacks scarcity and is therefore worthless.

Re:What nonsense

[pacergh]

Actually, one of the most revered attributes of property is the ability to exclude. The Supreme Court has stated in cases that the right to exclude is the most important stick in the bundle of rights. (Kaiser v. Aetna.) Some have argued the right to exclude is the 'sine qua non' of property.

Property law recognizes the important of the right to exclude in its methods of dealing with the ability to exclude. Property acquisition is a prime example. In order to acquire property, US common law has a long tradition of requiring a person to be able to exercise dominion and control over the object. Pierson v. Post, one of the more famous US property cases, is a perfect example of this.

The court in Pierson ruled that a foxhunter could not gain a property right in a fox unless he mortally wounded the fox, killed it, or captured it. Either of those three actions, in the court's eyes, was the result of the foxhunter exercising his dominion and control over an object in nature (and thereby acquiring it as his own property).

So there is a very real question as to whether the attributes of property can apply to virtual objects. Who exerts dominion and control over that object? The user? What about the developer and his superuser abilities? The user's rights, more often than not, are subject to the greater dominion and control of the superuser, or developer.

And then there is the property attribute of rivalrousness. Rivalrousness means something has a state that only allows one person to possess it at a time. This is considered by many property theorists as an important property attribute -- and one of the primary arguments for the existence of property law to begin with. Garret Hardin argued in The Tragedy of the Commons that property rights are the most efficient method of allocating usage rights in scarce, rivalrous objects.

It is not clear that virtual items are rivalrous. This goes back, once again, to the ability to exert dominion and control over the virtual object. A user can exert some control over his 'virtual sword,' but ultimately the developer can take it away. Similarly, in many virtual worlds, users can 'possess' the same seat or piece of land without harming the other's use and enjoyment of it. (What happens when you walk through someone in World of Warcraft? Do you bump them out of the way?)

So your assertion that property rights are not in conflict with concepts of 'virtual property' is not accurate. Property rights are very much in conflict with virtual property concepts.

One great illustration of this is the most often 'virtual property' right people think of -- copyright law.

Moving beyond the fact that US Copyright law does not call itself a property right, the application of property concepts to these intangible 'properties' creates many problems.

Enforcing copyright law was much easier when methods of distribution were more difficult. Physical copies could be easily possessed and controlled. They were rivalrous in nature.

The digital revolution severed the tangible copy from the intangible expression copyright law protected. The current issues in enforcing copyright law have arisen from the inability of copyright holders to exclude others.

This inability to exclude is the result of an inability to exert dominion and control over the intangible expression since copies of that expression are no longer rivalrous -- they are digital instead.

Re:What nonsense

[Jack9]

Pierson v. Post, one of the more famous US property cases, is a perfect example of this.

So if I stick a flag in my neighbor's yard (or is it that I have to kill my neighbor?) it becomes mine? Physical property laws and precedence do not apply in this case, anymore than they do in any other virtual property case.

A paste from a linden lab email

[stimpleton]

My account in second life was terminated due to billing issue.

That email states:
"What happens to your Second Life account holdings? When terminating Second Life accounts, we remove all associated holdings. There will be no refunds or exchanges for any unused time on your subscription, Island purchases, Linden Dollars, or inworld objects, items, or content."

The slightly longer explanation is was that my CC expired, which in turn forced me to "basic" membership with virtually no support rights.
If i'd owned virtual land then hundreds if not thousands could have been lost.
I know of one direct example. 6 sims x $195/month. Gone bill to billing dispute, and people see the tier(land tax) quickly exceed their saleable land value so just walk away.

I consider this article the definitive summary of how things can turn to custard very quickly.

Being a pioneer in a 3d world is risky and unfeasible.

Some games seek to simulate "real" life.

[FooAtWFU]

Some games try to simulate Reality, or a version of something not entirely dissimilar (wizards and such aside). Real life is characterized by objects that can only exist one place at a time. There is not an infinite supply of these objects. Insofar as a game attempts to simulate real life, then the notion of "virtual property" is not entirely devoid of meaning.

On the other hand, it's certainly overrated in some places. "Second Life" comes to mind. The objective of virtual property there, however, is not so much to simulate life as it is to aid in the enrichment of Linden Labs. The state of property there is pretty sad, and suffers from overcommercialization.

Wait, stock is real property

[JSBiff]

When you buy stock in a company, as a stock owner, you are a partial owner of all land, factories, office buildings (and any other facilities owned by the corporation), furniture, equipment (vehicles, manufacturing machines, etc) that company owns. All that stuff is quite tangible. I can go touch a building, and if I own stock in the company that owns the building, then I (in part), own that building.

As to your main point, virtual property in the 'game world' sense is different. How? You might theoretically 'own' a particular instance of a building in a game, but you most likely do not own the artwork which represents that building (models, textures, shaders, etc), nor the game server in whose memory it resides, nor even the client running on your machine (remember kids, you *license* software copies, you don't *own* software unless you wrote it or payed someone else to right it for you as an employee or contract work-for-hire and have the paperwork to document that fact).

I have a hard time saying you own *anything* if everyone else owns the stuff it's made up of. That's like saying you own your house, but someone else owns the land under your house which you rent, and the materials your house was constructed from (so they could take back the 'materials' any time they wanted).

Do you really own your house if someone else owns the land and materials?

Re:Wait, stock is real property

[TubeSteak]

That's like saying you own your house, but someone else owns the land under your house which you rent,

Try this: stop paying your property taxes.
You'll find out very quickly just who owns the land under your house.

There's also the matter of mineral rights, which you more than likely don't own.

Re:Wait, stock is real property

[I'm not really here]

Well, the government, in effect, owns the land, and if you don't pony up the dough, they can take it away from you. Also, "eminent domain" = they can take it if they want to. But trust me, I still own my house. If you try to take my stuff from my house, or try to live in my house, I will call the cops and have you arrested for trespassing.

Re:Wait, stock is real property

[RobertLTux]

"but you most likely do not own the artwork which represents that building (models, textures, shaders, etc), "

Not entirely true in the context of SecondLife type setups

You can in Photoshop/Gimp/whatever create your textures (and in some cases in some programs like Blender or AC3D create the models)
and then upload to the SL server and build an in game item.

You most definitely "own" those items created and the assests used to build them (and could file DMCA takedowns over them).

Re:Wait, stock is real property

[jparker]

You say that if you own stock in a company, you own part of its buildings, factories, etc., but what does ownership give you in this case? Can you take your part of that building and go sell it to someone else? Can you take it and use it in your house? Can you have the workers you own get you coffee? What you "own" in this case is entirely virtual. There's a theoretical mapping onto some real items, but the "ownership" that you have over those is very different than the ownership you have over a piece of furniture in your home.

Re:Wait, stock is real property

[Anonymous Coward]

Your stock represents tangible equity? Really? Prove it in some other way than buying or selling the stock. Try exchanging it for some of that "tangible" equity. Try taking a chunk of land, a brick from a building or a box of office staplers.

The value represented in stock is just as virtual as in-game property because its only real-world relevance is an exchange for monetary value.

Re:Wait, stock is real property

[SL Baur]

If you try to take my stuff from my house, or try to live in my house, I will call the cops and have you arrested for trespassing.

Nope. Not if the "you" you are referring to is an IRS agent processing a tax case or something. You will be the one going to jail if you complain.

Re:Wait, stock is real property

[SL Baur]

Your stock represents tangible equity? Really? Prove it in some other way than buying or selling the stock. Try exchanging it for some of that "tangible" equity. Try taking a chunk of land, a brick from a building or a box of office staplers.

The value represented in stock is just as virtual as in-game property because its only real-world relevance is an exchange for monetary value.

That's insightful and it's a pity you posted anonymously.

The difference between Wall Street, Linden Labs and Blizzard is that political power in the US is centered in Wall Street. The US government has been a negative force for a century now and break everything they touch. I would prefer to keep them out of gaming.

<sarcasm>Personally, I would be more than delighted to see IRS tax collectors show up in Dalaran to enforce capital gains taxes (on AH sales), income taxes (on quest rewards) and require tax forms to be filed every year. Great fun! It might even force the gold sellers out of the game, so there's a benefit!</sarcasm>

Just Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. People are not satisfied with the limits of traditional capitalism, so they have to expand it to the virtual world.
Is this were this is coming. People fighting for their virtual 'rights' while governments continue to fuck us in the ass on the real rights issues.

Real money is virtual

[FunkyELF]

If you have direct deposit and a debit / credit card linked to your checking account, all your money if virtual property.
Not to mention the fact that the Federal Reserve System can create it out of thin air... it might as well be completely virtual.

Re:Real money is virtual

[inerlogic]

it has been completely virtual ever since we left the gold standard....

Re:Real money is virtual

[sayfawa]

Unless one needs a good conductor, the worth of gold is just as imaginary as the worth of paper money. It's not like I can eat gold, or shelter myself with it. We only think it's worth a lot because our ancestors did, and they only thought so because they were yahoos who were attracted to shiny objects.

Re:Real money is virtual

[inerlogic]

ok, i'll give you some green pieces of paper, you give me your worthless shiny objects.... fair trade?

Wife Thanks You All

[Stenchwarrior]

I was supposed to cancel WOW but I kept forgetting. This article reminded me and now my wife deeply appreciates the existence of /. (feel free to mod me OffTopic).

Property is theft

[Anonymous Coward]

that's all there is to it

Devaluation...

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when a arbitrary change in the game mechanics renders your property worthless?

Granted, similar sorts of things can happen to real property, but I have some legal recourse as well.

Whats the court going to do in a virtual world? Tell the developers that they can't make a game merchant accept orc teeth for services because it will render another players boar tusks useless?

It should exist, but...

[iamacat]

Punishment for violating virtual property rights must be domain-specific. If I got too clever in a game and ended up taking or damaging someone else's stuff, it's all right to forfeit my items (fine), suspend my account for a certain time (incarceration) or terminate my character and ban me from the game for life (death penalty). However people playing games shouldn't end up in real-world jail for getting caught up in the moment.

The only exception would be virtual systems specialized for tracking real-life assets such as banks and brokerages. In other words, something which is obviously not a game or social interaction medium.

actually..

[_avs_007]

It does if one of those tools had a licensing agreement that said that it extends to derivative works... I know, becuase I wrote such a tool, and our companies attorneys made sure that I was explicit in the licensing who owned derivative works created with said tool. (This is especially important because of patent issues, etc)

Re:actually..

[BlueKitties]

So images made in Adobe Photoshop are considered derived works? So "legally speaking," if a free image designer suite has (we own all ur bases) in the fine print, they could sue you for using the images you created using the software?

Complete misunderstanding of the law

[argent]

Second Life grants its users the right to copyright their creations.

This is neither true nor relevant to the situation described in SL.

* In US law, you have a copyright in your creations when you create them, unless you grant that copyright to another. The Terms of Service in Sony's "Little Big World" state that to access the service you have to give up your rights in what you create, YOU grant YOUR rights TO Sony. The terms of Service in SL grant Linden Labs a right to your creations... Linden Labs isn't granting you anything... they are merely limiting the rights you grant them in the Terms of Service.

* The grant allows Linden Lab to use your works within the SL service. What they do with those rights is to set up a mini-economy based on a permissions model that controls the copying and transfer of objects in the game. The mechanism of duplicating objects in SL does not depend on a bug in the permissions system, but on the realities of copy protection in the real world... what you're doing is the equivalent of taping a song from the radio and selling copies of that tape out of the back of your car. The applicability of the law in this situation is clear, and it doesn't matter whether the so-called virtual property consists of two minutes of music or two megabytes of texture files.

This paper's analysis only applies to a situation where either (a) the content of the virtual world is only created by the game developer, or (b) where the terms of service require a transfer of copyright to the game developer. It's completely irrelevant to content in SL where real-life copyright laws are in play.

There is an analogy in SL, ownership of virtual land, but the existing case law is at best unsettled (Bragg vs Linden Lab).

Re:Complete misunderstanding of the law

[pacergh]

* In US law, you have a copyright in your creations when you create them, unless you grant that copyright to another. The Terms of Service in Sony's "Little Big World" state that to access the service you have to give up your rights in what you create, YOU grant YOUR rights TO Sony. The terms of Service in SL grant Linden Labs a right to your creations... Linden Labs isn't granting you anything... they are merely limiting the rights you grant them in the Terms of Service.

This is not entirely accurate. Linden Labs has a copyright in its virtual world. This includes the underlying code, any fictional story lines it creates, the names of land masses it creates, and the images it creates. This arguable includes the tools needed for modifying this world.

Copyright grants an owner rights in all subsequent derivative works as well. This differs from patent law. Under copyright law, the fan fiction I created based upon my EVE Online character's background, what planet he hales from, and what faction he represents is arguable a derivative work.

Similarly, works created in Second Life using Linden Lab's copyrighted materials are also arguable derivative works. Therefore, Linden Labs may own the rights to the boots your make or the items you design using their tools.

Why do I use the word 'arguable' so often, though? That is because there is a tremendous amount of ambiguity as to the scope of derivative rights in this context. For example, if Microsoft reserves all rights in the papers I write using MS Word, will using that tool mean my works are derivative works and Microsoft now owns their copyright? This is an extreme example, but the contours of this area of law are still being developed in the courts and lawschools of the U.S.

Second Life's Terms of Use clears these ambiguities up. It does two things: (1) First, it divides copyright clearly between Linden Labs and the user; (2) Second, it creates a covenant not to sue for copyright infringement based on derivative rights.

The effects here are more-or-less the same as in the above post. Rather, the path the laws takes to get to a similar conclusion is different. This may seem unimportant, but it is actually very important. A few different turns through actual copyright procedure leaves not only the person selling tape recordings on the street violating copyright law, but also the guy who sings the song the tapes have on them. See Grand Upright v. Warner Bros.

Re:Complete misunderstanding of the law

[argent]

This is not entirely accurate. Linden Labs has a copyright in its virtual world. This includes the underlying code, any fictional story lines it creates, the names of land masses it creates, and the images it creates. This arguable includes the tools needed for modifying this world.

By your logic, Mac OS X is GPLed because it was compiled by gcc.

Re:Complete misunderstanding of the law

[pacergh]

Actually, the licenses for the gcc waive this, I believe. I would have to look it up.

And it is not my logic, merely a point on legal arguments people are willing to make. And yes, people have actually made that very same argument that compiling using someone's compiler grants the compiler's company the copyright in your program.

I am not saying it is right, or that it will stand up in court, but merely that the scope and limits of the law of derivative works as it pertains to software is currently not clear. It is ambiguous.

That is what is so novel about the Second Life Terms of Use. Rather than going the route of a game like World of Wacraft, it explicitly says 'We give you these explicit rights, and ourselves these explicit rights.'

It seeks to avoid problems of that ambiguity in the law. Other companies choose to exploit those ambiguities.

Re:Complete misunderstanding of the law

[argent]

GCC doesn't have a specific license, just the regular GPL. The GPL explicitly does not state whether the output of a program is a derived work.

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

When you upload a PNG texture to Second Life, and it converts it to JPEG 2000, that doesn't make the resulting image a derivative work. When you upload and compile a script, that doesn't make it a derivative work. The parameters describing prims are simply geometric operations on curves swept through space, those parameters are not a derivative work. I suppose if you use textures from the texture library built in to the application you'd be making a derivative work, but that's a special case, not the general case.

I agree that Second Life's decision not to require a copyright grant is unusual among 3d environments, but that's not because Linden Lab grants you any rights, it's because Linden Lab does not require you to give away your rights in the process of registering with Second Life. This sounds like quibbling, but it is an important and significant legal distinction.

And yes, people have actually made that very same argument that compiling using someone's compiler grants the compiler's company the copyright in your program.

That argument is only valid in the case where the output is a derived work of the runtime library. For that to be the case, the runtime has to meet certain requirements. The Bison parser skeleton may meet those. /lib/crt0.o doesn't.

Re:Complete misunderstanding of the law

[pacergh]

I agree that Second Life's decision not to require a copyright grant is unusual among 3d environments, but that's not because Linden Lab grants you any rights, it's because Linden Lab does not require you to give away your rights in the process of registering with Second Life. This sounds like quibbling, but it is an important and significant legal distinction.

Quibbling can be important in ambiguous areas of the law. You are right, you are not giving away your rights. That is an important distinction. Moreover, Second Life is giving you rights as well. This is where you retain copyright in your work even if you use their skins.

This is comparable to Activision-Blizzard granting you rights in your character's backstory in World of Warcraft. A character backstory is a type of work traditionally associated with copyright. Depending on how much your borrow from Blizzard's own World of Warcraft story line, your story may be subject to derivative work copyright issues.

The Second Life approach, applied to World of Warcraft, would also grant you copyright freedom even over a derivative backstory for your character.

So yes, you are right in some ways, but no, there was no complete misunderstanding of the law. Rather, there are nuanced differences in our approaches to the law.

Of course, this is a moot point. The article does not involve copyright issues, it involves the theoretical creation of property rights in virtual items. This is something some legal commentators are beginning to advocate. This paper seeks to provide solid arguments against virtual property. Copyright is just a useful analogy since it is intangible, as virtual property would be.

Re:Complete misunderstanding of the law

[argent]

This is where you retain copyright in your work even if you use their skins.

The skin texture you upload to Second Life does not include their skins, and if you do something to create content that IS derivative (say, you apply a tattoo to their skins AND rip the resulting combined texture) you do not have the right to use it outside the Second Life service.

Linden Labs is not granting you any rights over derivative works of their content.

They do, elsewhere, in the GPLed client, but this principle applied just as much before the GPL release, and any derivative works involving the GPLed distribution are subject to the GPL... but the content you created, if it does not combine it with their content, is still 100% yours.

The article does not involve copyright issues, it involves the theoretical creation of property rights in virtual items.

My point is that despite the implication otherwise, the article does not apply in any way to user created content in Second Life. The only relevance to Second Life is for land trading (the Bragg case I mentioned).

Tax, insurance etc.

[cmeans]

Think of the taxes...insurance, what about ADA access. These are all things that can impact property of all sorts.

Virtual property not uniquely invaluable

[elrous0]

To those who say that digital property is meaningless and nothing but bytes in a computer, I ask this:

What is the money in your wallet but paper? What is the money in your bank account but bytes? What is the real world property you own but words on a deed?

It all comes down to how much you and others value it. There is no objective value to it.

Why virtual propert is not real property

[scorp1us]

1. SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production on Thu Aug 13 16:07:13 2009
Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Connected to: wow_prod_001
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options

SQL> DELETE FROM player_inventory;
where oh shit!!!!1!!

2. Virtual property cannot be reconciled. With real property, there is a house, a dead a title, a MCO. There are physical things which exist beyond these paper instruments, or the paper is alt least redeemable for physical things. Your virtual property is an arrangement of bits on a platter or on a wire. Your transactions aren't logged and you don't get monthly statements.

3. The creation of real property involves the splitting or effort coming from an economy in order to make it. If you want a tire, there is an economy around the production of the tire. The tire is set at a market value, which is relative to its importance in the economy. Again, your virtual goods are nothing more than an arrangement of bits.
INSERT INTO player_inventory (itemname) value ('heavy_mithril_axe');

4. We can make virual goods into the real one, but that would actually cost something. Documenting all those statements and transactions would impose a real cost on conducting business on virtual goods, which would ironically give them a real-world cost. But his would also cause the operators to comply with laws of equity.

More Keesha from Big Brother pics.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Personally, I don't care if there becomes a legal definition of "virtual property", so long as I only have to pay virtual taxes on it.

Virtual vs physical Property

[ehud42]

I can't help but think of the say "Possession is nine tenths of the law" or something like that. If the property is virtual then who has it in their hands? who can lick to get first dibs?

In the end, virtual property is neither good nor bad - it's ugly.

Unlimited supply, arbitrary value, abuse

[Fearan]

What I've always wondered about relating to virtual property is how its value will is decided on a large scale, and the potential risks for abuse. Virtual property has these 2 issues:

1. Unlimited supply -> Basically anything with unlimited supply should be a price point close to 0. Assigning an arbitrary value goes against the basic rules of an economy, where demand here will not dictate price. In some economies like WoW's gold economy, there is the appearance of limited supply, and value was derived according to this supply. This is fine as long as no one acts in greed and abuses the system.

2. Which brings me to my 2nd issue, abuse. The WoW gold economy is only good until an admin gives himself millions and starts selling it, now it's in Blizzard's best interest not to let this happen, but eventually some virtual property owner will be greedy and game their own system for profit.

What has been done in the past, and what is planned for the future to overcome these 2 issues with virtual property?

Re:Unlimited supply, arbitrary value, abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

1. There *is* a limited supply of items. The number of Infinity Plus One Swords in the game is limited by the number of people who are willing to spend 50 hours farming items, doing quests, and whatever other stuff it takes to craft an Infinity Plus One Sword, and also by the people who sell their Infinity Plus One Swords to NPC merchants where they will never be seen again. When you buy an Infinity Plus One Sword, you are paying for the time, materials, and know-how that the seller put into it that you don't want to put in yourself. The price of an item is based on how easy it is to get said item from the game, and on how many people demand it (and don't want Infinity Plus One Bows instead).

In Kingdom of Loathing, for example, there is a good market in Dry Noodles, because only Pastamancers can make them, they can only make 3 per day, and they are used in *all* pasta recipes. This, in turn, drives up the prices of pasta dishes, and pasta ingredients, etc.

2. There's no point in giving yourself a zillion gold, because that would make WoW gold valueless. You might as well ask "If the Fed can create as much money as they need to fund this bailout, why haven't they given themselves a billion dollars and retired to the Bahamas?" Creating money out of thin air inflates the currency, and if you're greedy or foolish enough, you can make the currency worthless.

Kingdom of Loathing had an event a while ago where the meat (money) market became hugely inflated due to an exploit. It was so easy to do and widespread that they couldn't ban the exploiters. The Mall (the player-owned market) featured prices in the millions for everything. The admins patched the bug, then introduced a set of meatsinks. These were one-time events where you could spend a zillion meat to fund "the battle with the Penguin Mafia", the spent meat would leave the economy permanently, you'd get your name on a leaderboard, and you'd get a nice story out of it.

Any MMO with sources and sinks for money will have similar economics. The player-owned market sets prices on goods, and the admins control the supply of items and money to prevent inflation or deflation.

Everyone already deals with virtual property now

[Ravensign]

How real is the money in your bank account?

The money that customers virtually paid your employer with a credit card, that was then virtually direct deposited to your bank account, that you will then use to pay your ISP for internet with by automatic monthly deduction, that they will direct deposit in their employees bank accounts...

How real is money really in a system like this?

IF Virtual Property THEN Virtual Damages

[MarkvW]

Equating virtual property to real property is insanely stupid.

(a) Whose law is going to apply? You must remember that the law of the USA is not the law of the world. I don't think that any game host would want to touch that issue with a ten foot pole (at the risk of losing Korean, Chinese, Indian, or British players). I also don't think that most hosts would want people in their enviroments bartering with thirty page contracts. Making a Himalayan game player liable to a Chilean game player under Chilean law is beyond absurd.

(b) Which nation will pay to host these stupid lawsuits? I can see them lining up now--in the opposite direction.

(c) Property law is extremely evolutionary and very culture-oriented. The property law of one nation is often very different from that of another.

(d) Law is expensive--very expensive for both the public and the participants. It takes forever, in many countries, to get a civil case resolved. I think most people in a democracy or a republic would be quite upset if their tax dollars were used to resolve a dispute over whether your avatar defamed my avatar.

Think about the complex international problems involved in creating a virtual property law legal construct--and then engrafting that onto the widely varied property laws of all the nations on Earth. The cost would be ASTOUNDING!

And for what? So litigious, angry nerds can take their stupidity to another dimension (that somebody else is paying for)?

If you really want a resolution of your virtual disputes--set up a virtual forum witin the environment where the virtual dispute arose and take the (enormous) time and effort to administer that virtual legal system. It will be boring and stupid, but you will get a hell of an education about the legal process.

Me, I want to reserve the right to resolve my virtual contract disputes with a virtual six-gun on a virtual dusty street, somewhere in the virtual Wild West. Yeah, that's the ticket!

Holder in fee simple

[tepples]

That's like saying you own your house, but someone else owns the land under your house which you rent

In common law countries, the government owns all land. People who hold real estate in fee simple in the United States, for example, pay a rent called "property tax" to the county.

Patents are virtual property

[strangeattraction]

Patents are virtual property and already exist. So are derivatives and many other things people trade that don't really exist.

It's just a game!

[BCW2]

It is not reality.
If you think it is, come out of your parents basement and get a job!

Re:It's just a game!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gold farming is a job.

Re:It's just a game!

[neonsignal]

"it is not reality"

Buying and selling real estate is just a game too. It might be a game that is ratified by governments and community sentiment, but for all that it is arbitrary. You don't 'own' a piece of land in anything more than a legal sense. You can't take it with you if you move overseas. You don't necessarily have the right to dig underneath it or fly over it. You didn't create it, cannot throw it away. A change of government could take it away from you with the stroke of a pen. You cannot protect your title with force, because the title is in the titles office, not in your possession. And what of the aboriginal peoples who used to live on that land; what happened to their ownership.

"get a job"

And this job you do; what does it involve? Are you a farmer, generating food for people who need to eat? Are you a builder, constructing houses that people need to keep them dry and warm? Are you an engineer designing weapons to put holes in people? Or are you sitting in an office pushing around bits of paper or punching a keyboard? How virtual is that? Our societies revolve around providing services, whether it is health or education or entertainment; very few of us actually produce tangible goods.

Don't think you can just tell people to 'get a job!'. You don't own them.

Re:Everyone already deals with virtual property no

[pacergh]

You do not own the money in your bank account. The bank owns that money. What you own is a right to demand the bank honor its obligation to pay you that money. This is why people will make runs on the bank when deposits are not insured (such as FDIC insurance in the US).

This is a common misconception. People confuse 'ownership' with 'obligation.' What you really own in a bank account is a contractual right that allows you to demand your money.

Here's another take on it...

[Fluffeh]

Virtual Property MUST exist, else all the cases brought against people for STEALING (downloading) other people's music through file sharing systems would be null and void.

It all depends on what side of the boat you are on really. Either something has been stolen, and you can't steal something that doesn't exist or belong to someone, or virtual property doesn't exist and we are all being taken for a sweet (but one sided) ride and end up broke.

When you start playing a game, it's generally spelt out quite clearly in the EULA who owns what, and who can do stuff with it, but I didn't sign any EULA that had anything to do with binary content copied across the net.

To qualify, I don't generally download much at all these days, if anything it's live DJ sets which I simply CANNOT buy anywhere from good rave events. I do have a LOT of TV shows, but they are the same ones that are on TV, I just hate the ads that we in Australia have to put up with like CRAZY. In fact, I have also ripped the majority of my own purchased DVD's into MPGS (I have a DVD collection that's probably about around 500) but I still mainly have the media playing on my second monitor while I tinker on my PC or play a game etc.

Implicit contracts does exist!

[DUdsen]

But there might exist an implicit contract between the owners of the park and the caretakers that they retain a usage right to it.

Road usage is the clear cut case, here you will loose in court if you close off a road that have been open to the public. Ownership or not, particularly if you bought the road as a part of a deal after public usage was an established tradition. Implicit contracts does need to be honored.

The stadium issue, have if i remember correctly been taken to court and the card holders got awarded compensation.

Land ownership is not actually always ownership, there countries(UK and Sweden for instance) where you cannot actually own land, but only lease it on permanent contracts.

This varies a lot from country to country some, like my native Denmark does not treat written contracts as superior to oral or implicit contracts, while some common law countries gives formal contracts preferable treatment. But i dont think that there is a western legal system where implicit contracts is not acknowledged by the courts

On the internet you have the big big problem of determining jurisdiction.

Games are just that games they are run for a purpose with a certain agenda, and in most games that agenda involves a kind of fair play doctrine that requires ingame assets to be tied to ingame actions alone and not subject to out of game financial transactions. Here theres no context of a implicit real world ownership, but this might differ Second life for instance might by encouraging real world trading of ingame assets create such a cotexts, The DNS system is an other example here there are an tradition for treating domains as property that can be treated as real asset.

What im trying to say is that the written ToS isnt the entire story of the contract.

IANYAL but im fairly sure this is a fair attempt at describing the actual law.

Re:Implicit contracts does exist!

[cpt kangarooski]

But there might exist an implicit contract between the owners of the park and the caretakers that they retain a usage right to it.

Road usage is the clear cut case, here you will loose in court if you close off a road that have been open to the public. Ownership or not, particularly if you bought the road as a part of a deal after public usage was an established tradition. Implicit contracts does need to be honored.

I think you're talking about an easement. But I am not so optimistic.

The city could grant the public a recreational easement and then sell the land, but the buyer would be stuck having to keep the land as a public park, and I doubt many people would want to buy the land under that condition. To acquire the recreational easement by prescription would likely fail since the city simply permits people to use the park as a park, so no prescription would arise. (I.e. if someone gives you something voluntarily, you can't construe that as taking it from them without their consent) And anyway, the requirements to gain an easement by prescription are basically the same as to get the land by adverse possession; the difference is just in what you're getting (a right to use someone else's land in some way, rather than all rights in the land).

As for looking at this in contractual terms, it's not. The city has granted the public a license to use the land as a park for all that time. The public didn't have to do anything to get that permission, and there's nothing keeping the city from revoking the permission. It's like, if you let your friend borrow your car whenever he asks, you're not obligated to continue doing so; you can refuse the next time he asks, and he can't legally force you to lend it to him. Cf. if your friend paid you money to use your car on demand; then you'd have a contract.

As for roads, governments can close public roads. People who own property abutting the road might have a right to prevent that, or to at least require some sort of substitute, but the general public is apt to lack standing. In the area where I live, the government seized a large amount of land in the name of urban renewal, tore down entire blocks, got rid of the roads, and created plazas, superblocks, etc. where once there had been a street grid. Since they compensated the owners of the seized property, it was all quite legal, though a very stupid thing to do.

In games, the problem I see with claims of property rights by users is that eventually the company running the game will want to shut it down, or divert resources elsewhere. Could users go to court and force the company not to do so? That seems pretty scary to me.

As for domain names, that's more to do with people exercising existing trademark law. After all, there is no requirement that ISPs use the main DNS system. What if, one day, everyone decided to use a new system. Rights to old DNS names would surely not carry over unless there were some other right -- basically a trademark -- that was applicable.

Re:Implicit contracts does exist!

[Anonymous Coward]

Road usage is the clear cut case, here you will loose in court if you close off a road that have been open to the public.

Even this is not as clear cut as you assume: it varies by jurisdiction, even in different countries with a connection to English Common Law.

Re:Implicit contracts does exist!

[mrchaotica]

Road usage is the clear cut case, here you will loose in court if you close off a road that have been open to the public. Ownership or not, particularly if you bought the road as a part of a deal after public usage was an established tradition. Implicit contracts does need to be honored.

But if you close off the road and years and years go by with it like that before anyone notices, then you might have a legal claim to it. Or at least, you would if the road were previously owned by another private entity; it probably wouldn't work if the road were owned directly by the government.

Land ownership is not actually always ownership, there countries(UK and Sweden for instance) where you cannot actually own land, but only lease it on permanent contracts.

And the United States. What we have is called ownership, but it's really just a lease with no set termination date since property taxes and eminent domain exist. (See also fee simple ownership, as contrasted with allodial title.)

As someone who loves FPS games...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really think its time for some of these people to put down the keyboard/mouse and get some fresh air. I fail to see the attraction to "owning" an object in a virtual world. That object is nothing but a few bits on a server for goodness sake! Next thing you know, someone will be selling "ultra-rare" virtual items for $200+. I'm sure that already goes on though.

I like to think of games as an escape from reality... where not everyone is trying to squeeze as much money out of me as they can at all times. I just want to connect to the game server, go around fragging the other players (in the game) and not having to worry about materialistic crap.

Re:Here's the case:

[endymion.nz]

Here's the thing though - it makes poor economic sense to work in a game for game currency, because you can normally earn more (by orders of magnitude) in real life than you can for the same time spent in any job in a virtual world.

Oblig

[PPH]

You kids stay off my virtual lawn!

Bad Example

[tjstork]

1. Your house, my gasoline. Pour, light match. By by.

2. 90% of what proves your house is your house is your possession of it. Bits and bytes are the same way.

3. INSERT INTO player_inventory actually costs something to make. First, you have to define the thing to insert, then you have to define the database, the storage, the network, the software... all of that is work, and the investment that is put into these systems, the work, is what people are trying to preserve when they call it property.

Re:Bad Example

[scorp1us]

1. My house is secured by deed, and is on file at the county records department.

2. Flat out false. If I rent my house out and I am not there or furnishing it, the tenants don't get the insurance money, and they don't get to rebuild the house. I do. Who has keys does not matter either. The tenants can't unsure it because it is not theirs. They can only insure their possessions in it.

3. It is a trivial amount of work. The idea is that you can add a million items to the game as easily as 1000. It only costs a few tenths of a second, making it effectively free.

Re:Bad Example

[tjstork]

1. My house is secured by deed, and is on file at the county records department.

But its still pretty easy to destroy. Its actually probably easier to burn down your house than it is to delete a newsgroup posting.

Flat out false. If I rent my house out and I am not there or furnishing it, the tenants don't get the insurance money, and they don't get to rebuild the house

If you rent out your house, good luck kicking your tenants out. Sure, eventually, you'll be able to call the police, but that's when your "property" has become an abstraction. We could just easily have police be callable when someone steals your IP.

It is a trivial amount of work. The idea is that you can add a million items to the game as easily as 1000. It only costs a few tenths of a second, making it effectively free.

You go ahead and write a million items then. Do the artwork for a million unique swords, and let me know when you are done.

Every time I hear someone argue ...

[rnturn]

... in favor of so-called "virtual property" I find myself thinking that this seems like it might be an idea put out there by the same geniuses that, only recently, nearly destroyed the global economy.

Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't property based on scarcity, and since when are ones and zeroes scarce? The entire advantage of digital stuff is it's beyond dirt cheap to reproduce. They'll have the same problems as the music and movie industries are facing, in that once the product itself is produced the basic laws of scarcity that economics and business models have been based on for thousands of years simply ceases to exist.

All propery is virtual.

[Anonymous Coward]

You come into this world naked. You go back naked.
Nevertheless, what is trully yours nobody can take away from you even if you try to give it away.

Your stock is virtual

[fantomas]

When you buy a $10 share in an oil company, you may believe its real because you can go and touch the office building, or an oil rig. But your share is only worth $10 because people believe that a small percentage of the company's assets (oil rigs, office buildings etc) works out at a value of $10. It's all virtual. Maybe the next day the oil company announces it might have found oil in some new location. It's not sure, but it thinks so. Probably your share will now be worth $11 or $15. There aren't 10% more oil rigs or 50% more buildings you can touch, they haven't grown over night, it's just people believe that's how much your percentage of the company is worth.

It's just as virtual as a game world possession. Nobody's actually going to let you unbolt a $10 section of railing from an oil rig if you want your money back. You don't actually own any physical property in the company. All virtual. Back to that old chestnut about how much is a glass of water worth? not a lot in the monsoon season, a heck of a lot if you're thirsty and in a desert.