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Is Online Property Real? Lawyer Says Sort-Of
Bob the Super Hamste writes "The St. Paul Pioneer Press is reporting on an analysis by lawyer Justin Kwong in the William Mitchell Law Review about virtual property and ownership. Justin Kwong asserts that virtual items are not real items (PDF) and that you do not own them but only have a license. The analysis stems from a 2008 case of a Blaine, MN man who filed a police report for the online theft of approximately $3800 of virtual goods. Justin Kwong compares virtual items to a mug club at a bar where patrons purchase rights to a specific numbered mug but cannot remove the mug from the premises. He does note that if in game items are purchased there needs to be clear language stating: 'the transaction is a license, not a sale, and that traditional consumer protections afforded by sales of goods do not necessarily apply.'"
Justin Kwong also made a weblog entry responding to misconceptions expressed in comments on the St. Paul Pioneer Press article.
As long as someone finds value in the item and is will to either pay for it or labor for it then it has an intrinsic value so it is a real entity. Be it one you can not yet physically hold.
And the winner is - the lawyers
So does getting killed and looted now count as online robbery?
All the money I have in the bank and my 401K ... is ... well, ... "virtual".
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
If you lose a virtual item to "virtual theft" you appeal to the people running that game, not the police. There are no virtual police, and likewise, the virtual police can not come into the real world and arrest people for trolling.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
It strikes me that "property" in the legal sense is as much a fiction as "intellectual property" - over time, and in different cultures, we have established complex legal concepts of "ownership", whereby the legal right of "ownership" amounts to a web of in personam rights, particularly the right to exclude.
I may hold a copy of a book in my hand, but, absent a legal construct of property, I have no clear right that means that you cannot take it away from me. Equally, there is no obligation on me to give it to you. If you want it, you will have to take it from me - absent you taking it, I have possession. If you take it, I can try to take it back from you, just as if we were dogs fighting over a bit of meat.
In different ways in different societies, we have evolved the notion of "ownership"; we impose a legal construct of "property" and of "ownership" on top of this physical existence, meaning that you require my permission to take the "property" in question away from me, or else face the legal consequences.
Perhaps intellectual property takes the notion too far, but, fundamentally, I am not sure I see a difference between the "imaginary" (legal construct only) right of ownership of something which does exist, and of something which does not - both are artificial legal constructs.
That's the reason for "sort of". When the answer is cut and dried there's no need for lawyers.
In America, the government owns the land. Try to not pay the annual rent which the government charges on it (i.e. property taxes) and see what happens.
What are you talking about? Freehold land IS owned by you.
The GP is talking about eminent domain. When the government can decide that your land would be better used as a shopping mall and can force you off, you can't claim that you own your land.
Given the recent SCOTUS decision on Kelo vs City of New London, there is definitely no such thing as private land ownership in the US.
The difference between real property (objects) and intellectual "property" (information) is that physical objects cannot be used by arbitrary people at the same time. Therefore it is of vital importance to have rules telling who has the right to use which object at which time. The concept of property is one, very successful, way to do this. However, intellectual "property" does not share this characteristic. There's nothing stopping some person in China to listen to the very same song you currently listen to at the very same time. Nor is there something stopping some African to use the very same idea to make things as you do. That is, unlike physical objects, information has no intrinsic restrictions on use which need to be regulated.
In your example, if someone takes the book you are currently reading in, you cannot continue reading this specific book. On the other hand he cannot read that very book unless he has it. Thus your interests of reading that specific book conflict, and therefore there have to be rules which tell who has the right to have that book. However, no such restrictions hold for the text in the book. If you can read the text in your book, he can still read another copy of the same text in another copy of the book.
The property concept is made for things with naturally exclusive use, which is why you need exclusive rights for their use. The intellectual property concept tries to use basically the same rules for something which doesn't have the natural property of exclusive use.
And no, the concepts are not the same just because both are legal constructs. Otherwise you could say that capital punishment and community service are the same because they are both punishments.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
They're not playing a game anymore but working.
They are working when their mom stops opening the basement door yelling, "Get a job!"
Have gnu, will travel.
So since there ISN'T that language, the items really are sold?
The difference between real property (objects) and intellectual "property" (information) is that physical objects cannot be used by arbitrary people at the same time.
I'm leasing space on a web server. This server is used by over 1,000 people at once, and at any one time, it's serving pages from several different customer's sites to several viewers. So is a server not property?
The property concept ... The intellectual property concept ... the concepts are not the same just because both are legal constructs
The rationale for property is, as you say, different to the rationale for the extension of property rights to different intellectual things - such as copyright - but there is no meaningful difference in the law of personalty between the ownership of a book, and the ownership of copyright, since both are property rights at law. They are the one and same thing. (The non-meaningful difference would be tangible v. intangible personalty.)
(If I had mod points, I'd mod your post up, FAOD - it's insightful, in my book.)
The difference between real property (objects) and intellectual "property" (information) is that physical objects cannot be used by arbitrary people at the same time. Therefore it is of vital importance to have rules telling who has the right to use which object at which time. The concept of property is one, very successful, way to do this. However, intellectual "property" does not share this characteristic. There's nothing stopping some person in China to listen to the very same song you currently listen to at the very same time. Nor is there something stopping some African to use the very same idea to make things as you do. That is, unlike physical objects, information has no intrinsic restrictions on use which need to be regulated.
Sorry, but that's not so clear. That's true for a song or idea, but there is in fact a limited number of certain "digital artifacts."
Items in an MMORPG are a clear example: I can copy the bits that make up the representation of a certain object (let's say a sword), but that's not the actual object; it's akin to taking a photography of something.
In reality, short of hacking the server (which is illegal by itself, for obvious reasons), there's no way that I can use someone's "digital sword" without depriving the other person of it.
Dilbert RSS feed
The land still belongs to the USA. The US bought the Lousiana Purchase from France. It stopped being part of France and started being part of the US.
But if you "buy" land in Lousiana, it does not stop being part of the US. So the US still has its ownership rights there on your land. You can't declare your land to be part of another country. (The US will use military force to stop you).
... said: "Being an elf doesn't make you turn off the rational economic calculator part of your brain."
But I agree with the license part. Since any virtual property is a construct dependant on the underlying servers (eg Everquest, Second Life etc), then you are bound by the EULA, which usually dresses everything up as a license which can be withdrawn at the whim of the owner of the server.
I hate my flatmate
Actually the property (a CPU core) is only being used by one person at a time, it just cycles very rapidly between them.
Hyperthreading.
Same for memory or disk space: each sector can only be used by one person at a time.
The compcache project aims to compress disk cache and swap files, as a modern-day spiritual successor to Connectix's RAM Doubler: "With compcache at hypervisor level, we can compress any part of guest memory transparently - this is true for any type of Guest OS (Linux, Windows etc.). This should allow running more number of VMs for given amount of total host memory." If data from multiple hosting accounts gets compressed into the same sector, then multiple people are using that sector.
Or to put it another way: Multiple people can be watching the same TV set showing the same movie at once. Therefore, a disc with a movie on it is not property. What did I miss?
Those games? Those are imaginary. Even this comment is imaginary.
Property isn't just a concept, after all...
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Virtual != Real
If you believe that virtual "property" has any real monetary value, you probably believe that the $70+ trillion in derivatives that are floating around the financial system -- larger than the real GDP of the entire planet -- have real value, too.
Of course, the bankers/gamblers will argue that they do but they have just a little bit of a conflict of interest in the matter. One would suspect that having an eight-figure bonus that depends on their having real value is the most important thing on their minds and not whether these financial constructs actually have any real meaning in the world.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
So it is just like real money, it is artificially scare (you can print it very easily and cheaply and the government can and sometimes does print it large amounts) and it only has any value because everyone believes that it does.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Try a little experiment for me, please:
1. Commit a serious crime. Make sure everyone knows it was you.
2. Retreat to your freehold land. Order the police not to come in and arrest you. Try to look smug. It's your land, after all.
3. After the police send a swat team in and hit you with a taser in, try to sue the arresting officers or police department for trespass. See how far you can get.
4. Bonus points: When they come to arrest you, defend your land with lethal force. See how that turns out.
Whatever the legal situation says, the true owner of land is always the government - because they have Men With Big Guns to enforce the law. The only exception I can think of would be regions with no functioning government, when the land is owned by whoever can afford the Men With Big Guns to guard it.
Actually, the US would just use police force to stop you. They have police snipers on helicopters. Calling in the military would by excessive, legally problematic, and embarassingly respectful to the claimed independence.
Final Fantasy mmo TOS clearly states that characters and items in their game are not owned by the player and that square reserves the right to delete items/character at will. the player is only paying for access to the game and not ownership of character/items.
so he's screwed, the police were right to laugh this idiot off. now if it were a game like second life that has provisions in their TOS for item ownership and copyright protection then he'd have a civil case, the police still will laugh you off if you got stolen from in second life or project entropia 2 games that have a large money transfer system.
but in final fantasy noone ones items or characters but Square, reminds me of the guy whining back when Dark age of Camelot was popular how someone stole his cloudsong and was gonna sue... it became a 'meme'
Justin Kwong compares virtual items to a mug club at a bar where patrons purchase rights to a specific numbered mug but cannot remove the mug from the premises. He does note that if in game items are purchased there needs to be clear language stating: 'the transaction is a license, not a sale, and that traditional consumer protections afforded by sales of goods do not necessarily apply.'
Don't forget that neither you or another bar are allowed to put that number on a glass in a different establishment, even if you own the glass and/or the bar, because you're violating copyright and/or DRM by re-using that magic number.
/snark
Ok so virtual properties are not real, that's the very definition of virtual. This has two implications. One, it means that when the company disappears so does your property. Two, it means that if you are the victim of robbery, you end up asking the police to help you get your pretend money back.
In both instances, the game company is the key factor in the reality of your property. In the former case, virtual robbery, it is the game company which has a stand to sue the thief, since the thief basically committed an unauthorised system access.
Also, and much more interesting, is that there isn't a reason why virtual property must evaporate when the game company closes shop. The game company may as well refund your investment in a variety of manners. While this might sound like financially unsound, it can actually have a huge marketing boost.
For instance, let say a popular game, like Team Fortress 2, is closing shop. You have bought a large number of items purported to be placed in the general area above yourself. Rather than just singing So long and thanks for all the fish, they may decide to give you a (similar but reduced) refund in the form of furniture for the The Sims. EA for its part, while seemingly losing money in the deal has basically acquired an entire user base of known-to-pay gamers.
So while I understand that you can't expect to get your money back, an smart company might decide to use virtual property as an asset before getting closed.
But... the future refused to change.
Items in an MMORPG are a clear example: I can copy the bits that make up the representation of a certain object (let's say a sword), but that's not the actual object; it's akin to taking a photography of something.
So the valuable part is not the description of the object itself but instead the service of inserting the description of the object into the game's simulated world.
It's technically feasible to have a virtual world with property owned by the users. But it's not as profitable.
No one has yet built a distributed virtual world on the scale of Second Life. I'm surprised this hasn't been done in some place like Singapore, where there are a lot of high-bandwidth end users. Conceptually, you could have a system where a DNS-like service handles "land allocation", so that activity relative to some area is sent to the owner of that area of land. Each landowner then runs the server for their area.
Movable objects, including avatars, would be digitally signed by their owners. They could be made unique but transferable, if desired, by using something like the Bitcoin block chain, which catches attempts to "double spend". (Bitcoin is an failed financial system but a useful technology.)
Technically, this could work, but it's not easily monetized. And, technically, a virtual world will work better if all the servers have really high bandwidth server farm backbone connections between them. Distributed, it's going to suffer from lag.
Petoria?
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Sounds like the MWBG actually own the land..
The issue here is food labeling. By law when you sell a package of food it must have all of the nutritional data on it. In the bulk items you are citing the nutritional data is on the bulk package - not the individual packages. That’s the issue.
Well, that, and preventing others from obtaining similar objects without paying. After all, they're often status symbols and who'd pay for a status symbol if everyone else could have them?
Dilbert RSS feed
This is always the case. "Rights" are nothing without the power to fight for them.
As sad as it is, might does make right in our world.
Given the "realm" of SecondLife if i "owned" a set of 9 regions (and various buildings and items on said island)
WITHIN THE SL GRID CONTEXT i own everything on those regions (unless they are owned by someone else) and can eject anything and anyone that is on those regions without my permission. Now if i find out that somebody is running some sort of scam on my regions (or making/selling porn) then i AM REQUIRED BY REAL WORLD LAW to eject that person.
Most of the time the Real World Authorities DO NOT CARE what happens in "virtual space" but if a nontrivial amount of money gets involved then they start taking notice.
if somebody "steals" a SecondLife lamborgini then they are not liable for GTA but if somebody is using said lambs in a Money Laundering Scheme then LL can and will get very friendly with the SS or the FBI or any TLA that wants to/ has jurisdiction make things very very unpleasant.
Heck if i was part of any of the TLAs i would have a region or 2 as an outpost just for those times.
Oh and a lot of the SL TOS/Community Standards cover exactly how SL/RL law intersects.
(of course if i had any serious virtual property i would make it using an OpenSim SandBox and then use Phoenix to Import to the SL grid)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
The interpretation of virtual goods not being subject to property law is dangerous as more information is moved to the cloud. It implies that you have no recourse, should somebody steal that information. It implies that the media you "buy" online can have it's lease revoked at any time, without recourse.
I could care less about people who spend real money on in-game items. It's a game. Your priorities are screwed up.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
What about the IRS? if in game has monetary value then you may have to pay tax even if it's 100% in game and you don't cash out.
But information is NOT a physical object, and does NOT adhere to the same laws. E.g. copying is lossless and free.
This concept will become even less comprehensible when 3D printers become more advanced and ubiquitous. Copying of printable physical objects will be lossless and free. I suppose for reproduction you will need the "source" blueprints. I cannot wait to see auto manufacturers join MAFIAA :)
If you want money for you work Demand it on the very first exchange!
That's how music and movie industries worked until recently, and also the reason why I haven't bought any. Even the 20-second "previews", when available, seldom reflect quality of the product. This also does not cover the "buy once, share with everyone" scenario.
There should be better compensation models. A perfect one would remove the middle man, aka film and music industries, and make IP available to everyone somehow, regardless of their willingness/ability to pay. The car analogy: 1. You invent (and print) a car. 2. I cannot afford to buy your car. 3. It costs you nothing to let me make a copy. 4. Profit???
Title - not a piece of paper, it's a legal interest or set of legal rights. For my car I have both the certificate of title (tangible piece of paper) and the title (a specific set of legal rights or claims that I may ask the courts to enforce).
Of course they impose certain requirements on you for the privledge.
You has mistaken a specific case for the general. A licence is permission to do what would otherwise be illegal (and it may or may not arise out of contract).
Your argument stinks.
Let's assume for a second that, if you don't pay property taxes, the government doesn't do anything.
Do you not "own" your land because, if you go bankrupt, you can lose land to satisfy your debts?
Do you not "own" your land because it's collateral to a mortgage?
Nevermind that, in most places in the US, the government will NOT take your land due to non-payment of taxes. What they will do is put a LIEN on your land, which basically means you can't sell it until the back taxes are paid.
The reality is, ownership means you control the use of something, and, in the modern civilized world, it usually also means that the government will protect your rights to control the use of something. I.e., if I set up a tent on your lawn, and you don't want me there, you don't have to remove me yourself - you call the police and they'll get rid of me for you. That's an ownership right.
But just because you own something now doesn't mean you can't lose ownership of it against your will. Don't pay your income taxes and the government will come take it from your bank account. Default on a debt and the other party may sue you to seize your property to satisfy it.
So, do you "own" virtual goods? The problem with virtual goods is that their existence depends on someone else keeping the server alive. The bar mug club analogy is not a bad one - not only can you only use your virtual good in the context of someone else's property (the bar/server), your "property" ceases to exist should the other party decide to shut down their operation.
paintball
I would expect that would be more or less like the stock market. You don't get hit with capital gains until and unless you cash out.
Come to think of it, stocks were an early form of "virtual property". Money, of course, is the original form.