Making the Case That Virtual Property Is a Bad Idea 184
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.'"
It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [worldofwarcraft.com] 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
It's existed for a long time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Virtual Property is an old concept (Score:5, Insightful)
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:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Wrong kind of properties to explore here. (Score:3, Insightful)
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:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It (Score:5, Insightful)
The important quote from the article:
A paste from a linden lab email (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [wordpress.com] the definitive summary of how things can turn to custard very quickly.
Being a pioneer in a 3d world is risky and unfeasible.
Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Wait, stock is real property (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Real money is virtual (Score:3, Insightful)
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:It's existed for a long time (Score:5, Insightful)
Your bank account's balance is an entry in a database.
Re:Virtual Property is an old concept (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Wait, stock is real property (Score:3, Insightful)
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:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It (Score:3, Insightful)
Virtual vs physical Property (Score:3, Insightful)
In the end, virtual property is neither good nor bad - it's ugly.
Unlimited supply, arbitrary value, abuse (Score:2, Insightful)
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:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It (Score:3, Insightful)
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 existed for a long time (Score:1, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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.