[MUD-Dev] Criminalize Community Volunteers?

[Greg Underwood]

This was a can of worms I didn't want to get into whilst writing my last
post... too many things to talk about, not enough time to sort my thoughts
out and get the message out in a reasonably short period of time.  Glad
someone picked up on it and I can continue my train of thought.  ;)


Koster, Raph writes:

> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu 
> > [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> > Greg Underwood
> > Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 11:19 PM
> > To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> > Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Criminalize Community Volunteers?
> > 
> > The mistake AOL, Verant, UO, and etc. made was to attempt to 
> > compensate
> > their volunteers with any real-world money.  I agree with the 
> > law suit...
> > but I disagree that it means the end of volunteerism.  It 
> > just means the
> > end of partially real-world compensated volunteerism.  As 
> > long as in-game
> > items (powers granted, eq given, etc) have no real world 
> > value, reward the
> > volunteers with that. 
> 
> cf Dave Rickey's post. Equipment has real world value. Everything in a
> virtual environment has real world value. Then again, everything in a real
> world has real world value, it might just be miniscule.

Well, it has a value on eBay, but no legally recognized value.  At this
point in time, the value of virtual items is very much up in the air.  It
wouldn't surprise me if the legal conundrums virtual items with real value
would cause is a large part of why Verant and OSI have come down so hard on
eBay auctions.  It seems to me that they are trying to prevent in game
items from acquiring a recognized, real world value.  Their original goal
may have been to prevent people short cutting the game (keep it running at
the pace intended, keep things fair), but the ultimate goal is the same. 
To do that, they have to say that in game items can have no real world
value, so the person with the largest bank role can't just buy their way to
the top.

> Seriously--the fact that there are exchange rates and money valuations
> attached to items in virtual spaces now means, as a player pointed out to
> me, that at some point we are BOUND to see legislation regarding avatar
> property rights. It certainly has an impact on the point you're making.

The reality of the situation is that, until legal precident is set, virtual
items have no "real world" value, and can be used as payment for services
rendered w/o violating the non-paying part of volunteer work.  As you said
above, tho, once that goes to court and precident is set, that may change. 
It might be safest to just not reward volunteers with virtual items, and
stick to in game powers only.

Of course, who's to say in game powers don't have real world value too?

-Greg



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