[MUD-Dev] RE: Digital Property Law

[Joe Andrieu]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu
> [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> the_logos at www.achaea.com
> Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2001 12:23 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: RE: Digital Property Law [was RE: [MUD-Dev]
> Selling training]
>
>
> On Sun, 11 Mar 2001, Joe Andrieu wrote:
>
> > Matt Mihaley:

[snip]

> And if the implied laws specifically allow for theft, muggings, etc?
> (if the game world has anything resembling a thief class for
> instance, I'd say it's implied that thieving is allowed.)

Well, this is the tricky part, which comes into conflict with a later
comment.

>>> I really hope that the courts aren't going to mandate game
>>> design. They don't require clubs to have civil and criminal
>>> courts to prosecute people who commit crimes inside them. They 
>>> seem to be satisfied as long as you're not encouraging it.

>> But people in clubs *are* subject to the laws of the
>> real-world. You can't just join a club and be exempt from the law.
>> However, if you can establish that the "rules of the game" are
>> sufficient definition of the "laws", then you might be ok.  That's
>> the case now, where the game declares upfront that "it's just a
>> game".  But I doubt that will hold up once digital objects are
>> treated like property and the average Joe won't be able to tell the
>> difference.

> Absolutely they are subject to the laws of the real-world. The club
> itself isn't obligated to act like the police though. If there is a
> murder in the club, the police come to handle it (or mess it
> up). Similarly, I think it's unlikely that a court order mandating
> that a game act like the police in case of a crime will stand up for
> very long. Doing so would be depriving the wronged parties of their
> right to use the police and court systems in case of a crime.

So, which laws apply?  Those of the game world or those of the
real-world? In the latter, you've got cops & feds demanding quite
onerous provisions in your service--Can you say "Digital Wiretap Law"?
Or, you try to establish that the game is its own jurisdiction, e.g.,
that the game rules are sufficient to define players' rights.  If you
make the latter claim, you may be able to keep the feds mostly out
(except when things spill over into kidnapping, pedophilia, etc.),
provided you have a rich enough, robust enough set of gamerules.

>> So, while I think mandating design might go a bit far, it could
>> happen.  Long term, perhaps the courts will mandate a certain
>> robustness in the delineation and treatment of rights, if such
>> rights are implied by certain conditions (like purchasable
>> property).  The courts may very well hold that any item purchased
>> is property and therefore, the service provider has an obligation
>> to provide reasonable protection of that right, possibly including
>> the provision of criminal and/or civil process within or outside
>> the game in order to pursue violations.  In other words, the game
>> may be forced to provide police and a court system if the
>> real-world court has determined that the services' digital objects
>> are property.  It's not that far fetched when you consider that US
>> courts are already aggressively applying US law to events that
>> happen outside the US.

> I think that is a little far-fetched. The sole example I can think
> of where an organization is required (or even allowed) to have its
> own police and court systems is the military, which is a special
> case. If courts treat stealing virtual objects as real crimes, then
> I don't see any way they can avoid having to investigate and
> prosecute the crimes themselves. I don't see this happening. It'd be
> essentially impossible for them. I imagine a cop logging into Achaea
> to investigate a crime. He'd get nowhere at all. Further, given that
> there can be a _total_ lack of hard evidence in a mud, I don't see
> how proof of guilt could be established.

Well, I agree that my scenario is far-fetched. But then again, a
southern state (I forget which one) has put a California couple in
jail for violating the local decency laws of their state by allowing
someone to download adult pictures from their BBS via a long distance
call. To me, that's pretty far-fetched too.  But the courts are
struggling with telecommunications induced jurisdictional issues and
it is very unclear how most of them will settle.

The reason to have your own in-game legal system is to avoid liability
by the rules of the "real-world" when the real-world decides that your
digital objects look like real property.

At some point, the courts may decide that "an average consumer" would
have a "reasonable expectation" that such-and-such contract term
applied to their digital property.  If there are clearly no digital
property rights, as UO and Verant are pushing hard to establish, then
there are few such implied terms.

But I believe this conversation started with an assertion that digital
property is good. That allowing people to own things makes for more
interesting, more entertaining, and hopefully more profitable games.
The problem is that if the game doesn't have a fully fledged concept
of what those digital property rights are, the courts may very well
impose their own version. Which could really suck.

Or, as John Buehler pointed out, they may not. So this could be just a
bunch of hot air. However, in the next decade we are going to see the
courts and the legislatures map out the space of digital rights, for
privacy, for songs & movies (ala napster), for access, and no doubt
for digital property.

Solving this problem correctly is what's required, IMHO, for success
for something akin to Project Entropia or any significant blurring of
real-world/game-world economies.

>> More to the immediate point, the courts are likely to make mistakes
>> before they figure this out. So, it would suck to have *your* MUD
>> be put out of business by a low-level judge who couldn't see the
>> difference between a virtual mugging and a real one.  Ultimately,
>> case law isn't determined until there's a case that completes at
>> trial.

> Right. When I do my next world, I know I will seriously look into
> hosting it somewhere offshore where they aren't likely to bother me
> with how I choose to run my world. I like experimenting with
> business models and the US is a little too self-righteous and nosy
> for my tastes.

Good luck. Bandwidth costs really suck when you do it that way. ;)

-j

--
Joe Andrieu
Realtime Drama

joe at andrieu.net
+1 (626) 395-1011

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