Digital Property Law [was RE: [MUD-Dev] Selling training]

[Matt Mihaly]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Tess Lowe wrote:

> The complexity as I see it comes from the fact that the player may
> be paying a large one-off fee for a service they expect to go on as
> long as *they* want it to. If a player pays $500 today for a virtual
> ubersword and the MUD closes tomorrow, the purchaser might feel a
> little aggrieved that they werent getting what was advertised.
 
> Now I've seen plenty of EULA's that say things like, 'If our service
> ends for reasons beyond our control, then tough luck.' But are
> service operators also allowed to put in clauses like, "We can end
> our service (ie close our MUD or take back your ubersword - or
> change its properties) whenever we want, with no refunds." ?

Well, all that really has to happen is for the company that owned it
to dissolve. As long as the owners haven't pierced the corporate veil
by mixing it with their personal affairs, and as long as the directors
haven't acted criminally, there doesn't seem to be much the players
could do. Maybe they could get some sort of court order to gain joint
ownership of the code to keep it running or something, I dunno.

--matt

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