[MUD-Dev] RE: BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights

[Dr. Cat]

(John Buehler)
 
> In brief, if players want to be able to transfer the privileges
> that they have paid for, they have to subscribe to a company's
> entertainment that includes the privilege of transferrance.  As an
> example, the leasor of an automobile is not obligated to permit
> you to transfer the lease to another person.  Same thing with a
> rented home.

One slightly odd aspect of this case, though, is that apparently
Mythic DOES give players the privilege of giving each other money
and items in the game.  Whatever their motivation for giving stuff
to another player, or even if there's no motive at all other than
random generosity to strangers, it's permitted to give things away
in the game, is it not?  Apparently Mythic feels it only becomes
unpermissible if the giving is preceeded by a certain real-world
occurence - i.e. the recipient agreeing to give real world cash to
the giver to motivate them to give the virual item or money.

Which brings to mind yet another odd thought.  Suppose for a moment
that the courts rule in Mythic's favor, all the way up to the
Supreme Court, and the law of the land is now officially that it's
legal to give someone your Magic Sword of Oyster Slaying for free,
but a violation of your contract with Mythic if you arrange for them
to pay you cash to give it to them.  Now let's fast-forward to six
months after the ruling...  A Mythic employee is logged into the
game, and watches as a powerful knight walks up to a novice player
and says "Hey Roderick!  I've been looking for you.  Here is a
powerful +87 Sword of Holy Ultimate Oyster Slaying, for absolutely
free!  Here you go!"

What rights and what recourse does Mythic have to determine whether
those two arranged some transfer of cash before this took place?
Sure, if people auction something on Ebay, Mythic may be able to
monitor it and do something about it.  But what if they arrange a
time and place by secret notes sent by carrier pigeons, get together
in a secret cave deep underground, lined with lead and equipped with
Maxwell Smart's old Cone of Silence, quickly slipping a five dollar
bill from one person to the other and swearing a blood oath to never
tell any other living human that the sword was really sold for five
bucks and not given for free, in shameful and blatant violation of
the EULA?  I think the law would probably say that if you happen to
find proof someone's violating your license agreement you can
enforce it, but if you don't find out it's tough luck, and you
aren't given any special additional authority to spy on your
customer's real lives just by virtue of the fact that you have a
contractual agreement with them that you desire to enforce.

Of course Ebay is convenient when you want to buy an extra 10,000
game coins, and deep underground caves are only for people with way
too much free time.  But I suspect if the way of things becomes that
the game companies CAN keep trying to forbid the sale of game items,
they'll just drive the Ebay item economy underground, as the players
establish little hidden exchange places and auction places that shut
down and move around whenever the game company gets wise to one and
forces them elsewhere.

I still think they're selling the wrong thing.  Paltry tens of
millions in annual revenue are the tip of the iceberg we'll be
seeing within the next twenty years - hopefully the next ten, or the
next five, but who really knows?  Right now they're selling people
make-believe versions of things that people want, like wealth and
big houses...  And maintaining an artificial scarcity to it that's
perhaps too tight, and yet their hardcore niche audiences rewards
them with the aforementioned tens of millions of dollars.

But you can focus people on getting something that's an actual real
thing people give and get and want, not an abstract representation
of a thing people want.  Human attention.  It has a real scarcity -
only one out of ten people at any given moment can have nine people
listening attentively to their latest joke, anecdote or story.  And
that's an automatically scalable level of scarcity.  It's something
that people seek in every existing online game, but many of them
have mechanics that work against them in seeking anything so real.

Attention is the currency of the future.

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