[MUD-Dev] BIZ: Who owns my sword?

[Crosbie Fitch]

From: Matt Mihaly

> No, it does not make sense. We're talking about whether or not an
> avatar can own something under the law. It cannot because it is
> not given personhood by the courts and as has been said about 5
> times on this thread so far, only entities with personhood can own
> things. The law could recognize an avatar as having personhood but
> I believe that's an extremely far-fetched possibility in the
> forseeable future. It serves no wide-spread public purpose, unlike
> corporate personhood. (Yes yes, any WTO-protestor types out there
> can complain that corporate personhood is detrimental to society
> but the law has definitively decided otherwise, for good reasons.)

By your definition then, that virtual characters cannot own
anything, I can legally take anything I want, because anytime
someone says "Hey! You can't take that car. I own that car!" I can
come up with the following retort "Ah, but you see, it is my
contention that we're currently living within a virtual universe -
obviously undetectable by ourselves - and that therefore all notions
of ownership within this world are null and void because in the
super-universe - the 'truly real universe' - virtual constructs do
not have 'personhood' and thus any notion we have that we own things
is purely illusory - only super-beings are able to own things".

It really doesn't hold water.

Avatars patently do own things, otherwise Grand Theft Auto couldn't
work, because how can your avatar steal anything if it's impossible
for it to be owned anyway? Should we rename it "Grand Pretend Theft
Auto"?

By your reckoning we should change the language such that we have
'rown' which means 'really own or have real legal title to as really
recognised by one or more real nations on the real planet Earth, in
the really real universe', and another word say 'vown' which means
'virtually own or have pretend legal title to as pretendedly
recognised by one or more pretend jurisdictions in the pretend
virtual world'.

So: An avatar can 'vown' a virtual sword, but cannot 'rown' a
virtual sword.

This would be required if it can be demonstrated that anyone using
the word 'own' is intrinsically ambiguous.

However, I expect misunderstand arises because some people operate
on the premise that the real world is 100% isolated from the virtual
world and vice versa, and that therefore, any use of language
implying something determined by law is governed by the respective
jurisdiction, i.e. if you talk about an avatar owning something in
the virtual world, it's governed by the virtual jurisdiction,
whereas if you talk about a player owning something in the real
world, it's goverened by the real jurisdiction. Obviously there are
problems if people start believing that the two jurisdictions can
interact, e.g. that a player can own a virtual item, or that a
virtual avatar could own the player's car (yikes!).
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