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

[Crosbie Fitch]

From: Jeff Cole

> It doesn't matter if virtual sword == real sword.  What matters is
> that the customer has the exclusive right to that sword, and can
> freely (or not so) transfer it to another.

Yup, and as I suggested in an earlier post, one of the solutions to
this would be to erode the entirely artificial feature whereby the
player appears to have a lasting and exclusive right to a virtual
item in their possession.

> You have a conceptual disconnect.  The law isn't going to take
> notice because people refer to avatars "owning" objects.

I was actually trying to demonstrate that.  :-/

> It's going to take notice because *real* people are placing *real*
> value on the *real* rights to exclude others and freely transfer
> *virtual* objects.  The value may well disappear if the developer
> powers down the servers, but that doesn't matter.  When the market
> becomes sufficiently valuable, the law will provide remedies to
> the *real* participants.

And that's the whole problem. A MMOG provider will face the prospect
that, simply by creating virtual objects in a virtual world that
players can manipulate (and value), they must grant rights to the
players and be obliged to guarantee some degree of integrity for
those virtual objects and the environment in which they're modelled
- and all this before any money is involved!

It's not a stocks and shares dealing system, it's a fiction!
Anything can happen. Even the unexpected.

> But that's not what you're discussing.  You're discussing one
> *player's* ability to give another *player* a *virtual* object.
> The avatar is merely a client or an interface.

Yup. I'm trying to say that a player doesn't exchange anything in
the virtual world. The player just makes a deal on eBay to get their
avatar to perform a certain action within a certain virtual
world. Co-incidentally, within that virtual world, two avatars may
exchange items. NB I'm not saying there's anything wrong in
that. Players have only exchanged money in return for performance of
an action. It's dangerous to say that they've also exchanged
property.

The problem is that if people start believing that MMOGs are like
share dealing systems simply because they observe a similarity
(despite the fact that the MMOG only tends to be modelled in a
similarly reliable fashion), it then establishes this, then lawyers
work on this basis, and before you know it, MMOGs turn into dealing
rooms systems, indeed they're obliged to operate as such.

I'd suggest that this idea is broken as soon as possible by
deliberately introducing unreliability in terms of item durability
and the ability to retain exclusive control.

> Regardless of whether they're isolated or not, it's the *real*
> world value and the *real* world player's right to exclude (and
> transfer to) others that the law is going to address.

Yes, I'm not questioning any real world rights whatsover. I'm
questioning whether the real player has any rights within the
virtual world.

> You can be as pedantic as you want, but that isn't going to win
> your case.

I'm trying to highlight the care with which one needs to specify
things. If you blur distinctions between fiction and reality then
you're bound to get into trouble.
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