Rights to Virtual Property?

[syrakusos]

On April 15, four Second Life property owners filed a class-action suit against Linden Lab, the online world's creator, alleging the company misled players into thinking they owned their virtual lands. People pay real dollars to Linden Lab for access to virtual land.

Can people actually 'own' virtual land?

By John D. Sutter, CNN By John D. Sutter, CNN"; May 10, 2010 10:45 a.m. EDT

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/10/virtual.property.second.life/index.html?hpt=C2

Is this a logical extension of "intellectual" property rights?

Our ideas about property rights evolve directly from medieval law about land. Even today we call it "real estate" because (1) land was the only real property. Tools, machines, books, even cash, were not real. and (2) title came from the state, i.e, from the crown. The king made you "Baron of Graymatter" and the king could (and did) take your title away.

In the industrial and commercial 18th and 19th centuries, new forms of wealth were protected with laws derived from those older folkways. For instance, two people cannot be in the same place at the same time, so two people cannot own the same non-land property at the same time. That led Ayn Rand (among many others) to consider the "airwaves" to be like land, claiming that the government's role was to prevent "jamming" of one broadcaster by another. But, in fact, at that very time of the early days, "choppers" were created. Choppers were electronic sequencers that let different signals share the same frequency. In point of fact, even in the days of direct current wire telegraphy, Thomas Edison invented a means of quadriplexing signals so that four messages could share one wire at the same time.

The point is that technology pushed far ahead of the law... which is to be expected, actually... We do not invent new laws for hypothetical cases. The law always looks backward in time.

Our copyright laws are equally faulty in attempting to treat ideas (or their form of expression) as if they were land: exclusive and rival -- if I have it, you cannot; and my having some of it prevents you from having all of it. Land is like that. Whether television broadcasts are is another matter entirely.

Now, we have a new level of abstraction... sort of like the "derivatives" of property rights, what puts and calls are to actual possession

Edited May 11, 2010 by Michael E. Marotta

[Christopher]

Perhaps virtual property should not be considered similar to real-estate property, but it certainly can be exchanged just as any good can be. That exchange means that a price can be attributed to the product, and therefore the product has a market value for those interested. Thus, we're talking ownership of something that does exist. It exists within a system of shared meaning. A plot of virtual land, just like a brand name, is not valued based on objective characteristics - bits and letters are not the source of value, nor do they accurately capture the product's meaning in an exchange economy.

Therefore, the question here seems to be whether Linden Lab guaranteed that virtual "property" is linked to the account and not borrowed by the account; and whether Linden Lab guaranteed or insinuated that Linden would retain responsibility for keeping the system active. My personal take given the nature of virtual accounts is that symbolic ownership is attached to the active account, but that the provider can cancel the entire system and be at most responsible only for terminating the costs of continued account renewal.

Christopher

[sbeaulieu]

This is akin to World of Warcraft, where account owners create and use characters. When WoW first kicked off, there was a rash of character sales by the account owners (approx. $600 a character...for time invested). There are also gold farmers (Chinese have the market on this iirc) who would play to accrue online gold with the intent to sell.

However, this led to defaulting on the accounts due to the End User License Agreement. Although the account owners paid, there was an explicit understanding that Blizzard owned all property...servers, accounts, characters, etc.

This is a likely parallel with the subject above. If the account owners singed the EULA without full knowledge of its contents, they won't have a case if ownership rights are covered. The idea is for the company to make money for its efforts, not the other way around.

~ Shane

[Christopher]

This is akin to World of Warcraft, where account owners create and use characters. When WoW first kicked off, there was a rash of character sales by the account owners (approx. $600 a character...for time invested). There are also gold farmers (Chinese have the market on this iirc) who would play to accrue online gold with the intent to sell.

However, this led to defaulting on the accounts due to the End User License Agreement. Although the account owners paid, there was an explicit understanding that Blizzard owned all property...servers, accounts, characters, etc.

This is a likely parallel with the subject above. If the account owners singed the EULA without full knowledge of its contents, they won't have a case if ownership rights are covered. The idea is for the company to make money for its efforts, not the other way around.

~ Shane

Right. What else can they (providers) do? If the system crashes and they lose information that has a market value of $1000x1000 users, property of the users, they're screwed. Pointless risk.

[sbeaulieu]

Right. What else can they (providers) do? If the system crashes and they lose information that has a market value of $1000x1000 users, property of the users, they're screwed. Pointless risk.

Agreed. Try covering losses on multiple terabyte servers! It's a losing arguement on the account holders. Who's to say that a hacker group couldn't gang up on accounts, crash the company and cash in. That's a very good angle to look at. While it's on the extreme end, if I thought of it, so could someone else. That fact alone would push me to add that sort of language into the EULA!

~ Shane