Property Rights in a Virtual World
The Washington Post ran an interesting story several years ago about the virtual world, Second Life, and intellectual property rights. A program was launched in Second Life that duplicates objects. This program was a huge threat to people like Veronica Brown, who makes a living designing and selling virtual clothes to Second Life users. Veronica’s boutique, Simone, brought in an estimated $60,000 annually. If programs like this exist and can steal her virtual merchandise, then who is to be prosecuted, or can they be? At the time the article was written there was no clear precedence over the ownership of virtual goods. A few cases have seen there day in court in various countries, but with different results-
1. In 2002 gamers started selling the virtual goods they had won playing the game “Dark Age of Camelot” on Ebay. The developers of the game blocked those goods from being used and the gamers sued claiming they had a right to sell the items they had legally aquired playing the game. Unfortunately for the gamers, the federal court was in favor of the makers of the game sighting the licensing agreement that all players agree to while setting up their games.
2. A Chinese court found that the creators of Mir 3, owed a player compensation for deleting his characters magic sword, which was valued at $120. The player unknowingly bought it from a virtual vendor who had illegally duplicated it from its original designer.
3. In 2008 a woman in Japan hacked into her husbands virtual account on Maple Story and killed his alter-ego avatar. The woman was arrested and is on trial for computer hacking – the punishment could be 5 years in prison and up to a $5000 fine.
The legal system hasnt been able to keep up with the problems that virtual worlds create and I suspect it will be several years before enough precidents are set. In addition, the globalization of the virtual world will make this even more difficult as laws are sure to be different from country to country.
As it stands now Veronica Brown owns the patterns for the clothes she sells, but Second Life owns the actual objects, and the users don’t own either. Which begs the question – If users dont own anything they are purchasing in a virtual world, how long will they continue to purchase items?
