Second Life Says You Own Virtual Goods In Their World
from the wow dept
Yesterday we wrote about a new conference looking at the issue of how do offline laws apply in online worlds, especially with respect to digital goods within those worlds. Ernest Miller is at the conference and is reporting that Linden Labs, who runs the game Second Life has officially announced that players get the ownership rights to intellectual property created in the game. They’ve put up a press release with more details. While interesting, I’m not sure this is a good development, since it basically throws the issue out of the online world and into the offline courts. Whereas most games handle such issues internally, Linden Labs is basically punting on the issue to the US court system. I can see the argument for both sides, but I’m not sure what makes the most sense yet. In the same post from Miller, he points out that a representative from There.com says that there have been problems within their world of people wearing “knockoff” clothing. Someone will design a new virtual shirt that looks like a more expensive virtual shirt. Suddenly, all of the problems of our intellectual property system in the offline world will get passed on to the virtual world. Why not use this opportunity to create new and better rules concerning intellectual property online?
Comments on “Second Life Says You Own Virtual Goods In Their World”
re: "You Own Virtual Goods In Their World"
Here’s the best question of all… Why doesn’t everyone concerned just get out of such virtual worlds and keep it real. Remember, this is cyber space… therefore, it doesn’t matter a hell of a lot.
I heard a comedian doing a joke about people who were into virtual worlds and online games… He was doing a quote from an avid gamer… which went something like:
“… yeah like in this game, it’s really kool???….. you get to go into these… like.. different scenes… ya know?… and interact with characters???…”
…to which the comedian responds…
hey buddy, I got a good game for you… you’ll love it… it’s called life.