2005-10-08

Law in Virtual Worlds

Quick primer of 3 important areas:

- copyright - limit possibilities of game creators - anti-circumvention laws -
prohibit circumvention of access controls or protection against duplication -
communications law - broadband can be regulated, which affects games

These 3 areas have been changing quickly in the last few years--but primarily
because of the film industry (even though it'll soon be dwarfed by the game
industry).

Important shifts: EULA and arbitration clauses in licenses *are* enforceable.
That means that whatever is written in the click-through is allowed.

Intellectual property vs virtual property: DMCA is IP issues. IP and
communications law is a different issue to virtual property.

[Ann Bartow is fantastic and articulate on the chilling effect of secondary
liability on creativity.]

"law as the excrement of courts"

[It's incredible listening to lawyers speak. They each have their own
distinctive voice, are massively articulate, and rarely say "uh" or "um"
unless that's necessary for the rhythm.]

[Also, the lawyers have a really interesting inquisitive mode. A content
creator from SL is asking a question, and the moderator is asking really
careful questions to isolate what he means. The question is about creators
having no rights over what they make, and their creations can be knocked off
and they lose it. The moderator says that they lose money from sales, but the
thing itself isn't lost--recognising that, in theory, the item *might*
disappear. Smart folks.]

question: was the internet an expression of a social need that because
possible because the technology was there, or is it an incredible accident
that was a consequence of the cold war. if we think this was an accident, and
we see that people want many internets, perhaps running over different lambda
frequencies, some of which will be closed, is copyright the right instrument
to be thinking about? should we be putting our effort into this, or into what
society wants: either a closed environment or a "classic internet", with
creativity?

a little of the answer: the accident you refer to represents an inflection
point in the X of information, a new kind of machine, a core X of sharing. as
creativity bubbles, it accretes power. at this inflection point, the "public
domain" became understood (the judges didn't in 1998, they do now). it's now
downhill, we're winning but law is slow. they'll be making better laws for
creators in 5 years time.