[...] Raph Koster’s: "Are microtransactions actually the future?" [...]

[...] Are microtransactions actually the future? [...]

[...] penny here, a penny there. Buy this story, it’s super-cheap. And of course there are always tales of a mysterious land [...]

[...] של WoW. לא תרגישו בהבדל בטעם (עשוי להכיל אספרטיים) – מה זה ‘מיקרוטרנסאקציות’. איזו מילה ארוכה, אלוהים. אני חושב שנקעתי את האונה [...]

[...] Free” that made the rounds of the blog-o-twitter-o-sphere a couple of weeks ago. I also remember Raph’s perceptive comments on this topic back in 2006 when Second Life was hit by the Copybot [...]

[...] innovation economy copyright CopyBot reality virtual worlds synthetic Life Second) […] Raph’s Website » Are microtransactions actually the future?   11.24.06 | 11:53 [...]

[...] about its long-term inherent value aside for the moment, there seems to be little question that gaming has provided the impetus for [...]

[...] here’s some more stuff to consider.First, off, Raph (where does he find the time?) once again has posted a thoughtful and lengthy set of thoughts on microtransations and copyright issues.Raph points out that virtual world “objects” aren’t objects at all, but only specific database [...]

[...] I’ve unfortunately not been able to take the time to get actively involved, but there’s been some decent discussion over on Raph Koster’s blog on the subject of microtransactions. It apparently started with a comment on that Venture Beat article I previously mentioned (reLink), which led to a first MT post, “Are microtransactions actually the future?” (Link) and then a second, current post, “Microtransactions getting a bad name” (Link). Although heavily skewed towards the subject of microtransactions in videogames, it’s worth following if you can spare the time to keep up with the comments. [...]

Perhaps Second Life is more like this ancient concept and 3-D virtual worlds with all their men in tights do represent regression, not progress.

Here’s “>a statement from Ginsu Linden on the forums which clarifies how LL sees itself:

“In Second Life, subject to certain licenses in the terms of service, you
retain the intellectual property rights you may have in your content,
including copyrights. “Intellectual property rights” are completely
separate to the rights of ownership of data – the bits and bytes that
reside on our servers. In order for us to provide the service of Second
Life at a reasonable cost, we must retain the right to own what we
physically own or control – the server infrastructure, including the
data on it. But ownership of bits and bytes of data does NOT by itself
give Linden Lab the right to publish or distribute your copyrighted
material.

I think there is a good analogy to hosted email services, like the
webmail services provided by many Internet portals. If you write an
email on those services, you own the copyright to the content of that
email. If you attach your copyrighted image to your email, you still own
the copyright to that image. In providing the service of sending that
email, the service provider hosts data that represents that email and
the attached image. The service provider owns the server infrastructure,
including the data on it, and stores that data for your email and
attachment in the “Sent” mail folder. But they can and will delete that
data anytime they need to, for service and scalability reasons. The
email service is more valuable to the extent they can store more of your
content, but for cost reasons they cannot guarantee that nothing will
ever happen to that data. However, regardless of what happens to that
data, under most terms of service for webmail that I’ve seen, you will
still own the copyright to the content represented by that data.

- Ginsu Linden