If you work for a company for 20 years and they give you a gold watch, it’s yours.

If you farm mobs for 20 hours and get an epic, why wouldn’t it be yours?

It’s a reward for time invested. The company who gave you the watch can’t stop you from selling the watch. Why should the game company stop you from selling the epic?

I’m not a big supporter of RMT, I do consider it a little bit of cheating, but I see all this anti-RMT “you don’t actually own that” as legislation getting in the way of people doing what they want to do. If people want to sit there and farm gold for hours upon hours, they should be able to. And if other people want to pay them real money for time they invested, why should the game company want to stop them? I don’t understand.

Your bowling alley analogy may be even better (though less timeless) than my usual old chess-at-a-friend’s-house analogy. I feel like some people just skim past that and don’t hear it. It’s not an outdated mode of thought. I can’t walk out of my favorite pool hall with the eight ball. No matter how many times I sink that puppy, I don’t have any right to it. It’s merely a prop that I have been granted use of for the duration of and within the context of my play.

8. Selling of Items.

Remember, at the outset of these Terms of Use, where we discussed how you were “licensed” the right to use World of Warcraft, and that your license was “limited”? Well, here is one of the more important areas where these license limitations come into effect. Note that Blizzard Entertainment either owns, or has exclusively licensed, all of the content which appears in World of Warcraft. Therefore, no one has the right to “sell” Blizzard Entertainments content, except Blizzard Entertainment! So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported sale, gift or trade in the “real world” of anything related to World of Warcraft. Accordingly, you may not sell items for “real” money or exchange items outside of World of Warcraft.

and

11. Ownership.

All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to World of Warcraft (including without limitation any user accounts, titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, “applets” incorporated into World of Warcraft, transcripts of the chat rooms, character profile information, recordings of games played on World of Warcraft, and the World of Warcraft client and server software) are owned by Blizzard Entertainment or its licensors. World of Warcraft is protected by the copyright laws of the United States, international copyright treaties and conventions, and other laws. All rights are reserved. World of Warcraft may contain certain licensed materials, and Blizzard Entertainments licensors may protect their rights in the event of any violation of this Agreement.

Not only is ownership explicitly granted, its also noted in more than one place in the EULA that this is the case. They even go so far as to extend the traditional employee automatic assignment of ownership to the end user. They own all transcripts of what I say in a chat room. Any UI AddOns I have zero claim to once they are incorporated into the WoW UI. All the YouTube videos featuring WoW are theirs as well. This sort of broad sweeping legal speak is usually routinely contested and shot down in courts as unconstitutional. Witness the Right to Work laws and other such contracts that were deemed too restrictive. This is why I think EULAs haven’t truly established ownership to the point where the IRS or politicians can begin to think about how to levy a tax.

Under these terms, not only is every sword in the game theirs but so is every YouTube video of a WoW encounter theirs. I’m sure the author of these videos would take exception to the fact that Blizzard owns all of their creative efforts by default. Eventually the EULA gets tested properly in a court of law and then we can begin to discuss how to tax the whole thing. Unfortunately, politicians and such will trample all over this new market long before it has a chance to properly sort itself out.

They stream the screen image? If not, copyright only covers works of a certain complexity and with a human author behind it. I simple sentence like “place texture y on top of texture x” isn’t copyrightable. Output of an algorithm probably isn’t covered at all. (This is all technical though, and beside the main point: MMOs try to be “your life”, not just a game, that’s where the pressure comes from. Remember: over time law follows morale.)

Raph, I think you should forget the art. Users already have the right to view the art if it sits on their HD. Basic copyright law doesn’t cover personal viewing, it covers copying. I think one should try to frame this in terms similar entertainment. This isn’t primarily an IP issue.

Bowling hall: Let’s say you pay per ball, then a friend comes along and asks if he can throw your ball. It isn’t the player’s ball, but it seems fair that he could let his friend throw for some compensation. Now, what if your hall has a scoring system, should you then be able to demand the right to sell your score to a friend? Obviously not, it would compromise the tournament, the game. This should hold for MMOs too.

Collectible Cards: Let’s say a MMO is marketed as an item oriented game where you can exchange stuff. Players may then claim that they have the same rights to trade items as they have with their MtG cards. Just because these items are exchanged through a computer network shouldn’t matter.

Multi-installment interactive story: The creator of a MMO sells his game a s a storyline that will unfold over 3 months. The progress is controlled through the aquisition of in-game items. Some players that has played through the storyline then sells his character and items to other players, as a net result players quit 2 months early and never get to experience the artwork as intended. In this case it is quite obvious to me that the reselling player is causing damage to the author, both in terms of art and income.

In my view, what right users should have will have to depend on the context. (in terms of morale, not law) So the issue might not be virtual or not virtual, but what kind of system is it trying to be? What does it present itself as?

Look, I agree that the whole area of fabbing from digital assets is incredibly fascinating and opens up whole new giant worm cans. But I don’t see it as breaking this essential paradigm — the WoW-style items are simply not user property, because they are purely database entries.

I agree with you that the WoW-style items are not user property. I think the only reason they are not user property is not because they are a database entry but because the EULA you sign to play the game explicitly assigns ownership to the developer. Until EULAs are challenged in a court, the EULA is binding. Let’s not even think about the international implications of the EULA being challenged in a court.

I’ve always contended that if the IRS steps in to collect taxes on revenue earned from RMT that the ownership can of worms will be opened big time. Right now we live in a veritable house of cards with respect to ownership over virtual items because the IRS or a politician looking for new tax money could run through our ideas of IP and ownership like a bull in a china shop. The EULAs never been tested in a court of law. Right now the EULA dictates the default and I agree with the way you’re looking at the ownership issue but once a government body wants to levy a tax, I am sure people will come out and fight that initiative based on ownership.

@Morgan…. Need bullets? I guess Tufte was right about the effect Powerpoint is having on our culture…

Actually, I posited a question that appears to cause problems with some of your assertions. For example:

All the issues of RMT and microtransactions typically get caught up in the question of what a virtual item is. So let’s settle that issue once and for all. A digital item is made up of database entries. It’s bits and bytes living on a server. It may have been made the same folks who operate the server, or it may not have. It may have been uploaded by someone who pays for the privilege of manipulating the data on the server, or it may have been uploaded by someone who gets access for free.

My example of uploading a digital CAD file meets the qualifications you set in the above comment.

You then say this:

Purchases of new outfits for your golfer, new Live Arcade games, or new furniture for your house are no longer truly “microtransactions.” They are the reduction of a number in one field, and the addition of some data to another. It may be data that says you have access to a given other field in a database, or it might be a change in the records that state that you have access to download something — at which point the download system can go ahead and verify that, then initiate the download.

But in fact, that CAD data is actually more than a simple change in the number of one field. So your comment -

When one person sells another an EverQuest sword, what is being traded is not actually an item (as in a retail supermarket) or even a stand-in for an item (as in markets for precious metals or pork bellies) or even bytes representing a bet on future price trajectories (as in futures markets), but rather moving some bytes from one column to another that have no analogue whatsoever.

– starts to break down. I could, in fact, fabricate that EverQuest sword. It could be fabricated using a metal rapid-prototyping system and it would be, more or less, a good physical representation of the EverQuest sword.

You then say this:

In fact, in the case of EverQuest, you are not even moving a copy of the sword’s information. You are only moving a pointer to the sword’s information, because in practice, there is only one sword defined in a template database. Each local copy is an illusion; your inventory says “you have Sword X.”

Fair enough. But it wouldn’t take much for each sword to be a unique object. If, for example, some dimensional characteristics were tied to fields inside a user’s account (their age, DOB, days logged in, whatever), the shape could be modified. The file would be parametric… which happens to be a feature of the file format for Second Life which allows that kind of functionality. Now things aren’t so simple anymore.

Okay, so much of the rest of that post are concerned with copyright. Only *you* negate it after much discussion:

Well, everything I have said till now is based on following the letter of the law. But in practice, here’s something we do know. The law doesn’t work. Copyright, since the days of the Stationers’ Guild, is premised on social consensus — it is completely unenforceable against anyone outside the law or who does not share the same social framework.

That’s the same argument I’ve been using.

You then open this up to my question (posted originally above) by saying this:

In particular, since anything that can be seen by our senses can be reproduced, for better or worse, all digital forms of enforcing copyright are doomed to fail.

Exactly. And that means I can replicate those virtual items and they can either be representative of Real things or originators of Real things. The path goes both ways.

Furthermore, if as you assert (and I agree) that copyright is “doomed to fail”, then it makes no sense to assume that I wouldn’t open source it; find new business models that allow this work.

But here you say something curious:

In the end, microtransactions are an ancillary business model because there are copies of everything everywhere. Microtransactions from the server side depend on the notion of monopoly.

I’m not sure that this is true. Microtransactions could function without that particular monopoly and instead rely on other kinds of monopolies and perhaps Convenience. You said it: “The reason iTunes can make money is not the content, it’s the service“. Well, the reason some of the new online music services work is because they’re convenient, not because they have a monopoly. It’s more convenient (and cost effective and secure) to use iTunes rather than downloading a potentially virus-laden file off the net.

So now look at your list of “truisms”

- “RMT is not about IP.” (yet you raise IP in this discussion)
- “Microtransactions work as long as providers have monopolistic or cartel-level control over the data.” (not necessarily; Microtransactions in some instances depend on monopolistic control. If I open source a file, the transaction may not actually happen within the framework of that database.)
- “In a digital world, it is impossible to maintain said control. Everything can be copied.” (agree, and I’m fine with that and in fact that could enhance profit.)
- “Copyright only functions as long as everyone agrees to it.” (again, agreed, only it’s not necessary to maintain copyright to profit from creating something that could claim copyright.)
- ““Broadcast” unidirectional services are going, going, gone.” (which means that what I’m suggesting is even more likely.)
- “Providers can still make quite a lot of money even if they give up on the notion of control, if they instead embrace the idea that what people really want access to isn’t the bytes that look like a chair, it’s the service.” (I agree. But there’s more than one way to play the game and different ideas about what constitutes “service”.)

You then make this claim:

The value is in the service, not the content.

I don’t quite agree here. If the content and the service are effectively the same thing, it gets more difficult to make that claim.

Lastly, in that post you add this edit:

The mistake is to rely on copyable stuff for revenue.

That’s actually funny. I can imagine a business model where relying on copying is *necessary* for revenue.

-

I’ll leave it at that. Let’s just say that we should expect business models that are unique and unprecedented. There’s still room yet for new ideas.

“At least not until we have self-assembling nanite clouds that make the table when you press the button on the wall?”

We can do this now.

“I don’t see any fruitful distinction here.”

If there’s no fruitful distinction, Raph, then why suggest the photo is a better example in the first place? I believe there *is* a worthwhile distinction: an object that exists three-dimensionally is a better example in that people do not have a viable and direct digital alternative. People can look at a photograph on their monitor or on the print. For many there is little difference. However, they can’t sit on their virtual chair unless they use their imagination to inhabit an avatar that is displayed on a two-dimensional monitor.

“Yes there is. Copyright is the default state; open sourcing takes an act of will.”

So does creating something.

Just because it’s the default state for many people, doesn’t mean the assumption should be made that it will stay in that state. We’re discussing a topic that is pushing some boundaries, so imo, artificially setting boundaries doesn’t make much sense anymore than assuming people won’t use a product in a way it was never intended makes sense (and yes, product developers *do* attempt to imagine how their product could be used outside of its intended function). If anything, this is where I find the game devs with whom I’ve corresponded stuck: they want to enclose their virtual worlds in impenetrable boundaries the same way that a product development group wants to control how people use the product being developed and sold. For them, the world is the code; the code are the rules; and they set the rules by which everyone *must* play because they write the code. That mentality dismisses the actions of consumers, who, btw, are becoming increasingly likely to do exactly what is *not* intended by the developers. People violate rules. Period. The product development teams on which I’ve been concede in the end that they can’t control how a customer will use and abuse their creation; yet those game devs to whom I refer resist giving up that sense of control over the worlds they create. I find that odd especially since handing out SDK’s for mod development is an unremarkable practice now.

“So what? We have many cases all the time where containers are more valuable than IP, and vice versa. Someone encrusts a Nintendo DS with diamonds for Paris Hilton, versus someone modding it to live inside a cardboard box. A rare edition of a book versus the Penguin paperback edition. Again, what is the paradigm shift?”

Those examples are, imo, pretty bad. Note that those are all examples of REAL objects. At issue is the value of a Virtual thing and its place relative to Real things. Recall that it was you who put the qualifier out: “virtual stuff is not a reflection of anything and that is what makes it different and unique“. That qualifier fails. Virtual stuff CAN be a reflection of something. Furthermore, the virtual thing inside a virtual world or a game can be the originator of a real thing. On top of that, the virtual thing can have a value that is as legitimate as other supposedly “real” virtual things – like paper money. And the IP that’s potentially wrapped up in the virtual thing *may* or may not be of lesser value than the real thing derived from it.

My point is that Real and Virtual are much more interchangeable than you’re allowing, and can breach the qualifier on which you’re depending. That in the “real” world we have integrated virtual things for centuries. IP is a virtual concept. Money is a virtual concept. The paradigm shift is that never before have the real and the virtual been so easily and closely interchangeable. It’s been generations since people have had to give this any thought. Recall that at one time people didn’t trust money because to them it really was just paper.

People have forgotten that the paper in their wallet is a real thing with little inherent value (it’s just paper) that most often represents a virtual thing of much greater value (their time in someone else’s employ). Almost no one actually tries to convert their cash to the standard upon which it’s based; when they do, it’s newsworthy. And in my experience rarely do people truly think of money as representative of their labor; they assign it the value that’s printed in ink (if you find a $100 bill, do you think “I’ve just come into the representation of $100 worth of someone’s labor? Not likely, imo. I’m more like to exclaim “a $100 bill!” and immediatley think about wha physical goods I can acquire in exchange for this piece of paper).

The virtual concept of money has been integrated into our reality. It’s the reason people have so much trouble with music and movies; they have largely perceived the container as the Thing; and purchasing the container means to many of them owning the Thing. Intellectual property is so poorly understood by the public because comments like Morgan’s – “You purchase the rights to listen to the music contained within the MP3” -are relatively new to the masses. These are new considerations for non-creators. It’s why CopyBot was so interesting to many of us: it opened up the masses to a reality faced by creators. This is new. This is the paradigm shift.

What is also new is the idea that the digital file being sold in, for example, There, could be fabricated. I can do it now. And if its function is simple (no floating hoverboards, please), it will be a useable Real thing. That’s new. And it goes well beyond what the public is still grappling with when someone tells them they’ve not *actually* purchased the music but have licensed it.

In the end, what I’m saying is that drawing lines in the sand between what’s virtual and what’s real is a losing proposition. I rarely read Bruce Sterling, but did catch this from his last column for Wired yesterday:

“If you’re under 21, you likely don’t care much about any supposed difference between virtual and actual, online and off. That’s because the two realms are penetrating each other…” (Link)

Couple this with O’Reilly’s recent observation that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to discern layers of virtuality – radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/which_one_was_m.html.

I say, rather than try to account for what is Real and what is Virtual, why not simply accept that it doesn’t make any difference anymore; that we’re wrapped up in both.

“A better analogy might be a photo.”

I disagree. A photo is effectively a two-dimensional thing and increasingly a digital-only thing. A physical table will likely never be “used” by switching on a monitor as can be done with a photographic image.

“Copyright still rests with you.”

Not necessarily. There’s no reason to assume that someone wouldn’t simply open source it. So you have a digital thing distributed as an open source thing not only inside a virtual world but between virtual worlds (where counters change) that is also a reflection of a physical thing that can be fabricated from each virtual dataset.

“The new “container” of the IP belongs to them, e.g. they own the photo print they made.”

Yet the container of that IP is arguably of greater value than the digital file that represents the IP; especially, as I pointed out, if the object is a 3D physical object instead of an effectively two-dimensional photograph.

“You don’t own the music contained within the MP3. You purchase the rights to listen to the music contained within the MP3. You license the music within the MP3 for personal use.”

I’m unaware if iTunes does not permit open source content to be distributed for free via its store. Assuming it can’t, I’d ask that you imagine it did since that’s not a technical issue, it’s most likely a profit issue. Thus unencumbered, the point still stands.

“We’re back at a very standard model.”

Only we’re not back to a standard “virtual world stuff doesn’t represent anything real” model, because this model isn’t really a virtual world/videogame model, it’s a real world model handling real world-related things that happen to be in a format that can go into a virtual world.

No one confuses iTunes for a virtual world, yet that’s what this is like imo. People purchase their mp3 digital file and download that to their PC, transfer it to their iPod and create soundwaves using the digital file as input.

That’s more virtual than what I’m suggesting.

With a 3D file, people could purchase it inside a 3D space (instead of a 2D net-connected application window) and download to their PC, then transfer the file to a small RP machine and create a physical thing using the digital file as input.

Is the iTune’s mp3 an illusion? It’s just bits and bytes too. And people can’t even touch the output.

“Patience. We’ll learn how to extract, delete, or otherwise manipulate memories in a brain soon enough.”

The “Memory Molecule” was discovered a few months ago – physorg link.

“Csven, I do not see where our disagreement lies. Ease of instantiatin a new physical copy does not change my opinion one bit, nor does it change the mechanics I described? If anything, seems like a perfectly straightforward case.”

I was asking how your comment – “virtual stuff is not a reflection of anything and that is what makes it different and unique” – applies to virtual stuff that *is* a reflection of something.

Your answer seemed to assume that the Thing I uploaded stayed with me.

In the event it was uploaded by an end user, if you retained your IP rights, go nuts. SL was just a nice prototyping environment, the end. The fact that it was “contained” briefly in something you didn’t own (e.g. their database) is no big deal. And the actual resultant table is all yours, the end. You have both the physical object and the IP rights in the design.

I’m not saying that at all. I’m asking what happens if I create a manufacturable CAD file, upload it, and *that* is then sold as a virtual good which could be used to generate the physically real thing. Unlike standard virtual content, this is a clear reflection of something “real” (as real as an mp3 or mpeg file) as well as a relflection of something tangibly real.

>When SL becomes obsolete, as it inevitably will, what happens to my table? The illusion of reality breaks down, as all I really “own” is a database record containing the unique ID of the original table.

Well, I will always have the memories of my table, and anything I learned about how to make or use tables — that you can’t take away.

And, hey, I could have bought an expensive car and thought I owned it until the repo man came and grabbed it when I didn’t make my monthly payments.

It’s all relative.

>Think you mean “je ne sais quoi”, Prok. If you’re going to be pretentious, it helps to get it right. As for “more real than reality” – that’s way up there with your “emotional bandwidth” comment for vomit-inducing saccharine idiocy.

Of course “quoi,” der! Akh, kto ego znaet. Who owns the qua that was corrected to quoi now, Cael? We both do.

Raph’s containers are simply blown apart because of the velocity and permeability of virtual worlds. I’m being blamed for refusing to accept his ownership of his programmed pixels and told I’m pwned and don’t own my table; five seconds later he tells me my table will be CopyBotted and all he sold was a licensed experience of a table for a short duration; but I’m here to say that my shared participation in the table made it my property. My holiday cottage is my holiday cottage, even when I merely rent it.

All flesh is grass, anyway.

If IP is not that important, the “work and effort” of creation.

if ownership of the “table” resides with the end-user, and the container and access method is not that important, but the content therin is.

if your experiential social interactions convey ownership to items, that are entries, which reside on a database, that your SL clinet via Windows using TCP/IP protocols calls to across a network, of switches, routers and backbones (the channel by which you access the data stream contained in a database on a server owned and operated by linden labs)

if you by virtue of access, and voluntary purchase of items, gain privledge of ownership over the IP, in a system designed to have open access and modding, then why the HELL are SL store owners all bent out of shape about Copybot?

Was it because they were robbed of IP? or revenue generated by using a service? Or was it because someone using the very system, a very open system, designed a means of efficiantly and rapidly accessing and duping content, thereby effecting a virtual economy built not around IP but around access.

If you want ownership of a VW invest in the company, not access to the service, the differance is one is an owner and one is a customer, you may have a great social and meaningful almost real experiance as a customer, you may even make money off the service, or spend money while using the service, but this does not convey ownership.

The reason this does not convey ownership is companies are in the business of selling you a service or product, the amount of satisfaction determines your continued use of said product or service, but not equity.

Otherwise:
Bill Gates owes you some money for using Windows
Your ISP owes you money for using thier bandwidth
The IEEE owes you money for using an approved protocol
Cisco owes you money for routing and switching packets
Al Gore owes you money for using his internet
SL owes you money for using thier client, databases, servers, and datacenter.

And Raph, Sony and Ebay owe me money for using SWG, and Ebay….

I’m sorry the great communal proletariat of SL users will have to deal with real world economics, IP and copyright laws for some time Prokofy.

I think it’s cool that your such an advocate for SL and it’s community, but your fighting 900 years of Common Law doctrine, and the common law exists whether or not there is or is not a “spoon”.

Think you mean “je ne sais quoi”, Prok. If you’re going to be pretentious, it helps to get it right. As for “more real than reality” – that’s way up there with your “emotional bandwidth” comment for vomit-inducing saccharine idiocy.

Rent a holiday cottage sometime. Put some flowers on the table. It doesn’t make it your table.

“We do not speak of how he does not have the moral right to change the bowling alley into a bingo hall.”

This touches on the biggest issue I have with SL, and why I’m astounded at the investment some people have in its world. No matter how much I feel like I own my kitschy 3D table, it’s stored on their servers in a proprietary format. When SL becomes obsolete, as it inevitably will, what happens to my table? The illusion of reality breaks down, as all I really “own” is a database record containing the unique ID of the original table.

I don’t mind that; I’m prepared to spend some amount of real-world cash for added value. But I’m under no illusion that I “own” anything.

Would a subsequent virtual world honour SL’s notions of ownership? It seems terribly unlikely, since future virtual worlds will have different economic models, not to mention entirely different software architecture and data formats.

Ahh, thank you for writing this. I do see two values where I think you are writing of one: There is a value of the content, and there is a value of the container.

The cost of the container can be used to artificially boost the cost of the content (by making it more or less available to others), but if the content has no implicit value then the container itself has no value. If the content is of high value, the container *could be* of high value, depending on how it is used – but if the value of the container exceeds the value of the content… oh, well, that’s business. Much like a CD and music.

A CD can only be sold for as much as the amount that people are willing to pay for the music on the CD. If the music is not seen as having value…. Right.

Very nicely put. Now I believe the people talking RMT and the potential taxation consequences are interested in what you are doing when I pay you $1000 per week to use your favourite “blue bowling shoes” in the same bowling hall.

Is it illegal for you to accept my offering?

This would appear somewhat similar to how a music teacher might charge a lot of money for some talking and a few minutes worth of playing together. I dont own the music teacher, If ownership is the deal there then that pick I still have around from one of my old masters got really expensive…

Im sure the music teacher pay taxes, but not because of value or profits from any kind of IP related stuff. The stuff people pay for through RMT is like the little notation scribbles and words of wisdom a music teacher will teach a student. Some people are a bit funny though and think that all the product of the interaction between the teacher and the student is embedded within the container of the notation scribble and start trading worthless notation scribbles for stupidly large amounts of money.

In reality when I pay you $1000 for the “blue bowling shoes” I give you a gift of $1000 and you give me nothing in return other than some happy thoughts. Large enough gifts can also be taxed, but they are neither service or barter.