Virtual Worlds News reports that an alderman in Illinois tried to cancel his kid’s MMO account, found it too hard, and took it up with the House. And now it’s the law in Illinois that there has to be a way to cancel on the website, with no phone call or snail mail required.

This will likely be a ripple effect, unless companies are going to make Illinois-facing websites and account management.

COPA, the Child Online Protection Act, has been overturned by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. This is actually upholding a lower court ruling from a while ago.

It will be interesting to see what effect this might have on virtual worlds, given the parental pressure for safe worlds and the ongoing political crusades, and the continued rise in kids’ worlds (and in kids who try out worlds not meant for them).

Edit: since there is some confusion about this, here’s a link that points out the differences between COPA and COPPA. In short, COPA is the replacement to the Communications Decency Act, and has to do with publishing adult material on sites minors can get to. COPPA is the Children’s Online Protection & Privacy Act, and has to do with collecting personal data from kids.

Virtually Blind has the scoop, but in short, Blizzard won on all the major points: the court didn’t go for the copyright argument, saying they were bound by precedent and not a policymaking body; and that making this kind of software looks like tortious interference (meaning, interfering with the contract between Blizzard and users). Further analysis at TerraNova.

Blizzard Responds to Amicus Brief in MDY Bot Suit | Virtually Blind | Virtual Law | Benjamin Duranske

Although it has not put the issue in quite such stark terms, Public Knowledge is essentially seeking a ruling that says that the sale of consumer software is, in most circumstances, a sale, pretty much regardless of what the agreement that comes with the software says. If the court agrees in spite of MAI and its progeny (and the ruling survives certain appeal) then U.S. copyright law would protect, among other things, making copies of purchased software in RAM in order to use the software — no matter what the “license agreement” says. Resolving this issue in favor of Public Knowledge would call into question provisions in EULAs governing nearly every virtual world and multiuser online game, as well as EULAs for other software.

Just continuing to follow the story, and it felt interesting enough to merit its own post rather than just an addition to the comment thread.

Blizzard Responds to Amicus Brief in MDY Bot Suit | Virtually Blind | Virtual Law | Benjamin Duranske

Although it has not put the issue in quite such stark terms, Public Knowledge is essentially seeking a ruling that says that the sale of consumer software is, in most circumstances, a sale, pretty much regardless of what the agreement that comes with the software says. If the court agrees in spite of MAI and its progeny (and the ruling survives certain appeal) then U.S. copyright law would protect, among other things, making copies of purchased software in RAM in order to use the software — no matter what the “license agreement” says. Resolving this issue in favor of Public Knowledge would call into question provisions in EULAs governing nearly every virtual world and multiuser online game, as well as EULAs for other software.

An interesting issue which should have come to a court ages ago is being surfaced by the MDY v Blizzard suit.

As you know, most of the time when you do something on a computer, copies are being made. In fact, a LOT of copies are being made (see my old post on microtransactions for a more detailed analysis and historical point of view on this). In particular, installing a piece of software means getting a copy on a disk, copying it into memory, then copying it from memory onto your own disk, then reloading it into memory every time you launch it.

So, Blizzard put a copyright claim in their suit against MDY, makers of WoWglider. And a third party called Public Knowledge, which advocates for digital rights, filed an amicus brief (”friend of the court,” basically a side opinion because they feel they have a stake in the case) which argues that the copyright claim is, well, bogus.

MDY v. Blizzard Bot Suit Judge Requires Blizzard to Respond to Amicus Brief on Copyright Issues | Virtually Blind | Virtual Law | Benjamin Duranske

The issue is essentially this: Blizzard claims that when third-party programs like MDY’s Glider (which automates certain World of Warcraft tasks) load World of Warcraft software into a computer’s RAM, that “creation of a copy” violates the copyright Blizzard holds in its software.

Public Knowledge argues “that Blizzard doesn’t have a claim on copyright grounds because the right of users to make the copy for use by the computer is already guaranteed by law. [...] Therefore, Blizzard cannot claim any infringement of its copyrights based upon the creation of RAM copies because the right to make those copies was never Blizzard’s to license in the first place.”

This has broad relevance outside of this one case. So it’s particularly interesting that the judge in the case has now ordered Blizzard to answer this issue specifically.

Massively has an article about a university in Australia patenting a way to extract emotional info from player actions and automatically puppeteer the avatar.

There’s a long history of this sort of thing out there, of course. This particular patent, for example, references pulling out emoticons from chat, as many worlds have done, but also pairing them up with voice analysis in order to better match up emotional markers provided by voice and the tone intended by a given emoticon.

• The Hernandez case in Florida, where IGE is being sued for damaging the WoW gameplay experience, is trying seeking class certification. This was always their intent, so I suppose really, I am just pointing out that the slow gears continue to grind on.
• In other legal news, a Legend of Mir 2 player is suing Shanda, trying to get monetary damages for the value of the in-game items that they lost due to some sort of technical glitch. In other words, a “virtual property” case. The player had been buying these items, and Massively did the math, working out that the guy had spent almost $30,000.
• SmallWorlds is about to launch — basically, it lets you make isometric multiplayer apartments and embed them on pages and link them. They are apparently planning on lots of Hollywood tie-ins. It will be interesting to see how this goes, given the similarities to Whirled, which has not set the world on fire yet despite being very cool. Using the “open big” estimation method and eyeballing their curve using the numbers they report on the site, they look to be on track to peak around 20-30,000 users unless they manage to crack another market or go viral. Naturally, we’re watching all this kind of closely since Metaplace bears some similarities to both of these.

Not sure how I missed this before!

Sweden moves to tax in-game transactions | Virtual Economy Research Network

Transactions between participants in a virtual world, where the deal is about the sale of a “product” or a “service” against reimbursement in an internal currency, should be considered, according to the Swedish Tax Agency’s ruling, [actual] sales of electronic services, if the internal currency can be exchanged to a valid legal means of payment. If the internal currency cannot be exchanged to money, the transactions should not be considered [actual] sales.

Edit: to be clear, the reason this is important is because it refers to taxing in-world earnings prior to cashout. Limited to virtual currencies with a cashout mechanism, but still — the line isn’t drawn where the virtual currency becomes “real.”