The main point of contention (should you desire to continue the debate, hehe) is that I maintain that the difference between work and play is “artificial” and purely mental. The difference is simply that a company specifies a certain environment as “play” and thus (usually) prohibit you from owning what you create within the environment. I believe trying to separate incidental and intended effects is a bit of a fallacy – effort and resources equals work no matter what is really intended. Think about art – where do you draw the line between “intended as work” and “intended as play” there? And yet, art in all forms is at the core of the copyright debate. If you create a work of art in a legit copy of 3D studio, you’re the owner (it is considered “work”). If you create the same in a pirated copy, it can only be considered “play”. It’s all in the implicit/explicit agreements (EULAs etc).

So basically… Like Swift Voyager said, it’s all about the agreements. And superior legislative bodies have the powers to render certain agreements void (you can’t sell yourself to slavery in most countries, even if you try). So all it takes is a little change in perspective, and you could own your MMO characters. I guess I’m just suggesting there’s nothing inherently absurd about the idea of owning the produce of your time and effort in any area of life, not even MMOs.

Playing a MMOG is equivalent to renting an ATV — in these and similar cases, what you’re actually purchasing is the time-limited opportunity to enjoy an entertainment experience delivered by a product someone else owns. There’s no rational basis for believing that rental usage of the ones and zeros in a game operator’s database creates a right of ownership over those objects, any more than you get to keep a rented ATV after you’re done riding it.

That it’s a MMORPG is irrelevant. Whether some of the ones and zeros are associated with the inventory of an in-game character makes no difference — it’s still just part of the entertainment experience, which is all you’re paying for.

Nor does virtuality matter. Suppose I’m playing a character in a real-world Alternate Reality Game of your devising. As the operator of that ARG, you’ve bought a bunch of props to hand out to the people playing your game. Let’s say that one of those props is a hammer, which you assign to my character for use as part of the game. If I then assert that because you let me use that hammer, I now own it, how would you respond?

More pointedly, suppose in your game you buy a hammer, some nails and some boards, and you assign those items to my character as props. If I have my character build a birdhouse out of those items, do I-the-player own the birdhouse even though you supplied the materials?

If I don’t, why doesn’t that argument also apply to computer games?

IANAL, but it seems to me that making this case to a judge would be a simple application of basic and long-established lease law. Then again, given the willingness of some judges to substitute their personal notions of “social justice” or suchlike stuff for actual law, I can see why publishers might be a little skittish about putting their assets on the line….

I’m not sure what the point you’re trying to make is, but in the end, the company owns your character in much the same way. If a company wants to give you the right to change your virtual goods for real-world money, then that is a right they have. If they choose to close their borders entirely, then that too is a right they have.

There’s also the very real legal problem of “work”. Games are intended to be entertainment. The money generated by most games such as World of Warcraft is incidental and not an intended aspect of the gameplay. There’s a reason the EULA doesn’t include a work-for-hire agreement, and that’s because there’s no “work” involved. The time spent in a game is play, and this is reinforced by the fact that you pay for the privilege in most games.

You say “The game developers made every aspect of your character and allowed you to license it.”. This of this in the terms of the real word. Your nation printed/minted the money in your wallet, and allowed you to licence it. All of RL economy is based around the same principle of “licencing” you use to argue that virtual property is not really “owned”.

Even though the work you do in a game/virtual world (I would like to see you argue the difference, and I don’t mean that sarcastically) is done within a “licensed” framework, and operates with “values produced” by someone else, it’s still work done by you. Heck, if you RL-work at an office, with all probability you didn’t make the office building yourself, you didn’t make the computer, etc etc. The framework in which you do your work is owned by someone else and “licensed” to you (via a near-infinite chain of sub-licensing).

If you’re attempting to define “virtual” as “immaterial” or “not actually there in the real world” I believe you’ll run into difficulties. VISA does not possess billions of dollar bills that they quickly ship around the world. Representation, virtualization of wealth (property) is ubiquitous. I think you’re looking for a line in the sand that isn’t there.

All these conversations a work of art that belongs to the creator(s), regardless of who provided the means used for the creation.

And I similarly claim that all conversation I’ve had are my intellectual property. The people providing the means for the conversation does not have any rights to it. For example: I have a conversation in a café: The owner of the building, the proprietor of the café, the fella serving us the beer that make us talk or the creator of he napkin that we jot down our idéas on have _no_ right at all to any income I could make from selling the stories/ideas that I construct during the talk. And they definitely have no right to take my ideas and say “Hey you wrote that while sitting at our café, so your creation belong to us.” I already paid them for the service to being able to sociably interact in a “room” created by thm.

But if I play up a nice bit of story in an online game, then I am forbidden to make money out of it, at least according to the terms of service. I have no idea at all if this has ever been tried in a court anywhere in the world, but it sure would be interesting to see. Compare with writing something in microsoft word, talking about something over a phone network, drawing something with a certain brand of crayons, creating music on a very specific brand of instrument etc…

Of course there is the problem about using intellectual property that is created or invented by someone else, and making money from it. So if I made a story that included certain copyrighted names, for example “Illidan” or “Conan” then I would have a problem. But, at least in Sweden, you are allowed to use other IPs names and copyrights if you do it with sufficiently artistic, satirical and/or journalistic intents and results. I imagine something similar is true in most contries/states around the world. See Andy Warhols classical pop-art for a prime example, he uses known trademarks and adds artistic value to them.

So, I say that my character is my intellectual property. Not as it is in the shape of stats and equipment, honour points or similar, but in the stories that I have created using it as a mean and a focus for. The online presentations can be a (necessary?) part of my work of art, and I only claim to have used them for creating something that holds a significant artistic value. What I would like to own is the right to my creation.

/Mellon

PS: Talking about the value of intellectual property in online forums might not be a good way of pleasing the crowd :-) But I’m a writer and musician and I like to make my living by those fields, so they are close to my heart.

that being said, there really isn’t any one can say or do about it, even if some clearly stated rules and laws were laid out, what would happen, fines? treated like a 80′s hacker? jail time? lock you up with rapists and murders cause you sold someone a SoJ (old school). what are the game companies really gaining, or loosing from then disallowing this behavior, I think its a waste of time and money on the grander scale, how much do you think is spent on lawyers fees just to write that agreement that hardly anyone ever reads cause they all read the same in their minds, how much time is used of the supreme court sys discussing these and other cases just like it.

now like I said I am on the side of the game companies to get what they made, but I don’t think they should get greedy either I want them to make a money, I want them to make millions actually, why so they can hire more people and make more games, if we could get blizzard and activision and EA and sony to make more money but turn around and use those profits to make more games so we give them more money holy crap its a circle and everyone is happy, now as far as subscription based games having content traded amongst players, if blizzard or sony is saying that my time is not worth anything, well then I am grossly over paid to do what I do, and some one should talk to my employer . here is a great example its like some one who goes out and finds that rusty old car from the junk yard buys it for 100$ takes it home restores it pays ohhh lets say 10 grand in parts and paint and the like, to its former glory lets say a white 70′ dodge challenger (hehe) and sells it to a private buyer for 50 grand. now is he selling the car, or is he selling the parts or his time. can the owners of the junk yard come back to him and say hey we sold you that car, how about the owners before that, how about dodge can they come back and say no no you made money off our product that we spent building almost 40 years ago, even though that guy had to spend 10 grand on parts most likely from dodge themselves.

anyways Im done playing devils advocate, I really hope that didnt come off as some poor forum gamer rant

Sony wouldn’t be the only company providing a specialized service for which it charges a fee. Most MMOs are willing to move your character from where you put it to where you want it for a fee because the fee covers the cost of the service provided. It neither establishes nor refutes ownership in the same way that FedEx does not establish or refute ownership of the Picasso.

And sales tax has nothing to do with establishing anything; the government uses the term “sales tax” to cover both item and service sales. It’s not a good basis for determining ownership. My brother may buy a car and I may pay the sales tax for him, but that doesn’t make me the owner of the car.

In my mind, if you’re going to try to make a game character the intellectual property of the player, you’re going to have to prove that everything (and I mean everything) about that character originated in the mind of the player; that it was neither inspired by nor fettered by limitations imposed by the game system; that the same character can be transfered between mediums to those exact specifications; that you have established ownership via legal registration (trademarking, copyrighting) or a bill of sale; that when the game company goes out of business you are still in possession of your game character; that you can license the use of your game character however you see fit to whomever you see fit. If these proofs of property rights cannot be applied, then you don’t own it.

As a user of Second Life, I know that it’s basically a world where everything is user created content. From the shape of your avatar, what clothing it wears, and the stuff you carry. Another user, somewhere, figured out the system and created it themselves. Photo-shopping for clothing, sitting in hours in the script or build interface to create a program or item respectively, or (as I sell in Second Life) working with an animation program to make new animations avatars can use to modify their visual behaviors.

By my records, I made $1000 worth of cash last year off Second Life. Not in game cash, REAL cash. Second Life ties their in game “virtual” money to the dollar in the real world. It even has an exchange rate, like any currency. For comparison, if I trade in close to 100K of their in game cash, I can make about $500 dollars US. So this takes the whole idea of virtual property in a new direction. Now, I’m not only creating original work via a provided interface, but I’m making real world money off it. This is more of a dilemma then I would have if I just kept playing my Warlock in WoW (In which all items and customizations are provided by Blizzard).

Just some food for thought.

- Polecat

Also remember that in order to enforce sales taxes, laws typically take a broad view. For example, in many states car leases are taxed on the full valuation of the car as if it was sold, despite the fact that it is a ‘right to use’ contract. It’s sensible to understand why, without broad view of what ‘sale’ and ‘property’ are, sales taxes would be unenforcable — as everyone could just write non-terminating right to use contracts.

I can believe a fixed price transfer fee is legitimizing the item as property, and in that case it may limit what a supplier can do to take that item away from you in the eyes of the court. (though it would have to be worth a court battle). Further, charging a percentage transfer fee sounds quite a bit like the actual value is being legitimized, and I can imagine this running right into interesting property ownership and taxation laws. Several states are going after itunes for sales tax on music downloads, that lvl 80 sword a couple years from now could be next.

This was an interesting part of a comment above – “feelings of resentment and distrust arise, and then alternative means of trade are searched for.” Circumventing the rules because they don’t like them is never going to get players a day in court to test their very shaky theory. The IP still belongs to the company, the only entity entitled to feel any resentment and distrust because the rights being violated are theirs. A frustrated and angry burglar is still a burglar when it comes right down to it.