WoWGlider litigation and more...
Just a few quick bullet points about law and virtual worlds:
- When Thomas blogged about the FBI looking at Second Life casinos last week, I wanted to chime in to say, based on my impressions, Second Life has good reason to be worried about the casinos. Most gambling regulations don't cover only wagers of currency, but talk about games of chance involving something of value. But I hesitated to comment because casino law is not my area and I hadn't even read the recently passed Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.
So many thanks to Professor Anita Ramasastry for actually reading the UIGEA and doing a thoughtful analysis of the Second Life casinos issue for FindLaw. See her column and conclusions here:
Could Second Life Be In Serious Trouble? The Risk of Real-Life Legal Consequences for Hosting Virtual Gambling
(In summary: yes, there is good reason for concern.)
- On the legal scholarship front, people often raise the question of
who owns the rights to player-created works in virtual worlds. Erez
Reuveni, currently clerking for the Chief Judge of the District of
Massachusetts, has a recent article about that exact issue in the Indiana Law Journal. It can be found here. It's a very thoughtful analysis of the issues.
- Not really law, but something that I think IP lawyers in this space might want to consider: Jason Craft's 200+ page PhD thesis, "Fiction Networks: The Emergence of Proprietary, Persistent, Large-Scale Popular Fictions." It's an interesting analysis that draws on Star Wars Galaxies and comic books to come up with a critical theory of virtual worlds and other proprietary fictional universes. It includes references to Wookies, Michel de Certeau, Harry Potter, Espen Aarseth, and Larry Lessig.
- The most interesting new VW case being litigated today (barring Bragg v. Linden, which is still live in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania but bogged down in a variety of procedural matters) is Blizzard's suit against the makers of WoWGlider. Gamasutra covered the story developments back in February. TN friend Matt Mihaly has been following the case on his blog (see here e.g.) and takes a pretty dim view of the Blizzard's claims. Others folks, including commenters on Matt's blog, are supportive of Blizzard.
If you're interested in the case documents, the original declaratory judgment Complaint is here. Counterclaims are here. A proposed joint case management plan can be found here. The case management plan is an interesting document for non-lawyers to read, since it offers brief and readable statements by both sides of the facts of the case and the nature of the legal claims.
I don't want to explain and hash out the merits of Blizzard's DMCA, contributory copyright infringement, unjust enrichment and tortious interference claims in this post (that would take a while), but I did find one aspect of the case very interesting. Part of Blizzard's damages theory is that WoWGlider is a gold farming tool that ruins the in-game economy and destroys the desired and optimal game balance, making players cancel subscriptions when they otherwise would continue playing. For example, Blizzard's lawyers say in their statement:- The MDY parties are also fully aware that WoWGlider users rely on the program to acquire large quantities of WoW virtual property with little effort, and then sell that virtual property for real money in unauthorized third-party exchanges. These sales have a ruinous effect on WoW's in-game economy. The MDY Parties' sale of WoWGlider has caused a loss of goodwill among WoW players by devaluing the game experience, forced Blizzard to divert resources to preventing access to WoWGlider users, and decreased Blizzard's revenues from WoW players who stop playing out of frustration with the devalued game and from WoWGlider users that Blizzard is forced to terminate to protect the overall integrity of the game.
- The MDY parties are also fully aware that WoWGlider users rely on the program to acquire large quantities of WoW virtual property with little effort, and then sell that virtual property for real money in unauthorized third-party exchanges. These sales have a ruinous effect on WoW's in-game economy. The MDY Parties' sale of WoWGlider has caused a loss of goodwill among WoW players by devaluing the game experience, forced Blizzard to divert resources to preventing access to WoWGlider users, and decreased Blizzard's revenues from WoW players who stop playing out of frustration with the devalued game and from WoWGlider users that Blizzard is forced to terminate to protect the overall integrity of the game.
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