A real-life right to virtual property
I am standing on a tropical island with palm trees and a beautiful ocean view. There is a real estate sign next to me offering a plot of land by the beach for only $50 down and $10 a month. It seems to be a bargain, but is it an illusion?
In one sense, yes. I am exploring Second Life, the online virtual world that is rapidly becoming a commercial phenomenon. In another, no. If I buy the estate, I will hold rights to it. My avatar will be able to live here, or I can sell it to someone else. If I sell again, perhaps after building a virtual villa, I can take my profit in real dollars or exchange Second Life's synthetic currency for them.
Second Life is unusual in granting intellectual property rights over clothes, land and buildings to its users. Most virtual worlds, such as Vivendi's popular World of Warcraft game, insist that all such chattels are owned by the publisher. WoW's 7m players are allowed to trade items such as gold trinkets or armour patches inside the game's world of Azeroth but are barred from selling them in the real one.
These rules are widely flouted, of course. As soon as online worlds were created, a division of labour sprung up. "Gold farmers" in China and Mexico spend hours online amassing virtual gold that can be traded for armour and fiery swords. Both gold and weapons are sold on exchange and auction sites to players willing pay cash for mythical power.
So the border between virtual worlds and the real one have blurred, despite the efforts of games publishers to keep it intact. The worlds are still divided in legal terms by end-user licences, which players must agree to comply with before being admitted into virtual worlds. Yet these agreements, with their sweeping denials of legal rights, could easily be struck down by courts.
The inhabitants of many virtual worlds deserve to have their property protected. No player who "buys" hotels in Monopoly with fictional money believes that he or she should keep them when a game ends. But those who live in virtual worlds often invest a lot more time and effort in them than Monopoly players: they may spend hours a day for years building characters and homes.
As the law professors Dan Hunter and Gregory Lastowka have written, this arguably makes them owners under John Locke's notion of property: "Whatsoever [man] removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he had mixed his labour with, and joined it to something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property."
Nor is the money at stake fictional. Entrepreneurs such as the virtual property developer who operates under the name Anshe Chung in Second Life, earn a real-world living by trading virtual goods. A US film-maker spent $100,000 (￡53,000) this year to buy a spaceship in the virtual world of Project Entropia. For such participants, these are less games than aspects of their livelihood.
Finally, the rules of virtual worlds are less clear-cut than board games. There is nothing to stop publishers from changing their worlds in order to keep them exciting or stop one group of users from gaining an advantage over another. They can introduce monsters or create new real estate kingdoms without worrying about who gets killed or suffers property devaluation as a result.
Even Second Life can be capricious about property. Linden Lab, Second Life's operator, is being sued by Marc Bragg, a US lawyer who dabbles in property development online. Mr Bragg had a plot of land repossessed by Linden Lab after using some sneaky tactics to buy it cheaply: he exploited a software glitch to start an auction before other users were ready.
Mr Bragg deserved to be hauled into line but Linden Lab went further than that. It allegedly took back all the land and property he had amassed up to that point and refused to return his money. "If you shoplift at Wal-Mart one day, they cannot come around to your house and take everything you have ever bought there," says Jason Archinaco, Mr Bragg's lawyer.
Worlds that allow users to swap virtual money for real cannot expect to avoid legal liability - or to be able to treat users exactly as they wish - by writing protections into end-user agreements. They are in the same position as a retailer that forces shoppers to sign disclaimers of their right to return faulty goods. It would quickly be overruled in court.
If real-world rights and legal protections dominated every virtual world, an element of their charm would be lost. The pleasure of some worlds is that they are spaces for role-playing and fantasy. It is fun to play a goblin whose hut is at risk of being burned down arbitrarily by a barbarian horde. If every goblin could go to court to seek compensation, the thrill would be gone.
So some distinction is needed between virtual worlds whose outcomes spill over into real life and those that are merely games. Edward Castronova, a professor at Indiana University, argues that "open worlds" with tradeable assets and convertible currencies should be subject to law while "closed world" games should have limited liability.
As games publishers have found, enforcing the distinction is harder in practice than it sounds in theory. But it is becoming easier as worlds that allow property rights and currency convertibility spring up, giving users a choice between the two approaches. I would not risk my own money on a hut in the vicinity of a barbarian horde but a tropical beach house in Second Life should do nicely.
买点虚拟房地产
我
站在一个热带海岛上，这里有着棕榈树和美丽海景。我身旁树立着一块房地产广告标牌，上面写明，海滩边一块地的押金只需不到50美元，每月的租金仅为10美元。这看上去真便宜，但是不是一种幻觉呢？
从某种意义上说，是这样的。我正在仔细研究在线虚拟世界――《第二生命》(Second Life)，它正迅速地成为一个商业奇迹。但从另一种意义上说，它又不是幻觉。如果我买了那块地，我就拥有它的权利。我指定的人可以在那里居住，或者我也可以把它卖给别人。如果我将它再次出手（也许是在建了一座虚拟别墅后），我就可以拿到真金白银的利润，或将利润兑换成《第二生命》中的虚拟货币。
在授予用户服装、土地和建筑物的知识产权方面，《第二生命》的做法与众不同。多数虚拟世界（例如维旺迪公司(Vivendi)大受欢迎的游戏《魔兽世界》(World of Warcraft)）坚持认为，所有动产的所有权都归游戏发布者所有。《魔兽世界》允许700万玩家在虚拟世界――艾泽拉斯(Azeroth)中交易金饰或盔甲装备，但不允许在现实世界中销售。
当然，这些规则遭到了普遍的蔑视。虚拟世界一经问世，就迅速出现了分工。中国和墨西哥的“游戏淘金者”(Gold farmers)花费大量时间，在线积聚虚拟金币，这些金币可以用来交换盔甲和火焰剑。金币和武器都可以在交换与拍卖网站上，出售给愿意用现金换取虚拟力量的玩家。
因此，尽管在线游戏的发布者们试图保持虚拟世界与现实世界之间的距离，但二者间的界限已变得模糊。从法律意义上讲，这两个世界仍被最终用户许可协议所割裂。在获准进入虚拟世界前，游戏玩家必须同意遵守这些协议。然而，这些全面否定玩家所拥有的法定权力的协议，可能会很轻易地被法院判决无效。
虚拟世界居民的财产理应受到保护。在大富翁(Monopoly)游戏中用虚拟货币“购买”酒店的玩家中，没人认为自己应该在游戏结束时保留这些财产。但那些生活在虚拟世界中的人，所花费的时间和精力通常比大富翁玩家们多得多：它们可能持续数年、每天花上几个小时，构建人物和家园。
正如法律专家授丹?亨特(Dan Hunter)和格里高里?拉斯托卡(Gregory Lastowka)写道的那样，上述特征理应使这些玩家成为约翰?洛克(John Locke)定义的财产拥有者：“只要（一个人）使任何东西脱离自然所提供的状态和那个东西所处的状态，他就已经掺入了自己的劳动，并在其中加入了他自己的某些东西，因而使其成为他的财产。”
虚拟世界中的财产也并非不可触及。《第二生命》中的企业家，例如网名为钟安社(Anshe Chung，音译)的虚拟房地产开发商，就通过交易虚拟商品在现实世界中谋生。一位美国电影制片人今年花了10万美元，在《安特罗皮亚计划》(Project Entropia)的虚拟世界中购买了一艘太空船。对于这些游戏玩家来说，这些并不仅仅是游戏，而是他们生活的一部分。
最后，虚拟世界中的规则也不像棋盘游戏那样明确。没有什么能阻止游戏发布者改变“世界”，以保持虚拟世界的趣味性，或防止一个用户群取得对其它用户群的优势。他们可以随意推出怪物，或创造新的房地产王国，而不必担心谁会因此被害，或遭受地产贬值的冲击。
即便是《第二生命》，在财产方面也会反复无常。在游戏中从事房地产开发的美国律师马尔克?布拉格(Marc Bragg)将《第二生命》的运营商――林登实验室(Linden Lab)告上了法庭。布拉格使用了一些卑鄙手段，以较低的价格购买了一块土地：他开发了一个软件漏洞，能够在其它用户准备好之前开始拍卖。林登实验室随后收回了这块土地的所有权。
布拉格理应受到惩罚，但林登实验室的做法更为过火。据称，它收回了布拉格用户名下到上述事件发生为止的所有土地和财产，并拒绝还款。“如果你有一天在沃尔玛偷了点东西，他们不会到你家，把你在那儿买的所有东西都拿走，”布拉格的律师Jason Archinaco表示。
允许用户以虚拟金钱交换真金白银的世界，无法指望通过把保护条款写入终端用户协议来避免法律责任――或是像用户所希望的那样对待他们。它们所处的地位，与强迫购物者签字放弃退回存在暇疵商品权利的零售商一般无异。这种做法很快会遭到法庭的否决。
如果所有虚拟世界都被真实世界的权利和法律保护所主宰，那它们就将丧失其魅力中的某一元素。某些世界的乐趣，就在于它们是扮演角色和幻想的空间。扮演一个自己的小屋可能会被野蛮的游牧部落肆意烧毁的小精灵，是件有趣的事情。如果每个小精灵都能走上法庭要求获得赔偿，就没有了那种兴奋感。
所以，在结果会波及到现实生活的虚拟世界和那些仅仅是游戏而已的虚拟世界之间，需要有一些区别。印地安纳大学(Indiana University)教授爱德华?卡斯特罗诺瓦(Edward Castronova)认为，存在可交易资产和流通货币的“开放世界”应该遵守法律，而“封闭世界”性质的游戏就不应背负太多责任。
正如游戏发布者所发现的，在实践中，把这些区别付诸实施的难度比在理论中听起来要大。不过，这正变得更为容易，因为随着允许所有权和货币流通的世界的涌现，用户可以在两种方式中进行选择。我不会把自己的钱押在一座临近野蛮游牧部落的小屋上，不过，把钱投在《第二生命》里一座热带海滩别墅上，该是个不错的选择。
