The Escapist introduces The Virtual Policy Network

The Escapist is carrying a deliciously cogent piece from multimedia writer Wendy Despain, tantalizingly entitled Legislating the Virtual World. In it, she introduces The Virtual Policy Network, founded by Ren Reynolds to help governments, universities and businesses mediate their interests in online worlds. The Virtual Policy Network includes such names as Richard Bartle, Mia Consalvo, Randy Farmer, Thomas Malaby, Jessica Mulligan, and David Pullinger. The issues in virtual environments, however, may be at once simpler and more complex than they appear on the surface.

'As an example, consider how landlord laws might apply to virtual worlds. If it's assumed the "residents" are renting their virtual space from the people who make and maintain the game, does banning a player equate to evicting them from an apartment?,' writes Despain, 'Now consider the fact that landlord laws vary from city to city, not just internationally, and you have an idea of how complex a simple account ban can become with a little creative litigation.'

However, we'll defer to the combined wisdom of Belgian surrealist painter Réné Magritte and philosopher, historian, intellectual and sociologist Michel Foucault, who more accurately stated, Ceçi n'est pas une pipe.

In other words, just because it has the appearance of something, it does not necessarily follow that it is that thing.

A photograph of your cat is not your cat. It is a photograph. You might show it to a friend and say, 'This is my cat.' However your friend knows that you are referring through the objective medium (the photograph) to refer to the actual thing (the cat) which is represented. There is no need to tell your friend, that 'This is a photograph that displays an image of my cat.' -- as a species, our brains do not require such particular specificity.

It's a comfortable mental shorthand that we've used for around 27 thousand years, since we started representing objects as cave paintings.

Renting a virtual space in which your avatar and digital property may be present does not satisfy the basic principles of residential tenancy. That is, regardless of what your avatar might appear to be doing in a virtual environment, you yourself (being the entity that law is applicable to) do not require the property to shelter from the elements, to safeguard your possessions, or enable your privacy.

You may very well be renting CPU time, storage space or other electronic resources that are measurable and finite (whether or not they are actually tangible isn't really an issue) -- existing Law certainly covers that, as it does the rental of many other similar sorts of resources. That doesn't imply that any landlord-tenant agreement exists, or the related torts -- no more than the rental of web-hosting from some commercial provider.

Despain observes, 'I sit down at my computer and spend half an hour browsing for clothing, finally deciding on a single shirt. I make sure I have enough funds in my account before clicking the "buy" button. Did I just describe shopping for myself or for my avatar? My shirt will be arriving next week. My avatar can put hers on immediately. That's the only difference I can see - and I'm not the only one.'

At a stroke, that is a crystalline summation of the fundamental heart of a virtual environment. The basic, enabling immersion that allows the brain to deal with complex abstracts in simple and familiar ways, and to converse with people on the other side of the world, as if they were in the room with us.

There is however, one key difference that Despain did miss, though it isn't something to be criticized or castigated for. There is no shirt.

That isn't to say that there is anything false, or fake or deceptive going on here. There's a real thing there, even if it is an intangible thing. The fact is, though, that like Magritte's famous painting, it isn't what it looks like. Call it a collection of pixels, or a data file, or a texture, if you like. It's not actually a shirt.

Surprisingly, shirts actually already fall under specific legal definitions. That's why Copyright Law doesn't apply to fashions in many parts of the world. Any competent court would example a TGA image file and conclude that it is (unsurprisingly) a TGA image file, and not actually a shirt, per se.

But in other respects, it appears to be one, and within certain frameworks may appear to function as one. That's the beauty of it all, really.

Some users believe that they should have speech protection equivalent to that granted by the United States Bill of Rights in public spaces within virtual environments, just as they exist in public spaces in the United States of America. It's hard to argue otherwise on the face of things -- except that there are no public spaces within virtual environments at present. Not by any legal definition. Only the semblance of them -- which isn't the same thing. Photographs and cats, remember?

Boiling virtual environments down into the fundamental facts of their existence brings every element into the firm grasp of existing Law -- even if the existing Law might be boneheaded, outdated or stupid -- yet our interactions with virtual environments are at odds with the underlying facts. Everyone's subjective grasp of the facts and appearances are going to be a bit different depending on the mental framework our brains use to turn semblances back into both physical and abstract relationships.

This inevitably seems like it will continue to place the users of virtual environments at odds with the operators of those environments and with the courts and legislators who ultimately will try to make sense of many subjective points of view.

The Virtual Policy Network certainly has its work cut out for it -- to create objective sense among all of this, going forward, seems to be a Herculean task.