The law's rough edges: Virtual goods and virtual environments

As we go around and around the media-circle associated with virtual worlds, people start bringing up virtual governments, virtual law, and virtual lawyering. And you know what? That's all a bit rubbish, really. That's the sort of thing that keeps us going around in the same media wading pool year after year.

Essentially what it boils down to is that some people seem to get the confused notion that, because of the use of a single technology, our whole legal and/or governmental systems need to be replicated and recreated from snuff just to deal with what people are doing. Why this should happen with virtual environments when no other human technology has ever required this, is really quite the bizarre notion.

When we switched to doing business by fax, or sending contracts around by email, or making agreements by IM we didn't suddenly start talking about having fax governments, email courts and IM lawyers. And yet here we are, with a communications platform that's in 3D, and we suddenly formulate the astonishing notion that the current governmental and legal systems no longer apply to us once we click on the Connect button?

Seriously. What's up with that, folks? Who thinks like that?

Oh, certainly the law needs some minor updates and a few new precedents, but that's about all. People have more reach than they used to, and faster. Once upon a time fraud across vast distances was only practical if you were defrauding companies or whole countries. Now people can defraud each-other as individuals from the other side of the world, in an afternoon.

People, eh? What are you going to do?

You see, not only has our reach grown a whole lot longer and faster, but our concept of value has evolved. Intangible ephemera like iTunes music and digital downloads have become accepted. You and I know that our virtual goods and virtual cash are worth something to someone, so people buy them, sell them, trade them and occasionally steal them.

People make money that way. Does that mean we need whole new areas of law to deal with this? No. Actually almost all your existing property and contractual law still applies. There are a few new quirks, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

The United States Code already incorporates a definition of property that covers virtual assets and in fact, has already been covering virtual assets of one sort or another for quite some decades.

Those shares you have in that startup company are property, and quite likely that sex-bed that you bought in that virtual environment. That DRMed song you bought isn't property, and neither is the DRMed digital download you got last week (well, they might be property, but legally speaking, they're not your property).

The law has some rough edges when it comes to new technology, that's true. When it comes to anything new. It's still not yet fully adjusted to coping with legal situations with people in two different legal jurisdictions, let along two different countries — but it's getting there.

Most members of our respective judiciaries aren't actually idiots, and while all of the rough edges take time to smooth down, they do get smoothed down eventually. Perhaps then, at last, we can all just get on with things.