Copyright in Virtual Property: A Flawed Approach to Virtual World Governance

Abstract

Virtual Worlds also called as massivelymultiplayer online games (MMOs) or massivelymultiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are online simulated environments that mimic the real world. Much like our everyday reality, inhabitants of these worlds interact with each other and with their virtual environment, they form communities and transact in virtual objects. All in-world activities are primarily centred around advancing the user’s character (avatar) through the acquisition of unique virtual objects. Statistics suggest that billions of dollars are spent globally by players in the pursuit of ‘owning’ virtual property to make their avatars more powerful or attractive through microtransactions or real money trade (RMT) where users ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ virtual property for real-world money. The end-user licensing agreements (EULAs) to these virtual worlds, however, mete out a different treatment to them where they are considered more as graphical objects rather than things that have been licensed to the users. Thus, players cannot, in fact, ‘own’ anything in the same sense as the real world. The question, therefore, arises as to what exactly is being traded through in-game transactions. EULAs suggest that virtual objects are the intellectual property of game developers, and users buying them merely get a ‘license to use’ the same. The present research challenges the application of copyright law to virtual property. It argues that for virtual objects to get recognition under the copyright regime they must, at the very least qualify as a copyrightable non-literal element of the game code. However, the very nature of virtual property is such that it does not fall within the recognised parameters of the term. The research finally proposes alternatives for the protection and regulation of virtual property by recognising limited property-like interests in them which would benefit both virtual world creators and their users.