The World is Owned by EA

"Raking muck in the Sims Online" is a fascinating piece on Salon about an online journalist in TSO whose account got terminated by EA. The intersection of law and the virtual is something I studied last semester with Larry Lessig and Julian Dibbell at Stanford, but I'm afraid I'm no closer to deciding what is right, if there is a right.

One factor is that the aims are very different. EA's goal is to make money, with the ancillary goals of protecting the brand, protecting the paying customers, and protecting future earnings. Ludlow, the journalist in the article, has a very different aim: he's a philosopher using the environment of TSO to experiment and gather data. For a time the two can co-exist but it's inevitable that they'll clash at some point. My question though is, capitalism (and, therefore, law) naturally rewards the owner; are there times when we ought not side with the doer, in this case Ludlow? There is no money in what he does, but that doesn't mean there is no value. In fact, there may well be value for EA in this, as well as for society. There is no good financial reward system that rewards the pursuit of knowledge, or art, even when it benefits us all.

These are problems that crop up when people begin to behave in a world as if it were free; when it fact it is paid for and therefore owned by a corporation. It's simulated freedom.

Currently I'm writing about the Simgallery project, curated by Katherine Isbister and Rainey Straus. Although I am not aware of any legal issues surrounding their situation, I wonder how copyright will work. All art created in the environment technically belongs to EA. Which isn't a problem - yet. An installation of Simgallery is slated to open on January 16th at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as part of their Bang The Machine exhibit.

(Incidentally, I think that's not a very good name for the series. Bang the Machine is the title of a documentary about Street Fighter tournaments. It has the aggression and the suggestion of arcade that's entirely appropriate to the content. The Yerba Buena show has no arcades. Hm. I don't really get it.)

Comments

[Gareth]

Last month, Second Life published a Press Release and accompanying Digital Rights FAQ as it pertains to their MMOG.

Here's an excerpt,

"Changes to Second Life's Terms of Service now recognize the ownership of in-world content by the subscribers who make it. The revised TOS allows subscribers to retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs."

[jane]

Gareth, thank you. That is fascinating.

I should also mention that Linden Labs has their own "embedded" reporter, W. James Au.

[eli]

Is it just me or is Salon obsessed with The Sims?

[jane]

Salon *is* kind of obsessed with the Sims!

[TitusByronicus]

while undoubtedly maxis has the right to do what they do with their virtual world, i don't think it is right for them to limit the way people use their interactive sandbox. they created TSO as a public (for those who pay) grounds for people to interact in interesting ways. why shouldn't they let people like ludlow do what they want in their playground? it doesn't seem like it is a good business option for maxis to terminate accounts of forward-thinking individuals who do such interesting projects as the alphaville herald. it seems like people like ludlow make TSO a more interesting place to be. if the purpose of games like TSO is to provide an alternate reality where you can play out your alter-ego fantasies, why shouldn't you be able to be a reporter or a private investigator in that world, and 'rake some muck', as it were? where's the danger to maxis?

[Bowler]

It's unfortunate that EA didn't see the value-added of having someone reporting on their online world.

Didn't the guy just get banned for having a URL in his character's bio (a breach of their ToS). Penny-Arcade was talking about this today as well.

[Just this guy, you know?]

Day to day control of TSO is done by EA. Maxis has nothing to do with it any more.

[jane]

thanks for the P-A update. i hadn't seen it yet but Tycho's coverage is, as usual, spot on.

[TitusByronicus]

er, yeah, just replace every instance of Maxis in my post with EA

[B. Rickman]

The Salon article is suspiciously one-sided, providing lots of free publicity for Ludlow, who is "pretty sure" he's going to write a book about the whole experience. While I imagine the actions of Maxis and EA were motivated more by legal advice than anything else, it would be nice to hear their version of the story, if possible.

I have not played TSO, but it sounds like they didn't do their homework as far as providing controls to deal with griefers and other obnoxious forms of behavior.

[jane]

Actually Rickman I think they did; they thought about it a lot. But TSO - in Wil Wright's vision - was supposed to be a very open-ended environment, and open-ended gaming system. It's difficult to exercise control AND let people have that experience. I'm actually not sure it's possible. In any case the tensions that arise lead to fascinating developments like the Shadow Government, which is something that I suggested that Maxis/EA set up - a self-policing society. I can't find the article I wrote about this but I remember being very excitied by the idea that some players would play the game to BE police officers, bureaucrats, and law-makers.

[Snowmit]

What's interesting to me is that there is very little that is new about this situation. It's pretty much the same issues as we have with amusement parks and malls over here in the real world. All the places to go hang out are owned by someone with financial interests that may not coincide with your personal interests or the public interests. Theorists have been writing about malls and amusement parks for quite some time, now. Might be worth reading up on some of that.

[jane]

Good point, Snowmit; but a key difference is the physical location problem. Malls and parks are located within a territory that has laws, which may be appealed to outside the context of the law of possession (that is, the company that owns the Mall). Where is Alphaville (one of the areas in TSO) located? And what happens when you get someone from Yemen or something playing there? What laws apply then? ALL you have to go on in that case is the EULA, which protects the company's rights and limits their responsibilties but it does not protect individual freedoms.

Deciding what law should be in virtual environments is such an exciting, still-nebulous project.

[eli]

All this talk of Alphaville makes me want to dig up my copy and watch it again.

Perhaps a better analogy for TSO, instead of malls, is private clubs. If you violate the terms of a private club's membership you may be kicked out, but in addition to that there is a board that can kick you out at their whim. Like a private club, TSO isn't really 'public' because it is a pay service. I see EA's actions as being more like a club kicking someone out for aesthetic or personal reasons, than rent-a-cops kicking a kid out of the mall.

[TitusByronicus]

virtual laws could also offer a new variety of gameplay that, in my opinion, has a lot of merit. wouldn't it be cool to set up in-game courthouses to which you would be summoned if you broke the virtual law. players could be allowed to play as lawyers, judges, and jury, provided they study the in-game laws and pass a kind of watered-down LSAT in the game. game company representatives could monitor the trial processes (or serve as judges) to make sure that it was operating correctly.

this would bring the game community into the ruling process, provide some interesting gameplay, and possibly divert players from being quite as reckless in-game.

[B. Rickman]

From Salon: "The SSG has had some success in curbing misbehavior, but their efforts are limited by the physics of the game...."

jane, can you describe what these game physics are? Is it something like putting down object to block someone? Can a crowd of players surround a sim and prevent them from moving?

[Mike Drucker]

Perhaps this is just me, but the issue that interests me the most in the Salon article was the little bit about heavy inflation in Alphaville. While the psychology and morality of selling oneself in a virtual environment or reporting on a virtual enivornment owned by a company is largely significant, I'm really curious about the economic problems and situations created in a virtual world.

[TitusByronicus]

B. Rickman: i don't play TSO, but i would imagine that they're not refering to 'physics' in the sense of newtonian physics, but more in the sense of what's possible in the game. as in, the SSG would be limited because the game allows people to simply ignore them without consequences, etc.

BTW, does anybody know of an online game where there is a system in place like the one i described in my last post? and if so, has it proved to be worth it/interesting/the worst idea ever?

[Mike Drucker]

Second thought about virtual worlds: sexuality.

I'm sort of reminded of a Neil Gaiman short story where people could change their gender at will using a miracle drug.

An underage boy is/was posing as a woman having sex. Virtual as it may be, they player is still, and I quote "typing with one hand. This creates a really funky turn on sexuality. In theory, in a virtual environment such as The Sims, Everquest, etc, you can be whatever gender/sexuality you wish outside of the normal confines and preferences of your real life self.

I know this is a big "duh" for everyone, but I just like to point out the obvious.

[jane]

On that economy tip, Mike, Julian posted something recently: a bug in UO apparently has the power to wreak havoc on the economy of Norath.

[jane]

um, i'm just going to leave the sexuality thing alone for now. :)

[whatever]

Ludlow is writing a book... he is data minig for a book, he is a captalist as well.. not a "philosopher".

[Adam]

I used to study MOOs with various universities, with the argument that they enacpsulated what future VR environments would be like. So I wrote some papers on ethical systems that emerged in MOOs, and looked at how MOOs could be used for teaching (they couldn't, on the whole), and eventually just drifted off into other projects.

I was wrong, though. MOOs are nothing like the VR worlds emerging now, for exactly the reasons outlined in that Salon piece. Today's worlds belong to corporations, who then dictate how things will work, and don't simply refelect the systems that emerge online. Perhaps they should go back and study the bigger MOOs to find out how communities form in VR? Perhaps then failures like the Sims Online would be less likely.

[Adam]

I used to study MOOs with various universities, with the argument that they enacpsulated what future VR environments would be like. So I wrote some papers on ethical systems that emerged in MOOs, and looked at how MOOs could be used for teaching (they couldn't, on the whole), and eventually just drifted off into other projects.

I was wrong, though. MOOs are nothing like the VR worlds emerging now, for exactly the reasons outlined in that Salon piece. Today's worlds belong to corporations, who then dictate how things will work, and don't simply refelect the systems that emerge online. Perhaps they should go back and study the bigger MOOs to find out how communities form in VR? Perhaps then failures like the Sims Online would be less likely.

[urizenus]

Hey all, lots of issues here, only some of which I am able to discuss, and then only in the abstract.

The Alphaville Herald interview with Evangeline was part of a study I am doing on the history of political and social formations within TSO. I was interested in the way that griefers can lead to the formation of user-based social and political institutions like Alphaville's Sim Shadow Government. I certainly don't suppose that anything Evangeline claimed to have done was illegal, nor do I even suppose that it is wrong. I am not calling for anyting to be done. I am just doing raw interviews at this point and recording what these characters say. I understand that the content may have been an embarassment to Maxis, but I cannot help that.

About the website, there are indeed links to money traders and companies that make software patches. I do not charge for these links, but provide them as a resource for researchers in my area that study the emergence of virtual economies in MMORPGs. I am currently editing a book on this topic with the economist Edward Castronova.

I understand the Maxis position on why they don't want links to sites that link to such sites, and I indeed removed all such links from my bio when I received a warning. I plum forgot that the URL was included in my property description, which apparently led to the 72 hour suspension. 11 hours after being notified of the suspension my account was terminated.

Can Maxis do this? Of course. TOS says they don't even need to warn. There is a matter of selective enforcement, however. There remain thousands of sims that still link to these "illegal" sites. The passion and agressiveness with which Maxis pursued this termination, as well as the timing, is what raises questions of fairness (not necessarily legality, but who knows). In the realm of human intentions, we can only speculate. I know what I think. YMMV.

Let me know if you have any questions. --Uri