# Law LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- Lawyers are almost all concerned only with real-life laws as they apply to virtual worlds. They are overwhelmingly not interested in the design of in-context legal systems for virtual worlds. Even so, for this reason alone virtual world designers should listen to what they have to say; there are also other reasons, however, that we shall come to shortly. Virtual worlds raise several issues for real-world law with which legislators have yet to get to grips. These include - Ownership of data. Can players sell characters and property? Can the virtual world owner [^358]? What are the liabilities that the virtual world developer has in either case? What would PD mean in such a world? Do players of loss-making virtual worlds have any grounds for complaint if the developer shuts it down? - Ownership of intellectual property. Do players have rights concerning anything they create in the virtual world? Does it make a difference whether it’s in-context (they made a picture from colored stones) or out-of-context (they created a complex of rooms)? Can they claim usage royalties? Can they insist their creation is removed? Is joint ownership between player and developer a solution? What if the virtual world uses a licensed franchise? - Employment law. When does what people do for fun become work? Should volunteers be able to claim the minimum wage? - Governing law. If I as an Englishman interact improperly with an American in a virtual world that has its server in Canada, under which country’s laws can I be sued? How are disputes in virtual worlds resolved [^359]? - Responsibility and liability. Are virtual world designers responsible if their players become addicted? Can they be held to account for real-world violence meted out for virtual-world reasons? Are they liable for repetitive strain injuries incurred by players performing activities that the designer has encouraged? The country where virtual worlds are taken most seriously by the legal establishment is Korea. In 2002, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced changes to its online game rating system that effectively meant virtual worlds featuring PKing could only be played by people aged 18 and over. NCSoft’s shares fell dramatically with this news, as the realization that Lineage could lose half its players sank into the minds of investors. The Korean government acted because of incidents of real-life unrest that were apparently resulting from activities undertaken in virtual worlds. Virtual worlds were associated with reports of suicide, violence [^360], and prostitution (selling real-life sex for in-world reward [^361]). That their response was something of a knee-jerk reaction is clear from the way that it linked PKing to the intention of the PKer to steal virtual goods from their victim (presumably as a means of disambiguating the Counterstrike-like PKing of nonpersistent characters with the Lineage-like PKing of persistent ones). Nevertheless, as virtual worlds become more and more mainstream, it’s a sign of things to come. I did say that there were other reasons that virtual world designers should look at what lawyers have to say apart from the obvious one of being possibly bankrupted if they get things wrong. These are those few (and they are very few) occasions where case studies of happenings in virtual worlds are looked at from a lawyer’s standpoint; these constitute the beginnings of a jurisprudence for virtual worlds, and should be welcomed. My only concern here is that laws may be drawn up prematurely, without proper consultation with those who “get” virtual worlds [^362], and we could be stuck with something unsuitable or unworkable as a consequence. I’d like to finish this section on law by mentioning a book [^363] by Tim Jordan that isn’t about law at all: It’s about government. Ultimately, laws are made by people with political power, not by lawyers. Jordan looks at who has this power in cyberspace, and who wants it. If you know who’s going to make the rules, you can get a good idea of the rules they are going to make. [^358]: Ultima Online jumped the shark in September 2002 when the announcement was made that players could buy advanced characters at source instead of having to work their way up. [^359]: For a discussion of this particular gray area, see Todd H. Flaming, The Rules of Cyberspace: Informal Law in a New Jurisdiction. Illinois Bar Journal, April 1997. http://www.sw.com/rulescyb.htm. [^360]: Note that people have been stabbed to death after chess matches before, so this is not something unique to virtual worlds. [^361]: This, on the other hand, does look new. [^362]: Or, worse, those who think they get them but don’t. Not every virtual world is LambdaMOO. [^363]: Tim Jordan, Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet. New York, Routledge, 1999.