Intellectual Property and Virtual Worlds

Abstract

As stated previously, virtual worlds are created by computer code which is designed to act like real world property. (Fairfield, 2005) Also noted earlier was the emergent certainty that digital technology is detaching information from the physical plane, which, in turn, disrupts the foundations of property law. The next question posed was, should this virtual property be protected and regulated in the same manner as real world property? The answer was perhaps. However, first, another aspect of property law should be considered, intellectual property. A good deal of computer code is just one step away from pure idea. Like ideas, it is non-rivalrous; that is, one person’s use of the code does not stop another person from using it. (Fairfield, 2005) This kind of code is deemed to be protected by intellectual property law. (Lessig, 1999; Geist, 2003; O’Rourke, 1997) Intellectual property protects the creative interest in non-rivalrous resources. Richard Posner (2000) noted: “Intellectual property is characterized by heavy fixed costs relative to marginal costs. It is often very expensive to create, but once it is created the cost of making additional copies is low, dramatically so, in the case of software, where it is only a slight overstatement to speak of marginal cost as zero. Without legal protection, the creator of intellectual property may be unable to recoup his investment, because competitors can free-ride on it; and so legal protection can expand output rather than, as in the usual case of monopoly reduce it.”