Virtually Blind, which covers legal issues in online worlds, is hosting a fascinating new paper by Kevin Deenihan titled "Leave Those Orcs Alone: Property Rights In Virtual Worlds." What's most interesting about the paper is that it takes a tack somewhat different from the legal cautions and predictions we've been hearing around the issue of virtual items -- it effectively recommends against real-world legal intervention in online environments.

Virtually Blind provides a summary of the paper as follows:

"Players and their characters earn virtual property to socialize, for fun, or for status, not for protection or investment. Shoehorning in a legal system that protects investment and ignores the value of fun and communality would do terrible violence to these societies. Far better utility results from allowing users and developers to continue elaborating on their quasi-legal systems in peace.

The litigants with the most incentive to sue, and thus to have their interest recognized, are typically those whose role in Virtual Worlds is considered negative by wide swathes of the playerbase: gold farmers, account sellers, and exploiters."

In other words, putting these sorts of legal constraints on online worlds may actually turn out to benefit negative presences in virtual worlds, not the everyday consumer who's just there to play. Part of Deenihan's argument hinges on the value of virtual items to each of Richard Bartle's classic "four player types". His conclusion? Virtual worlds aren't yet enough like real worlds to warrant governance under such laws -- they're still dominated by the basic mechanics and human impulses of play, and that self-governance is one of the collaborative community activities that make the environment what it is.

[Via Virtually Blind]