Some time ago, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on human rights in the context of virtual worlds, or MMORPG’s. The venue was the spring 2006 meeting of the Netherlands Association for Information Technology, the occasion was the presentation of an installment in the association’s ICT and law series, “Legal Aspects of Virtual Worlds”. The presentation, which I gave together with Marga Groothuis, one of my co-author’s on the human rights chapter of the publication, came included with slides (pdf, in Dutch), and featured a short movie (avi) from The Endless Forest.

The Book

In the book, a group of 18 authors wrote contributions on numerous (in-game) legal aspects, such as in-game property ownership, in-game advertising and in-game trademark use (see for example Marty Schwimmer on that here), virtual in-game currency, in-game gambling and even in-game crime. Not all of these aspects are new, but, with the growing popularity of online gaming, they all are increasingly relevant. What kind of games did we discuss? Think Second Life, World of Warcraft, or perhaps even The Endless Forest (where you get to play a deer – but not a doe; via wmmna).

The Chapter on Human Rights

Marga Groothuis, who teaches administrative and constitutional law at Leiden University, Juliette van Balen, a colleague from my law firm, and I wrote a chapter on human rights aspects of MMORPG’s. (My apologies if this part is self-referential, and of course, I can only speak for myself here.) I really enjoyed writing this chapter on human rights in virtual worlds. First of all, I got to revisit the human rights concepts, an area of law I last looked at when in school. (Although that isn’t too far ago ^^.) Second, some of all that feedreading paid dividends, as I believe I was able to contribute especially in the area of giving good examples of instances of gameplay when human rights became relevant to players, developers and those outside the game. Third, I was prompted to re-read McLuhan and De Sola Pool, indulging in a few techno-utopian thoughts.

To give some examples of when human rights become relevant in-game: the likely discrimination against non-English language players (seen as gold-farmers) in WoW; the possibility to start gay-friendly guilds, again in WoW (via the excellent Video Game Law Blog); or yet gender discrimination in A Tale In The Desert. The two take-away points? It’s a game, so keep in mind that you have to look at the rights of the players themselves, we are not talking Tron (compare in this sense in-game surveillance and privacy law); and, it’s a game, so you have to allow for some gameplay in a private setting.

For our presentation, I made a small Alice, Bob, Carol scenario to illustrate the relationships surrounding such an action (see the picture to this post). Of course, drawing intricate diagrams might be fun in and of itself, but the point here is that it is relevant to look at the set-up of the game when looking at the legal questions surrounding it as the answer to a particular question for one game might not hold true for game. Adiagram might help in the analysis.

The Presentations

Thanks to the editor of the book, Arno Lodder of the Computer Law Institute of the Free University of Amsterdam, we all got to enjoy excellent talks from Marc Schuilenburg of Free University of Amsterdam/Studio Popcorn, on MMORPG’s and the military-entertainment complex (see also Marc’s and Alex de Jong’s upcoming book Mediapolis, to be published by 010 publishers); Menso Heus from Dutch ISP XS4ALL, on the history of MMORPG’s; and Martine Boonk of the Computer Law Institute of the Free University of Amsterdam on private law aspects of MMORPG’s, mostly relevant for the in-game or extra-game transfer of in-game property. (On a different note, the later issues are also explored to an extent in an upcoming EPN survey, focusing on Second Life. EPN is a Dutch semi-government platform.)

Get The Book (For Free)

And some self-promotion, for Dutch language readers only though. Je kunt het boek hier bij Elsevier Juridisch bestellen. Of mail mij. (Ik heb gemerkt dat de link soms niet goed werkt. Zoek in dat geval op ‘Virtuele Wereld’ op Elsevier Juridisch.) Een .doc van de tekst van het boek is hier te downloaden.

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[This is a post from Technology Law Culture: http://tlc.oosterbaan.net. Olivier Oosterbaan, ICT and media lawyer in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, maintains this blog.]

(Picture from: The presentation I held with Marga Groothuis.)