renreynolds.com | philosophy

Intellectual Property Rights and Virtual Entities

This project focuses on Intellectual Property Rights and certain classes of virtual entity, specifically MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Play Game) player-characters - which are currently the most broadly used instantiation of the avatar, and entities that hose that subsist within name spaces generally.

Player-Characters ARE NOT property
I have argued that under current Anglo-American Intellectual Property player-characters are not property as the fail 'Originality' and 'Work' tests, and the status of 'Author' is moot. I have argued further that there is weak Lockean support for the status of player-characters as property. These arguments can be found in the following paper:

Hands of MY avatar (12 pages with references)

Intellectual Property Rights in Community Based Video Games (12 pages with references).

Player-Characters SHOULD NOT be property
I am currently working on papers where I will discuss the way that the current debate is framed, and argue further that framing the debate over player-characters in terms of property excludes a set of values that should be taken into account. An abstract for this paper can be found here:

IPR, Ownership and Freedom in Virtual Worlds (2 Pages).

Between the Human and the Virtual: Players, Player-characters and Organ Donors (1 Page).