A virtual identity custody battle
Dave Birch writes:
Who cares about custody of the quids [sic] when there's virtual assets at stake! A divorcing couple in China are fighting for the custody of virtual identities in the Zhengtu Online virtual world. The couple met each other through the game in September 2006 and got married in November. The two jointly own more than 10 Zhengtu Online accounts (each of which is, in essence, a different virtual identity) that are each above level 100. This, incidentally, makes them a liquid asset as they can be sold for 10,000 Yuan each online. The husband wants all the game accounts and in return is willing to give their newly purchased and renovated apartment to his wife: in other words, he wants the virtual stuff and she can keep the real stuff. As they say in Yorkshire -- or they did in the era when my mother was born in Catterick -- there's nowt as strange a folk. The dispute? The wife wants to split the real and virtual stuff equally... how old fashioned.Which is all further proof that "real" and "virtual" aspects of value are becoming practically indistinguishable—if someone cares about something, it has value, whether that something is a game-world avatar or an apartment.
4 Comments:
This is a really interesting story. The only "intangible" that most individuals have had to regard as being important up until now have been bank accounts and maybe shareholdings, and you wouldn't put them in someone else's name, or give someone access to them without thinking twice. In my view, the story demonstrates that individuals are going to have to start actively managing their other virtual assets, now that these assets are perceived to have value.
Yes, I agree. The issue of copyright in virtual worlds is also an interesting one: when a whole world's fabric is manufactured, where is the dividing line for copyright ownership of virtual "things" created within that fabric by users?
That's an issue that the creators of virtual worlds have had to tackle as part of the creation process, or at least an issue that lawyers have been suggesting that the creators address!
Second Life appears to have resolved the issue in a way that everyone is happy with by simply saying that the creators of virtual "things" own the IP in those things.
Other types of "social media" such as MySpace and Youtube rely on materials created by their users and so have the same issue. As you may recall, there was a big fuss a while ago over the provisions of the MySpace terms & conditions that discussed IP ownership. As a result, MySpace changed those terms to make it clear that it wasn't involved in a "rights grab".
Ah thanks for those clarifications, Alex.
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