• Selected
• Entire List

Abstract:
This article explores three new concepts in property law. First, the article defines an emerging property form - virtual property - which is not intellectual property, but that more efficiently governs rivalrous, persistent, and interconnected online resources. Second, the article demonstrates that the threat to high-value uses of internet resources is not the traditional tragedy of the commons that results in overuse. Rather, the naturally layered nature of the internet leads to overlapping rights of exclusion that cause underuse of internet resources: a tragedy of the anticommons. And finally, the article shows that the common law of property can act to limit the costs of this internet anticommons.

Virtual, property, digital, internet, cyberlaw, intellectual, anticommons, cybertrespass, video game, world of warcraft, world

Abstract:
This piece briefly describes the self-enforcing and non-pecuniary resource allocation system used by players in virtual worlds to allocate goods produced by a combination of player effort (the effort required to organize a group and overcome challenges) and the game itself (which "generates the good" - the input here is the time of the design staff). For historical reasons, these systems are commonly called DKP - Dragon Kill Points. The following is an attempt at a fun, not a thorough, discussion of the subject and some of the puzzles it raises.

Dragon Kill Points, Rational Models Seminar, Virtual World, World of Warcraft, Law and Economics, Edward Castronova, Online community

Abstract:
Virtual worlds have seized the imaginations of millions of people who now live, work, and play together in these new environments. But all is not well. These online communities are ruled nearly exclusively by contract law, through end-user license agreements, terms of service, and codes of conduct. Contracts are a critical means of helping two (or a few) people negotiate their preferences. But online communities are made up of enormous and shifting populations that have no time or ability to negotiate agreements with every other community member. Relying on contracts alone thus threatens the investments and creativity that go into these communities.

This article seeks to demonstrate that contracts cannot, by their very nature, provide for all the legal needs of online communities. Public law needs to be developed to allow these communities to thrive. The author argues that common law, rather than legislation, can be most effective in this task. Courts can draw on existing and familiar areas of common law to provide the private-property, dignitary, and personal protections these communities need according to the specific behavioural norms their creators and users have fostered. The common law method, being iterative, incremental, and experimental, is well suited to modifying these areas where needed. It allows for the more immediate resolution of problems while also being sufficiently flexible to permit rules to be expanded or contained as required.

Contracts, Law, EULA, World of Warcraft, Virtual Worlds, Online Communities, Facebook, YouTube, Law and Economics

Abstract:
Scholarship to date has focused on the legal significance of the novelty of the Internet. This scholarship does not describe or predict actual Internet legislation. Instead of asking whether the Internet is so new as to merit new law, legislators and academics should re-evaluate the role of government in orchestrating collective action and change the relative weight of enforcement, deterrence, and incentives in Internet regulations.

A perfect example of the need for this new approach is the recent CANSPAM Act of 2003, which was intended to protect personal privacy and legitimate businesses. However, the law threatens both of these interests, because it does not recognize either the limits of enforceability, or the enhanced possibilities for incentives offered by the decentralized architecture of the Internet.

internet, regulation, legislation, collective action, encryption, hack, spam, email, hash, CAN-SPAM Act, cyberlaw, privacy, e-mail

Abstract:
This essay examines the concept of the "magic circle," the argument that real-world law ought to be excluded from virtual worlds. The article explores the reasons for the magic circle metaphor, and criticizes the metaphor's logical and legal basis. The article concludes that although real-world law cannot reasonably be excluded from virtual worlds, game gods and players can control the interface between law and virtual worlds through their agreements, customs, and practices. This leads to a new conception of the magic circle: the magic circle is the point of interface between community-generated norms and external law, which often adopts local norms as legal rules.

Technology Law, External Law

Abstract:
Parties often do not negotiate for contract terms. Instead, parties search for the products, terms, and contractual counterparties they desire. The traditional negotiation centered view of contract continues to lead courts to try to construe the meaning of the parties where no meaning was negotiated, and to waste time determining the benefits of bargains that were never struck. Further, while courts have ample tools to validate specifically negotiated contract terms, courts lack the tools to respond to searched-for terms. Although the law and literature have long recognized that there is a disconnect between the legal fictions of negotiation and the reality of contracting practice, no theory has emerged to replace fictional negotiation. Therefore, this article develops a new search-oriented theory of contract, and shows that search theory can explain contracting behavior where the fictions of negotiation fail. The article then applies this theory to the common law of contract, the Uniform Commercial Code, and the growing world of internet searches and electronic contracting.

Contract, Transaction Costs, Search, Negotiate, E-bay, Google, Search Optimization, Search Engine, Law, Cyber Law

Abstract:
This article argues that informed consent to contract terms is not a good to be maximized, but is rather an information cost that courts should minimize. The goal of mass-market contract law ought to be to keep costs low by encouraging contract standardization. The article applies information cost theory to show that information-forcing rules are often inefficient at both the micro- and macroeconomic levels. Such rules also impose greater costs on third parties than the benefits they create for the contracting parties. When one consumer creates an idiosyncratic deal, the information-savings benefits of standardization are reduced for all other potential consumers. The article demonstrates that in some cases courts are already abandoning a rigid view of contractual consent where consent is too costly; but that under other doctrines courts insist on an inefficient level of informed contractual consent.

Contract law, Cost theory, Contractual consent

Abstract:
Parents, not laws, ultimately protect children both online and offline. If legislation places adults at legal risk because of the presence of children in virtual worlds, adults will exit those worlds, and children will be isolated into separate spaces. This will not improve safety for children. Instead, this Article suggests that Congress enact measures that encourage filtering technology and parental tools that will both protect children in virtual worlds, and protect free speech online.