can virtual world property be considered a digital good?

IADIS International Conference on Internet Technologies & Society 2010

CAN VIRTUAL WORLD PROPERTY BE CONSIDERED A DIGITAL GOOD? Nicholas. C. Patterson and Michael Hobbs Deakin University - Waurn Ponds, Victoria, Australia 3217

ABSTRACT What types of goods should be considered digital goods? This paper discusses the question of whether virtual property, such as items available in virtual world environments like Linden Lab’s Second Life and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, should be considered a valid digital good. The makeup of a virtual property items are explored in this paper and their key features compared and contrasted with that of digital goods. Common examples of digital goods include: electronic books, software, digital music and digital movies. These goods are considered a tangible commodity, that is they have an unlimited supply and secondly they are in a digital/binary form (a sequence of 1’s and 0s’). When looking at why a virtual property items should be included in the category of ‘digital goods’, it is important to consider how items in a virtual world come to exist and how the availability of these items are often controlled by publishers and developers. The aim of this paper is show that digital goods should not be limited to the traditional views such as electronic books, software, music and movies; but in fact the term ‘digital good’ should also include the active market of virtual property items. KEYWORDS Digital goods, virtual property, virtual world environments, real money trading, virtual property theft, piracy

1. INTRODUCTION Virtual worlds fall into two categories, virtual world environments (VWEs) and virtual world games (VWGs). The distinct difference between these two is that VWEs are essentially a persistent online social space which aims to represent the real world, whereas the latter revolves around gaming activities, accumulation of points and increasing levels – although VWGs can still be used for online, social interaction. Within virtual worlds each user is represented by an avatar, a digital representation of themselves that can be used to collect a form of personal goods within the virtual world, aptly named virtual property. These virtual property items can be gathered from many sources within virtual worlds; they might come from performing missions or quests, creating items within the environment or purchasing them with the use of virtual currency. Virtual property can also be purchased with real world money as there are legitimate and illegitimate markets for virtual property items. Users can visit websites such as ItemBay (ItemBay 2005) which is a legitimate virtual property auction site and purchase virtual property items (of their choice) and once the purchase is made the virtual property is sent to the users designated avatar in a virtual world. Most of the cyber crime in virtual worlds comes from the theft of these virtual property items and then selling them for real money, a process known as Real Money Trading (RMT). Virtual worlds are becoming increasingly popular; with this popularity so are the occurrences of cyber crime, so the security of these online worlds is becoming increasingly important. Since the advent of high speed internet digital goods have become prevalent in the online world. Users can purchase physical goods online, as well as purchase and download a myriad of different digital goods such as music, movies, video games and electronic books, just to name a few. The digital goods market operates by a user purchasing a product with real money (usually through a credit card transaction), after which they are permitted to download and use a digital version of that product on their home computer or mobile phone. It is important to note that the digital goods market is also prone to crime, in the form of piracy where illegitimate copies of the digital goods are made available to other users. These alternate

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sources can be downloaded without having to pay the purchase price; commonly through peer-to-peer file sharing technologies such as bit-torrent. The goal of this paper is to present evidence that many similarities exist between traditional digital goods and the relatively new form of goods named virtual property. These two electronic items share many of the same benefits, as they also suffer from similar problems. The advantages of both digital goods and virtual property include: no physical inventory, no shipping, instant consumer gratification, instantaneous transactions and often are cheaper than physical items. Whereas, the issues that exist for both digital goods and virtual property items include: inadequate legal support, vulnerability to crime, availability manipulation, and difficulty in allowing customers with a demonstration of the item before purchase. Due to the distinct similarities between the two, virtual property should now be included in the family of digital goods. Virtual property and virtual worlds suffer from the crime of virtual property theft, a crime that is not yet fully recognized from a legal point of view. The limited capabilities of the law (in this area), often results in cyber thieves avoiding punishment. If virtual property is considered in the family of digital goods, owners of these items could benefit from greater legal recognition in national and international courts of law. This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents our definition and description of digital goods and highlights there features against those of virtual property items. Section 3 discusses the value of both digital goods and virtual property, as identified by the merchant and users, respectively. This section also details piracy and theft issues which are common with both of these goods. Section 4 ends the paper with concluding remarks to reinforce the overall consensus.

2. DIGITAL GOODS AND VIRTUAL PROPERTY 2.1 What is a Digital Good? So what exactly is a digital good? Quah (2003, p. 7) states that economists have traditionally viewed digital goods essentially as ideas, such as; scientific knowledge, engineering blueprints and technological innovation. Rayna (2007, p .19) on the other hand argues that a digital good is an item that is distributed in a digital format; which can be anything that is encoded in binary form as a continuous stream of 1s and 0s. Haltiwanger and Jarmin (2000, p. 6) enforces this theory by stating that digital goods such as books, movies and music; are items that can be delivered to consumers in a digital form over the internet, so therefore it is possible for these goods to bypass traditional distribution channels. Rayna (2007, p. 19) further expands on the discussion explaining that these digital goods are generally items that are used for entertainment purposes, so movies, music, video games and books. Digital goods have a high initial production cost, and a very low, if not zero reproduction cost. Digital goods have characteristics of a public good in the fact that they can be shared with others and this sharing does not reduce the consumer’s usefulness of the product (Bhattacharjee, Gopal et al. 2003, p. 108). These characteristics actually inadvertently allow for the widespread and quite often illegal distribution worldwide (Bhattacharjee, Gopal et al. 2003, p. 108). Haltiwanger and Jarmin (2000, p. 10) enforces this statement by saying that digital products are characterized by high fixed costs (for example writing a book) and low marginal costs (say emailing an electronic book file). Rayna (2007, p. 25) declares 4 key points that he believes that are common with all digital goods: • They are accessible to the public • They contain information which has a value (yet their value can be subjective) • They do not suffer from erosion • They can be duplicated In terms of being accessible to the public; digital goods can be accessed by consumers with simply an internet connection, web browser and in most cases a form of payment option such as credit card. These items in fact contain a value which can be subjective, they are generally priced based upon factors such as popularity, release date and rarity; these prices are determined often purely on an individual merchant basis. For example using the music industry, if on the exact same day a popular artist releases a new album the merchant price is often higher than say when a not so popular artist releases a new album on the same day. In terms of not suffering from erosion, these digital goods due to being electronic are made up of a series of

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binary data which does not suffer from ‘wear and tear’ as physical items do. The last point being they can be duplicated means that due to these items being digital and often found on personal computers, they can be quite easily cloned or ‘pirated’ without having to pay any extra cost (this will be discussed further in section 3.4).

2.2 What is a Virtual Property Item? As discussed in the introduction virtual worlds can fall into two categories: that of virtual world environments (VWEs) and virtual world games (VWGs). Virtual worlds can have a great numbers of users amounting in the millions. Blizzard Entertainment operates the award winning fantasy virtual world game named World of Warcraft is played by more than 11.5 million subscribers (Blizzard.Entertainment 2008). These virtual worlds allow for people with internet connections to live a portion of their life in a digital form; allowing them to form virtual friendships, build and acquire virtual property and form social organizations (Keighley (cited in Lastowka and Hunter 2003)). In these virtual worlds people are now trading real money for ‘property’ existent purely in these virtual worlds environments, which then creates value in a virtual world (Kennedy 2008, p. 96). This process of real money trading (RMT) has grown rapidly over the past few years. It was initially viewed with curiosity and an example of the strange and unpredictable nature of the internet, but now it has become a profitable market in its own right and has created several fortunes for various people (Castranova (cited in Kennedy 2008, p. 96)) . Virtual world operators are beginning to introduce a method called ‘microtransactions’ where users pay a small amount of money for a virtual property item introduced by the virtual world operator, which usually has no competitive advantage within the world. In 2009 World of Warcraft started offering virtual pets to its user base for a small price; these were the first virtual world items sold for real world money in this VWG (Mastrapa 2009). Mastrapa (2009) goes on to say that it is not uncommon for users to pay real world money for virtual property items in ‘free to play’ VWGs in order for the operators to make their money off of item sales. As where subscription based VWGs the virtual property is often gathered mostly through gameplay mechanics as well as time and effort on the user’s part through questing or killing non player characters (NPCs). When explaining what virtual property is, it can be beneficial to detail the characteristics of virtual property. Virtual property has the same characteristics as digital property outlined by Rayna (Rayna 2007) in the previous section 2.1 . Is virtual property available to the public? Yes if they use one of the many virtual world environments available. Does virtual property contain information which has value? Yes virtual property contains information that is valuable both in the real and virtual world. Does virtual property erode quickly? Due to it being a digital item it can’t physically wear out. Can the value of virtual property be subjective? Yes value of virtual property items is often determined by the users of these virtual worlds and is often based on the rarity or usefulness of the item. Can virtual property items be stolen or pirated? Virtual property items can be transferred or traded, if this process is done without the consent of the owner it is considered virtual property theft.

2.3 Comparison of Digital Goods and Virtual Property This section discusses compares and contrasts, digital goods and virtual property items. Rayna (2007, p. 18) explains that digital goods exist and are available to the public in very large quantities and in some cases their value is not known to the consumer or the producer. This is similar to virtual property in virtual worlds, where items are abundant in quantity; in one specific VWG such as World of Warcraft there could be many thousands of clones/copies of the exact same virtual property item; which can be acquired in many different ways. It’s possible for each avatar to have their own copy of a virtual item; for example two avatars in the VWE World of Warcraft (Blizzard.Entertainment 2004) can each have a ‘barbarian axe’ (which could either be gained through purchase or gameplay mechanics). The value of these items is often not known, so therefore is determined by virtual world operators and varies between different realms (regions of the same world). Digital goods can come from various sources, for example official distributors, pirate peer-to-peer networks and social networks. The quality and reliability of these particular sources is often uncertain at best (Rayna 2007, p. 18). This directly correlates with virtual property; it can also come from many different

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sources. These can be acquired through doing virtual world quests or missions, created by users, direct trade for virtual currency, virtual world auction house trades, and purchase on World Wide Web (WWW) markets such as ItemBay for real money through RMT. These sources are defiantly uncertain at best; due to factors such as sellers (both in virtual world markets and WWW markets) can often be deceitful and often in fact can be cyber criminals peddling stolen goods. Virtual property items exist in an environment which essentially has very limited legal avenues for prosecuting criminals which commit virtual world crimes such as virtual property theft. In many cases where a crime has occurred, such as virtual property theft it is difficult to apply real world laws. As an example, protecting the rights to a virtual world avatar, the law of unfair competition can be adapted. This law essentially protects unregistered trademarks and also trade dress, which could allow for a users virtual world avatar to qualify as an unregistered trademark (which is a mark that is unregistered, and if prior rights can be claimed can still receive protection) or receive trade dress protection to cover packaging or appearance of a product (Stephens 2002, p. 7). Even though digital goods exist in an online environment and are electronic goods, not physical items they don’t have the same difficulty in the realm of law as virtual property. They can benefit from areas of law such as intellectual property rights and copyright. Digital goods are essentially electronic forms of information, entertainment or culture, they are a type of good that the quality of the product cannot be determined prior to the purchase by the user (Nelson 1970) (Nelson 1974). Consumers of these digital goods can sometimes experience the product before purchase through free samples (Wright and Lynch 1995); there are various sampling techniques, in the case of music the merchant might let the user listen to 30 seconds of a song before purchase is made. The distinct difference here with virtual property items is that the user can not trial the item before purchase and has no idea how an item will perform prior to purchase or collection, only once the user has gained control of the item will they know how effective or ineffective it is. Sampling is a method that cannot work for virtual property, because you need the entirety of a virtual property item to gain a perspective on how it looks and functions. Due to these virtual property items often having distinct uses in VWGs, sampling could put the issue of cheating in to question, where one user could continually utilize samples of high powered items to achieve a competitive advantage against other users. To summarize virtual property items and digital goods are similar in many ways, both are available in very large quantities and often the value is not known to the consumer. Both items can come from a variety of sources and not limited to one particular supply merchant, but these streams can often be uncertain at best in terms of factors such as security and safety.

3. VALUE, TRADING AND SECURITY OF DIGITAL GOODS AND VIRTUAL PROPERTY Digital goods and virtual property both have value associated with them, either explicitly as marked price on a digital good or through the subjective value of a virtual property item obtained through many long hours playing a virtual world game. In this section we discuss the issue of value further in regards to digital goods and virtual property, in addition to the mechanisms of how both these items are traded and the security concerns users experience when trading.

3.1 The Value of Digital Goods The question of how the value of a digital property item is defined is complex. Rayna (2007, p. 25) states that digital goods such as music, software or video games actually need to be experienced multiple times before a true value can be known to the consumer. Some examples of what digital goods are valued at are the current top selling video game is valued at $89.95 AU (Games.Warehouse 2010), the current top selling music album is valued at $24.99 AU (Sanity.Entertainment 2010), the current top BluRay version of a movie is valued at $34.99 AU (Sanity.Entertainment 2010). Digital goods are often valued through consumer experience, so in other words the value of these goods cannot be determined without the consumer first trying them (Hill 2007, p. 18). So when legal samples are not available, users may actually turn to using a pirated copy of the product they desire in order to put a value on the digital good and then decide whether or not to make a legal purchase of that product (Hill 2007, p. 18).

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So for example with digital music, the user might download a particular band’s album and decide they like it, so then when the band’s new album comes available will make a legal purchase of it. In regards to the digital good in the form of software, network effects are quite important in defining value. What is meant by network effects is the value of owning various software products is an important function of the number of other people who own the same product (Hill 2007, p. 18). Using the example of Microsoft Office product, the ability to exchange Office files with other users of Office creates a value for owners of Office; therefore is an increasing function of the number of other consumers in the network (Hill 2007, p. 18). On the issue availability of digital goods within the real world, the publisher can essentially create an unlimited number of copies of a good, which often is determined by judging potential popularity and estimated sales. This amount can easily be increased when products exceed expectations. The cost with digital goods is initially set by the publisher, and then secondary markets or retailers can either choose to increase or decrease the cost to the consumer dependant on factors such as ongoing sales and popularity.

3.2 The Value of Virtual Property Virtual property items are arbitrary items, which only have use within virtual worlds which that virtual property item is related too. For example trying to utilize a pair of virtual shoes from the VWE Second Life (Linden.Research.Inc 1999) in the VWG World of Warcraft will not work. Whereas digital goods have multiple uses and generally widespread compatibility, such as watching a movie or reading a book all can be done from the same personal computer. The value of virtual property initially comes from the virtual world operator; they give each virtual property item an initial value, determine its availability to users through techniques such as ‘percentage drop rate’ (where users in VWGs attack enemies and once beaten, items will become available on the corpse) and each is given a distinct use. Once an owner comes in possession of a virtual property item, they can manipulate the economy by setting a price which suits them. The supply of these virtual property items is being handled by the virtual world operator and manipulation of the economy. Most virtual property items are still available in infinite quantities but their availability is limited to what the virtual world operators decide is a good amount to have within the world. Within VWGs you want to have a suitable amount of every grade of virtual property that is among the population to stabilize the economy, so for example a lot of commonly acquired items, less rare quality items and even lesser epic quality items. For example if you had more epic items than common grade items, the economy would be totally thrown out of control; as these items are worth more and often have greater uses. So if every user is reaping the rewards of having such hard to find items, this would ultimately lead to imbalance. Virtual property items often have a specific ‘grade’ (e.g. common, rare or epic) which determines worth. These ‘rarer’ items often perform vastly better or contain special abilities for the user and therefore are more sought after. When it comes to a virtual axe in the VWG Guild Wars (NCSoft 2009), these items have distinct attributes and ‘grade’ which give the item a specific use. Due to this, these virtual property items can often have an implicit value set through estimating how good or bad they are based on potential performance but the user has to experience the use of the item multiple times before a value can truly be attached. To outline what virtual property is worth and what it is selling for in various markets, Ku & Gupta (2008, p. 428) provide some examples of what virtual property is selling for in real world markets; a high level virtual character in the world of the popular game Lineage (NCSoft 2009) can fetch upwards of $800 USD and in a Yahoo (Yahoo.Inc 1994) auction for a Mahjong account with 3 million Mahjong currency will fetch around the same price of $800 USD. In the first week of January 2010 a virtual space station in the virtual world game Project Entropia sold for $330,000 United States dollars (Thier 2010). Project Entropia thrives with a 820,000 strong user base that inhabit a planet called Calypso, users utilize a form of currency called Project Entropia Dollars (PEDs) which can be exchanged for real U.S dollars at a 10 to 1 ratio (Thier 2010). User to user transactions in Project Entropia in the year of 2008 exceeded $420 million dollars (Thier 2010).

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3.3 Real Money Trading of Virtual Property This section will discuss the process called Real Money Trading or RMT. Where real world money is paid to obtain virtual property, which then can then in turn be traded for virtual money within the virtual world and converted back into real world money.

Figure 1. A model of virtual property trading in a virtual world game

The model presented in Figure 1 (Patterson and Hobbs 2010, p. 163) is a representation of how virtual property trading can occur in VWGs in particular. When analyzing this model, it’s important to point out the key features which help to highlight that virtual property has both a digital value and real world value. The virtual world and the entities that represent game players in the game (referred to as Game Avatars in the figure); the possessions of the game players (Virtual Property); the mechanisms to transfer virtual property between players (Trading); and finally, the interface between the virtual and real worlds (Input and Output). This model outlines that first there is some form of value that is input into the virtual world, this is most often real world money and is used to purchase virtual property items (could also be in the form of time and effort for the creation/collection/completion of items). This virtual property can then be traded between avatars in the virtual world. Once the new owner (avatar) gains this virtual property they can go ahead and trade it on legitimate markets for real world money. This form of trading is essential to the virtual world marketplace due to the inability to clone these items. Virtual property generally maintains its value unlike digital goods which can be pirated or cloned illegally (piracy is the purchase of counterfeit products at a discount to the actual price of the copyrighted product or the illegal file sharing of copyrighted material

Internet Real World

Consumer

Real World $

Online Merchant

Transfer of Digital Goods

DELIVERY

Figure 2. A model of digital goods trading

usually over peer-to-peer networks for free (Hill 2007, p. 9)). Section 3.5 will expand and elaborate on crimes that exist for both digital goods and virtual property; piracy for digital goods and deliberate theft for virtual property. The model presented in Figure 2 is a representation of how digital goods trading can occur. When analyzing this model, it’s important to point out the key features which help to highlight that digital goods are essentially information or a bit stream of 1’s and 0’s that are traded in an online market place. The entity that represents the person purchasing a digital good is referred to as ‘Consumer’ in the figure; the item being purchased (Digital Goods); the mechanisms to transfer digital goods between consumer and merchant (Delivery); and finally, the connection between the merchant and consumer (Internet).

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3.4 Piracy and Theft A very important aspect of virtual goods is the fact that they are now subject to the crime of theft. This has a direct correlation to digital goods, in that regardless of their attributes or function, they are being illegally reproduced (pirated) (Rayna 2007, p. 26). Digital piracy is the purchase of counterfeit products at a discount to the actual price of the copyrighted product and also the illegal file sharing of copyrighted material usually over peer-to-peer networks for free (Hill 2007, p. 9). Essentially digital piracy is proportionally equivalent to the theft of intellectual property (Hill 2007, p. 10). Rayna (2007, p. 19) explains that a large amount of the distribution and exchange of digital goods often occurs in secretive environments where in fact the monetary value of these products essentially cease to exist and every individual can freely gain ‘clones’ of these goods without permission from the creator or original merchant. This also correlates to virtual property items as VWEs are now a target for criminals who are looking for virtual property (such as virtual currency) because it contains real world value. These criminals deliberately break into user’s accounts, steal virtual property and virtual avatars in the game and then sell them, usually on the black market, for anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars (Spring 2006). One plausible reason why computer criminals have opted into virtual world crime is that it brings less risk than traditional forms of crime, as there is little chance that police will be able to prosecute them for stealing a magic potion virtual item in a virtual world for example (Spring 2006), even if they are caught. To emphasize this point, in the United States especially among other countries, these cyber criminals benefit greatly from very loose or nonexistent virtual property laws and it is believed game designers are reluctant to push for legal recognition of virtual property for fear of being held liable for theft (Spring 2006).

4. CONCLUSION This paper discusses why virtual property should be considered a digital good. It highlights that digital goods and virtual property are in fact an entertainment item that is distributed in a digital formats. The actual worth of these items can often be undetermined but an approximate value can be applied by examining the information that is embedded within. A virtual property item is also an item that is used for entertainment purposes but also can be considered a tangible commodity, they can be sold for real money in the same way a digital good can. It is important to note that digital goods and virtual property are both digital in nature and are not considered a physical item that can be handled by the user. They are both purchased in a digital format accessible purely by some kind of technological device such as a personal computer. To give an example that describes this scenario better; when an individual purchases a digital movie over the internet or a virtual property item such as a ‘virtual sword’, they don’t have a real world item but merely a binary stream of 1s and 0s. This can mean certain things for the user such as the items will not erode over time, they are often cheaper, purchases can be made with instant gratification, in the case of digital property items they can be cloned and they bring into question various legal issues. The methods by which digital items are sold is commonly through online vendors and in the case of electronic books they are sold through websites such as Amazon (Amazon.com 1995). Virtual property items can be sold in a variety of different ways both virtual world trading between avatars and also WWW trading between two individual people through websites such as ItemBay. The key factor in the trade supply chain of virtual property items is that they essentially are limited in terms of quantity; this factor is manipulated by the virtual world operators themselves. In terms of digital goods these items are ultimately unlimited in supply and often rely on predicted market sales estimates. Crime is a factor of both; digital goods and virtual property items. This common crime between these two is ultimately classed as theft. Digital goods suffer from piracy or unlicensed cloning and virtual property items with deliberate theft via cyber criminals compromising user’s accounts and stealing all the valuable items. To summarize, this paper has given the facts about both digital goods and virtual property: It is clear that virtual property, although existent purely within virtual worlds, benefits and suffers from the same characteristics as digital goods so therefore in fact should be considered a digital good by nature. Digital goods are more widely recognized as a form of ‘property’ so with that certain benefits arise, especially in the

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field of law. If an individual steals or commits piracy, they can be held liable for this in a court of law, if an individual steals a virtual property item it’s still very hard to prosecute these criminals. For virtual world crime to be reduced, virtual property needs to be considered a digital good, this can bring in many benefits such as greater legal recognition which at the moment is a vast problem with the abundance of virtual property theft and real money trading.

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