Jacob Rogers · February 2008
76 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 405 (2008)
Imagine waking up one morning to find that your neighbor had erected a nude statue of himself and pointed it toward your window. Even worse, the moment you leave for work, a group of surly strangers makes your house its home. To top it off, when you arrive at the crafts store you own and manage, every customer is somehow making exact copies of your merchandise, eliminating their need to actually purchase anything.
If the described state of affairs ever came to pass, few would hesitate to describe it with words like “nightmarish” or “dystopian.” For tens of millions of people around the world, however, such a world is entertaining enough to merit paying a nontrivial monthly fee for the right to participate in it. Although situations like the ones above are not intended to be a part of the virtual-world experience, so far they have been an inescapable component.
Virtual worlds provide a forum for the exchange of billions of dollars annually—a figure that will only rise with each passing year. With so much money and time invested, courts and legislatures must develop a viable legal framework to solve the current and inevitable disputes. This Note proposes one such framework.
The emerging phenomenon of virtual online worlds should be governed by a two-tier system. First, everything that occurs completely inside the world should be regulated by a terms-of-service contract. Second, transactions that occur outside the virtual world (that is, in the real world), but that involve virtual-world goods or relationships, should be treated no differently than a similar transaction involving real-world goods or relationships.
After providing a fuller explanation of the nature and significance of virtual worlds in Part I, Part II of this Note examines actual and potential disputes arising from these worlds and how legal systems have addressed or might address them. Next, Part III briefly discusses other proposals in this field and explains why they are inadequate. Part IV presents this Note’s proposal and suggests some ways the proposal may be given effect.
