A response to Atty and Scholar Andrew Jankowich’s article, “EULAw: The Complex Web of Corporate Rule-Making in Virtual Worlds”

Below is an excerpted response to Jankowich’s article, in an email I sent to him 11/25/2007:

I appreciate that you respect so much that ‘quitting the game’ is not the option that the non-rpg-playing public seems to think it is, particularly given the inability to export your character (likeness, property, AND reputation) from one world to another. Beyond the general sense of investment a player has is the issue of how broadly similar the agreements really are - from one game to another - in terms of their ability to terminate players for EULAw violations. “The only way to win is not to play.”

I also really liked how well you articulated the smoke and mirrors game of EULAw rules for termination. While it would seem a player should be ’safe’ by staying within the bounds of the EULAw, the fact that the proprietor is the one determining at any given moment what those bounds are, puts the player constantly at the mercy of the proprietor during every moment of game play. The net effect is that these agreements are ‘we reserve the right to terminate at any time and for any reason whatsoever’, despite what appears to be a ‘reasonable’ amount of protection for abiding by the EULAw…

Up Next: Free-market freedom of speech, and a revolution for Avatar Civil Rights in our future.

Tags: Avatar Rights, Chilling Effect, EULA, Jankowich

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 2:41 am and is filed under Avatar Rights, Virtual Worlds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.