Law & Games Seminar

In InformationWeek Cory Doctorow distinguishes between citizens and customers and argues that players of online games are customers:

Can you be a citizen of a virtual world? That’s the question that I keep asking myself, whenever anyone tells me about the wonder of multiplayer online games, especially Second Life, the virtual world that is more creative playground than game…
The money in your real-world bank-account and in your in-game bank-account is really just a pointer in a database. But if the bank moves the pointer around arbitrarily (depositing a billion dollars in your account, or wiping you out), they face a regulator. If a game wants to wipe you out, well, you probably agreed to let them do that when you signed up….
Elected governments can field armies, run schools, provide health care (I’m a Canadian), and bring acid lakes back to health. But I’ve never done anything run by a government agency that was a lot of fun. It’s my sneaking suspicion that the only people who’d enjoy playing World of Democracycraft would be the people running for office there. The players would soon find themselves playing IRSQuest, Second Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Life, and Caves of 27 Stroke B.