Title: Between the Human and the Virtual: Players, Player-characters and Organ Donors

This paper argues that the framing of a central debate about MMORPG (Massively Multi-player On-Line Role Play Game) player-characters in terms of property rights tends to exclude a range of values and issues that are pertinent to an understanding, not only of player-characters, but a wider class of virtual artifacts and our relationship with them.

The structure of the current debate will be examined though an analysis of the network of actors and digital-artifacts in question and the prevailing framework of property and contract law though which much of the discourse is being shaped. Cases considered will include recent disputes over EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot character trading, and contemporary debates about the construction of world rules in Star Wars Galaxies and Project Entropia. 

Through the cases, unique aspects of the artifact-mediated actor relationships established in interactive virtual communities will be elucidated, and it will be argued that many of these fall outside traditional property discourse. The range, and often opposition, of views and values held both within and between communities (player, developer, publisher) will be examined in respect of the way that this informs the problematic nature of any single governing framework of rights and duties that might be applied to virtual worlds. 

The paper will discuss specific limits and issues associated with a traditional property based discourse in the context of an extension of a wider set of possible rights into virtual spaces, and will seek to draw parallels between potential alternative legal frameworks that may re-introduce notions of non-property rights into the debate. 

Specifically the paper will draw upon the legal model currently applied to human bodies and organ donation in order to posit a broad, yet structured nexus between the human with the virtual. That is, it will parallel the status of human organs in the current Anglo-American legal ontology with a possible sui generous status for certain virtual artifacts. Benefits and limitations of this approach will be located within the spectrum of community values drawn from case studies. 

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(c) Ren Reynolds 2003 		www.renreynolds.com