Jack Balkin

If a platform owner allows the players to hold copyrights in their own designs, the game owner is inviting the law into the game space, and the problems of enforcing intellectual property rights are greatly multiplied. For example, people may have intellectual property interests in the design of virtual items. Taking a screenshot of the game that displays these items makes a copy of the surface pattern, and thus may violate the owner's intellectual property rights. All of the emerging conflicts between freedom of expression and intellectual property law are present in virtual worlds. In fact, because so much activity in virtual spaces involves copying and building on existing elements, and because the entire space is a set of representations, the conflicts between freedom of speech and intellectual property are further heightened; in some respects, virtual worlds constitute a perfect storm.