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Can virtual world property be considered a digital good?
conference contribution
posted on 2010-01-01, 00:00 authored by Nick Patterson, Michael HobbsMichael HobbsWhat types of goods should be considered digital goods? This paper discusses the question of whether virtual property, such as items available in virtual world environments like Linden Lab’s Second Life and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, should be considered a valid digital good. The makeup of a virtual property items are explored in this paper and their key features compared and contrasted with that of digital goods. Common examples of digital goods include: electronic books, software, digital music and digital movies. These goods are considered a tangible commodity, that is they have an unlimited supply and secondly they are in a digital/binary form (a sequence of 1’s and 0s’). When looking at why a virtual property items should be included in the category of ‘digital goods’, it is important to consider how items in a virtual world come to exist and how the availability of these items are often controlled by publishers and developers. The aim of this paper is show that digital goods should not be limited to the traditional views such as electronic books, software, music and movies; but in fact the term ‘digital good’ should also include the active market of virtual property
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History
Event
International Association for the development of the Information Society International Conference on Internet Technologies & Society (2010 : Perth, W.A.)Pagination
33 - 40Publisher
IADIS PressLocation
Perth, AustraliaPlace of publication
Perth, AustraliaStart date
2010-11-29End date
2010-12-01ISBN-13
9789728939311Language
engPublication classification
E1 Full written paper - refereedCopyright notice
2010, IADISEditor/Contributor(s)
P Kommers, T Issa, P IsaiasTitle of proceedings
IADIS ITS 2010 : Proceedings of THE IADIS International Conference : Internet Technologies & SocietyUsage metrics
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