Truck and Barter

Over the weekend the Financial Times ran a piececovering an event that occured in the popular online game Everquest II.

In short: a player in Everyquest II found a way (allegedly, anyway) to sell an item, yet retain it at the same time, effectively duplicating the item. Since it's possible to sell popular virtual items for real money, this would allow the player to reap real cash for a virtual "glitch". Mildly amusing, to a certain extent.

Of greater interest to me, however, are the questions this issue raises for virtual worlds. Are online goods the sole property of the company that provided them, or does some consideration have to be given to the creative process that goes into making unique expressions with those tools? (A piece of art isn't the province of the maker of the canvas, the paints, or the brushes, despite it not having been possible to make the art specifically as it exists without those things.) Are these things covered by intellectual or traditional property rights? (Knowledge is, to some extent, non-excludable. But after selling a character or item for real cash, it's no longer usable by anyone else.)

Or, how about issues of eminent domain? What effect would it have on the level of play (and thus revenue for the company) if Sony Online Entertainment regularly employed this tactic:

"We have the right to take [gold] away if necessary," [Chris Kramer of Sony Online] says. "We allow people to come in and play in the world but they don't own the world. Our games are entertainment; we provide an entertainment service to our subscribers."

The online market Sony has devised could easily be read as an outgrowth of the company realizing that the employment of tactics similar to the declaration of eminent domain would seriously dampen involvement. Is it unreasonable to link game playing to economic activity in areas where the government regularly seizes property?