Here we get back to Martha and Dank. In their exchange—when Martha blamed Dank for having a dog that died with pain—they revealed what is amazing about this space. Martha’s remarks (“Why do you have a dog that suffers when dying? Get yourself a pain-free dog, and my petals will cause no harm”) may have struck you as odd. You may have thought, “How weird that someone would think that the fault lay not in the poison petals but in a dog that died with pain.” But in this space Dank did have a choice about how his dog would die. Maybe not a choice about whether “poison” would “kill” a dog, but a choice about whether the dog would suffer when it died. He also had a choice about whether a copy of the dog could be made, so that if it died it could “come back to life.” In Avatar space these possibilities are not given by God. Or rather, if they are defined by God, then we are God. The possibilities in Avatar space are determined by the code—the software, or architecture, that makes the Avatar space what it is. “What happens when” is a statement of logic; it asserts a relationship that is manifested in code. In real space we don’t make much of the code. In Avatar space we do.

So, when Martha said what she said about the dog, Dank made what seemed to me an obvious response. “Why do your flowers have to stay poisonous once they leave your land? Why not make the petals poisonous only when on your land? When they leave your land—when, for example, they are blown onto my land—why not make them harmless?”

It was an idea, but it didn’t really help. For Martha made her living selling these poisonous plants. Others too liked the idea of this art tied to death. So it was not a solution to make poisonous plants that were poisonous only on Martha’s property, unless Martha was also interested in collecting a lot of very weird people on her land.

But the idea did suggest another. “Okay,” said Dank, “why not make the petals poisonous only when in the possession of someone who has purchased them? If they are stolen, or if they blow away, then let the petals lose their poison. But when kept by the owner of the plant, let the petals keep their poison. Isn’t that a solution to the problem that both of us face?”

The idea was ingenious. Not only did it help Dank; it helped Martha as well. For the code, as it existed, did allow theft. (People want reality in that virtual space; there will be time enough for heaven later.) But if Martha could modify the code slightly so that theft removed a plant’s value, that change would protect the profit in her plants as well as Dank’s dogs. Here was a solution that made both neighbors better off—what economists call a pareto superior move.¹ And it was a solution that was as possible as any other. All it required was a change of code.

[This isn't right. Changing the code in this way is not pareto superior. The modified plant would have less value to its owner, since the owner would no longer have the ability to sell the plant, or trade it, or give it as a gift, or have his/her heirs take possession of it. The plant would be tethered to an owner, which the owner might not want. And since the eventual owner of the plant would value it less, Martha would have to lower the price she charged for the plant, so she might be worse off as well.

In theory you might give the plant some mode that let its owner pass on ownership to somebody else. But that wouldn't help if the owner died -- in that case it would be more efficient to let somebody else take possession of the plant. But who should get possession? If you go down this path then you're introducing a whole property-rights regime, consisting of formal rules implemented by code, and you're building that regime into the plant's code. Is that a good idea? Is it pareto superior? Probably not.

Even if we could solve that problem, why should we assume that Martha would want this? The whole story is based on the perverse premise that Martha gets pleasure from the fact that the plant causes harm. Why should she get less pleasure from that harm just because the plant was stolen in the meantime, or just because the leaves blew from one place to another in the meantime.

The issues here seem much more complicated than Lessig lets on.]

Think for a second about what’s involved here. “Theft” entails (at minimum) a change in possession. But in Avatar space “possession” is just a relation defined by the software that defines the space. That same code must also define the properties that possession yields. It must distinguish, for example, between having a cake and eating it. In both cases you “possess” the cake, but in the second case what you possess must change over time. With each “bite,” you possess less.

[This isn't right. In Avatar space there's no reason that you can't code up a special cake that allows you to have it and eat it too. You could eat all you wanted, and afterward you would still have the same cake you started with. In Avatar space you can feed a huge crowd with five loaves and two fishes, and it isn't even a miracle.]

So why not the same solution to Martha and Dank’s problem? Why not define ownership to include the quality of poisonousness, and possession without ownership to be possession without poison? Rather than resolve the dispute between Martha and Dank by making one of them change his or her behavior, why not change the laws of nature to eliminate the conflict altogether?

We’re a short way into this relatively short book, and what I’m about to say may make it a very short book indeed (for you at least). This book is all about the question raised by this simple story, and about the simplicity in this apparently simple answer. This is not a book about Avatar space; the story about Martha and Dank is the first and last example that will include Avatars. But it is a book about cyberspace. My claim is that cyberspace will raise precisely the questions that Martha and Dank confronted, as well as the questions that their solution raised. What does it mean to live in a world where problems can be programmed away? And when, in that world, should we program problems away?

It is not Avatar space that makes these questions interesting problems for law; the very same problems will arise outside of Avatar space, and outside MUDs and MOOs. The problems of these spaces are problems of cyberspace generally, and as more of our life becomes wired, these questions will become more pressing.

Footnotes

¹ A pareto superior move requires that at least one person be made better off and that no one be made worse off. See Robert Cooter and Thomas Ulen, Law and Economics, 2d ed. (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997), 12, 41–42. Edit Delete