D2.13 Virtual Persons CONCLUSION

Conclusion

As these games evolve into alternative places not only for leisure and entertainment but also for working and investing, the law should step in to protect the inhabitants from arbitrary judgments of the game developers. In those virtual environments various privacy issues, regarding the identity of the avatars, the relation between the avatar and the player, as well as the rights of the later arise. This new “virtual reality” poses questions relative to the way the law shall react to these new developments. Shall existing law apply to virtual games? Is there a need for such regulation? Or shall these new circumstances bring along new regulations? Perhaps “virtual games” will manage to self-regulate the issues that arise in them and any invasion from the “real world” may be rendered redundant. Till then, we will all follow the lives of our online characters…

In this contribution, we will examine the proposal to initiate a new legal category, “the virtual person”, as proposed by Danièle Bourcier. To understand her point an introduction is provided about some of the key concepts that are relevant for the proposal: the legal subject; legal consequence, legal action, legal fact; and some attention is paid to the difference between criminal and civil liability.