Productive Users, Intellectual Property and Governance: The Challenges of Computer Games

Abstract

Computer games present challenges to intellectual property regimes that will become more widespread as interactive media, with their active, creative and productive users become more common. This paper explores how production has moved from linear to networked and recursive models, involving users as producers in a variety of ways. It suggests that intellectual property and copyright law are based on linear models unsuited to these new forms. The paper further explores the definition of content in the context of social software such as Massively Multi-user Online Games and raises issues pertaining to community governance by publishers, who have moved beyond their traditional role as managers of property rights and into the role of managers of communities.