Property in world of warcraft, talk given at mit5 conference in Cambridge, MA (April, 28th 2007)

1. Ownership in the Digital Age: A Sociological Approach Luca Rossi, Fabio Giglietto, Giovanni Boccia Artieri - Dpt. of Communication Studies - University of Urbino “Carlo Bo” - Italy

2. technical boundaries / society’s semantic of property property in world of warcraft media-environment 1 2 actual practices 3 4

3. Media are an active environmet: Experience came from Communication and Action

4. me [scenario | media-world perspective]

5. technical boundaries actual practices [scenario | everyone mass media]

6. property practices [property | property practices] Property designates those things that are commonly recognized as the entities that a person or group has exclusive rights in respect of. (Wikipedia) society’s semantic shift Continuous creation Save the original Collective authorship Individual authorship Access value Object value next old

7. society’s semantic “ stock of rules and themes available on the processing of meaning”

8. World of Warcraft/ digital practices digital world’s rules: new objects (BoP; BoE; Normale) trade rules… property practices: loot rules; Gold farming/selling; … technical boundaries actual practices

9. Before trying: Gift, Sell, Tried: Disenchant, Drop, destroy Binds on Equipement Disenchant, Drop, destroy Binds on PickUp Share, gift, sell, Disenchant, Drop, destroy, Try Normal

10. 1.The co-existence of different semantics is possible in different area of life experience; 2.Those different semantics are going to influence each others; 3.This continuous perturbation can be observed also in specific external Social System e.g. for private property related semantic the typical field of observation is the law System. Consequences: