When we invent the Virtual Reality vacation, can Hawaii copyright its beaches?

Great Debates
1

Full-sensory VR may be a pipe dream. But suppose for a moment that it will someday be invented, and be relatively cheap (or only moderately expensive). People will be able to virtually-visit locations that they had never seen before. You could hold a multi-person face-to-face conference in Paris, even though the people attending the meeting live in a dozen different cities around the world. The possibilities are endless.

However, this might severely cripple the tourist industry in many places around the world. Why visit Hawaii and risk a long, dull, plane flight when you can visit the ersatz Hawaii in minutes for the same price? And Hawaii, which depends on tourist revenue, would see huge losses unless it could protect its investment.

Would Hawaii be able to copyright its natural beauty or its beaches? Would Paris be able to copyright the Eiffel Tower, or St Louis the Arch, or Seattle the Space Needle? What would happen to tourist destinations?

Do you think people would rather visit the real thing, or would a VR vacation be just as popular? Why visit the real location if you can’t tell the difference?

I’ve been thinking about this, and I don’t believe anybody would try to copyright their tourist locations. Visiting a virtual Hawaii doesn’t give you a tan, or seashells, or interesting stories to tell. I’m not sure it would harm the original Hawaii’s tourist dollars by a great amount. Maybe I have faith that people will want the real thing.

There are a few other arguments but I’ll leave it at this for now.

2

Who owns the property in question? If I own the Eiffel Tower, damn straight I can copyright it. But I’m guessing that most of the stuff you’re talking about is public property, and therefore most probably fair game for VI replications.

3

Well, sure, those virtual reality vacations are cheap, but what about all those people who suffered schizoid embolisms and believed they were Arnold Schwarzenegger? :slight_smile:

But seriously, people would undoubtedly prefer the real thing unless the simulation was absolutely perfect. And even then, part of the fun of going on vacation for some people is spontaneity and meeting the locals, which wouldn’t be available in a perfectly programmed simulation. If such things did exist, they’d most likely be used for doing things that would be impossible in reality. For example:

Architect: Well, now you’ve done it. How are we supposed to generate power if no one wants to stay in the Matrix?

Oracle: All you have to do to is make a few small changes to the program. Tell me, have you ever heard of “EverQuest”?

4

If it happens at all, virtual reality tourism will happen in stages; at first it won’t worry the Hawaiian tourist board, but as the technology improves, perhaps it will…

at first, the VR experience will need chunky head sets, and will be purely a sight and sound experience; this will involve interfacing with an artificial mockup of the real thing; this could be entertaining, but would be a completely different experience to actually going there.
Oh, you will probably be able to meet people (or their avatars) but it would just be an extension of the internet chat/message board experience.

As interfaces get more sophisticated, the other senses could be stimulated; you would be able to feel the breeze, taste the wine; this could be achieved by some sort of hookup into your nervous system (ouch!) or by a layer of active nanogel all over the body (see utility fog; the first use for this bizarre concept will probably be as a VR interface).
You will have difficulty distinguishing the virtual beach from reality, but you would be stuck at home in a VR immersion pod of some sort; if everybody did this the future citizens would become pallid weak specimens with no muscle tone and, as you say, no sun tan.

So the virtual tourist will need to be encased in a device which will keep his or her body healthy, exposing it to controlled amounts of UV, exercising the unused muscles and bones like an intensive care patient.

One advantage of VR living would be that you could go anywhere, not just hawaii; you could inhabit a real-time submersible in the Marianas trench, or suffer the second long timelag of a robot explorer on the Moon; you could perform actions impossible in real life, like flying to the centre of the virtual galaxy or wandering around the inside of your own bloodstream.

but this lifestyle may not appeal to everybody as a permanent lifestyle choice; I put my money on diversity, and reality being popular too.

SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

5

I don’t think tourist spots such as beaches would be copyrighted for the simple fact that Earth beaches are imperfect. The reef blocks the view of sunset, the cabana is too far away from the walking path, the sand gets too hot for bare feet, the water doesn’t stay warm at night, or whatever. I think VR designers would strive to make beaches that are better than what we can find in nature. The demand for real-life beaches (and hiking trails and mountains and forests and parks) would be limited to people who craved the real life experience and the souvenirs and stuff.

I’m also pretty sure there will be a great division between purists and perfectionists.

6

Legally speaking there are some misconceptions in the OP and following posts. I had hoped Walloon would have picked them up, but apparently he is busy elsewhere. :slight_smile:

You can’t ‘copyright’ something (in the active sense): you either ‘own’ the copyright or you don’t. In the latter case you might get it assigned/transfered from the owner, if there is one. Ownership of an object does not have any connection to owning the copyright to the work incorporated in the work (as minty unfortunately seems to suggest). This is evident when speaking about books or computer programs, but applies overall. I own several original works of art, but I do not own the copyright to those works. .
‘Ownership’ of copyright is obtained by the act of creation.* Hawaii may own the natural resources, but since I gather it was created naturally, no human being ‘owns’ the copyright to the resources per se. Paris can’t copyright the Eiffel tower; the copyright would originally belong to its creator, Gustave Eiffel, who may have assigned it to someone else, but since he died in 1923 the copyright expired at the latest 70 years later, in 1993.**

However, copyright may be owned to specific elements of the view (buildings, road marks and the like). So in order to make a faithful reproduction you would probably need the consent of the owners of the copyright to those works.*** But you could get around it by simply leaving out those elements.

  • It is possible that some people got confused with the concept of a registered trademark, which works differently.

** To all you nit-pickers: yes, I’m simplifying. IIRC France actually used to have a 50-year limit, so it expired in 1973. But the EU extended copyright duration after the fact to 70 years in the 1990’s. I’m not sure whether the Directive got into effect before 1993, hence my careful ‘at the latest’ which is correct in either case.

*** That is, unless fair use applies: in certain cases you can copy (part of) a work without needing consent of the copyright owner. It may apply partly to reproduction of elements of a view.

7

Hawaii might not be able to copyright its beaches directly, but if anyone makes a particularly good virtual reality image/emulation of them then it will be possible to copyright that emulation;

Years of work on texture, bumpmapping and wave dynamics could be ripped off by a pirate, and distributed without acknowledgement. So any bonafide original VR environment will have a trade mark or watermark hidden in it somewhere- perhaps underneath a rock, or carved into a tree-
it could be a challenge to look for them.

So if you find a stone with ‘copyright Neotek Total Fidelity VR Inc. 2054’ on the underneath, put it back;

that is just the maker’s mark.

8

If copyrighting is the wrong legal protection, Tusculan, then what would be correct, if anything? How would a tourist location such as that protect itself from loss of revenue when VR became a viable process?

I ask only for clarification; I already maintain that designers will come up with vacation spots less flawed than something created by Nature, so the Real Thing wouldn’t be in danger of such blatant theft.

9

Legally speaking, nobody could copyright a beach because you have to create a work to originate a copyright on it, following which said right can be sold around. Nobody created the beach, thus nobody could generate the original copyright.

The problem is that the courts are so hopelessly inept in dealing with technology issues that they might not be able to see past those to get back to the core of the matter. And to top it off, recent history seems to show that someone could, very easily, be issued a copyright or even a patent on said beaches, because they seem to rubber stamp those applications these days.

The interesting question to me is, could someone copyright the VR tour, and if so, what happens when someone else generates another virtually identical tour? We’re talking about what amounts to a really suped up photograph of a public place, and yet I would foresee massive lawsuit sprees between competing firms claiming infringement any time two people made tours of the same subject.

10

True enough, the creator may retain the copyright to the work even while transferring the ownership of the property. That is not, however, the case in every instance. It’s entirely possible for the creator to pass along the copyright to some other person, who then controls the rights to the object. So for the sake of simplicity, just assume that I own both the physical Eiffel Tower and the metaphysical copyright to it. In that case, you ain’t putting my tower in no virrtual reality program 'less you cough up some serious Euros.

11

Since we’re speaking in generalities, I do not feel the need to add a proviso. Just to be upfront, I am not qualified to practice law in the U.S. I’m only applying basic Intellectual Property principles, to which there may be variations in varying jurisdictions.

minty: I highly respect your legal knowledge. For that very reason I feel that it is necessary to correct any misconceptions innocious readers might inadvertently pick up from your post earlier in this thread. You can assume hypothetically that the copyright is transfered, but bear in mind that this is not automatically the case. The Eiffel Tower is a misleading example since the copyright on it has already expired. The Trump Tower or any other recent building would be a better example.

In your first post you seem to suggest incorrectly that the crucial distinction is whether the property is private or public owned. AFAIK property that is owned by the State can still be under copyright, i.e. public property does not mean that the copyright to the work incorporated in the property is public domain. Ownership of the material object is completely irrelevant (except possibly in matters of proof).

Fish: let me start to state that I do not feel that Hawaii should have a right to monopolize its beaches. Unfortunate though the effects might be on local tourist industry, that’s just the bad luck that occurs with industries when they become obsolete. I can sympathize with the plight of the people involved, but do not believe a monopoly would be a good idea to remedy the negative effects.

That said, I think you could use copyright if you hired a landscape designer, have him redesign the beach and transfer the copyright, then execute his design. AFAIK this wouldn’t follow under designs (Chapter 13 of Title 17 U.S. Code) but would have to be considered according to the common copyright articles.

Another possible route might be to use trademark law. You could try to register a trademark consisting of one or more of Hawaiian views, and have it apply to categories such as travels, games or the like. AFAIK this is legally possible. It is in line with Harley Davidson trying to register a trademark on the sound of it’s motor cycles. Whether this would in the end be upheld by the courts is uncertain but AFAIK it has at least some merit.

In both cases there may be additional restrictions, such as fair use in the case of copyright law, that could foil such plans. Consult your lawyer if you want to have a complete and considered advice. I am not your lawyer etcetera, etcetera.

With respect to the other comments: there is no copyright on works of pure fact or pure ideas. If one company created a VR-tour, that tour (or rather, the code/data combination) would be subject to copyright, but another company would be allowed to create a tour through the exact same area based on the exact same physical facts, as long as they created the code independently. There are some thorny legal issues with the possibility that the specific set-up of the tour (at which places to turn etcetera) could be subject to copyright. For the sake of simplicity I’ll leave those issues alone.

12

I forgot to add the following.

  1. Besides copyright to the beach, there is the option I mentioned before, to use copyright or trademark) on specific elements of a view. If there are picturesque buildings or café’s or the like, you could try to obtain trademark rights on those elements; you could also add a new building to the view and have the copyright to that building transfered. If the element is sufficiently important, a developer would want to incorporate it in his program, which may give you an angle to make money. A recent thread on racing programs discussed this with respect to the racing teams giving licenses for use of their trademarks.

  2. Another trick is used by museums. You only allow visitors on specific conditions, among which is a restriction on making pictures and/or using pictures for commercial purposes without permission of the museum. This provides you with a contractual right to forbid the use of the pictures, which is not as strong as copyright, since it doesn’t directly apply to third parties.

13

This is something like the idea of an actor copyrighting his/her image; you might be charged just to take a photo or a video of a famous person, and be prevented from filming them in the street;
you certainly can’t film them at their wedding from outside the property with a telephoto lens. or with a concealed camera.

in the same way, a famous landmark might have a prohibition zone within which you are not allowed to film or use 3D recording equipment.

This is horrible;
the Eiffel tower is visible from all over Paris; will the Image police prevent anyone filming it at all times?

on a related note, could a criminal copyright his her image and prevent surveillance cameras from operating wherever he/she goes?

something isn’t right…

14

Actually I remember back in law school I studied a case where somebody had built a golf course consisting of duplicates of famous holes from 18 well-known golf courses around the world. The other golf course owners brought suit. I’m not sure what the result was.

As far as the OP goes, I doubt that copywright or anything else for that matter could stop someone from a VR depiction of Hawaii beaches. Fundamentally, it’s not that much different from selling pictures of the beach. (IMHO).

I imagine that in the scenario proposed by the OP, tourism boards would lobby Congress for some kind of new protection for their locales.

15

Truth be told, I was thinking of the property law doctrine [can’t remember the name and my outlines are at work] that says beaches and certain other properties are held by the goverment in trust for the public. I did not mean to suggest that private vs. governmental ownership was determinative of the rights involved, though the question of who owns what is the obvious starting point for the inquiry.