Hello Avatar! Who Are You? Does it Matter?

Recently while participating in the Science Guild in WoW, a heated debate ensued regarding transparency (identity disclosure) and anonymity as a digital person. This discussion has been occurring for some time now between those wishing to remain anonymous and continue as a digital person, and those that not only need, but require physical world identities.

What is a digital person? For those unfamiliar with this term, they are synthetic identities created by people using the internet for virtual world habitation and representation, MMORPGs, and/or social networking. Many create a presence for themselves that replicate a human being’s presence in the physical world—with the exception of providing a legal identity. Some have extensive social networks, built brands around themselves, and offer services both to virtual and physical world businesses or organizations. In this context, a digital person is, by their own admission, a “person” that should be recognized based on their merit and not required to divulge a physical world identity. I speculate that it is possible they may be recognized as intellectual property. But by whom?

From my point of view, businesses and organizations have every right to require identification. They need to know who they’re contracting or associating with, whether that person or legal entity is licensed to conduct business, what their reputation is, and have some assurance in regard to liability. Organizations also need to protect their employees, customers, shareholders, students, audiences, reputations, brands, products, and services--and they have every right to do so.

In May 2008, the IRS ruled Electric Sheep’s Second Life greeters were part-time employees. No one should be surprised by this. If you employ or contract someone and pay them, you should expect your government to step in to collect their taxes as well as to protect the employee or contractor. I think this is a wake-up call for “digital people”. If you haven’t done so already, those providing virtual goods and services and realizing a physical world income from them should seriously think about obtaining a business license and reporting the income. At worst, keep records and be prepared to do so. I know several “digital people” in Second Life that are making $60,000.00+ USD annually—I’m pretty sure the government is going to notice. It’s only a matter of time.

Where does that leave the digital person? I’m acquainted with many extremely talented and intelligent digital personas that, to date, have refused to disclose their physical world identities. I’ve envisioned scenarios where this might be necessary. Perhaps the digital person is famous in the physical world and wants to retain their anonymity in order to socialize and experience people and events in the same way that the average person does. Perhaps they are performing research and need the anonymity to insure their research is untainted by contrived reactions based on identity. I’m sure there are other reasons I’ve not covered here. However, in these scenarios they aren’t conducting business with physical world businesses or organizations, and they aren’t selling virtual goods or services in virtual worlds. The expectation that a digital persona can conduct business or interact on a professional level with organizations without disclosing their identity is likely going to limit their opportunities if they expect any kind of monetary exchange or financial investment.

With that, what do you think?