In their very interesting draft paper that Dan mentioned, Professors Bradley and Froomkin suggest that virtual worlds might be testbeds for legal rules. However, with regard to experimenting with intellectual property, they aren't so sure that virtual worlds are a good fit. They say: Like zoning, intellectual property involves complex technical issues in the real world that a game could not test. This may be true, but a bigger problem with using virtual worlds as testbeds for experimental intellectual property rules is that virtual worlds are intellectual property. Putting aside trademarks, patents, and other relevant forms of intellectual property, software is protected by copyright. The copyright is not just limited to a game's source code and object code, but also extends (to an unclear extent) to other salient aspects of the program.