First, note that that wouldn't change with electricity being massless; the argument in the paper I mentioned would. Turns out it was in 1921, but either way: t

First, note that that wouldn't change with electricity being massless; the argument in the paper I mentioned would. Turns out it was in 1921, but either way: there was a dentist who blocked his electricity meter by putting a pen in it (it was one of those that turned to take the measurement). The question was: did this qualify as 'theft', because, according to Dutch penal code, theft requires the 'appropriation of any good'. The argument was that electricity is not a 'good' (Dutch civil law has a particular concept of a 'good', and being physical is one of the criteria. Note also that I'm not writing a paper here, and that I'm using loose translations for terms that are well-known concepts, so I'm probably making several technical mistakes here). The Supreme Court however decided that electricity was still a 'good' because it represented economic value (that was one line of reasoning, they didn't actually say 'electricity has mass, hence it's physical, hence it's a good'). The paper I mentioned then concluded from this that the Supreme Court had decided that electricity has mass (because it was considered a 'good', and 'goods' need to be physical - which is why e.g. what we now call intellectual property is not a 'good'. This has far-reaching consequences.) So the paper went on to qualify virtual swords as goods, and then proceeded from there. There are more criteria for being a 'good', like something has to be uniquely identifiable; so the author couldn't make a straight analogy to the electricity case to make his case for virtual swords being 'goods'; I don't recall the details exactly but in the end, his qualification of virtual swords as 'goods' came down to electricity having mass. He said, essentially, that the 'sword' is the movement of electrons through systems, and that therefore it could be qualified as 'theft'. There was a separate argument about intellectual property as well of course, I don't recall either, but there was a reason that wasn't material in the precise question being asked. The whole point was of looking at the case of some people (physically) forcing a boy to transfer his virtual sword to them in some online game, and whether that constituted 'theft' or 'robbery' (which requires some aspects of the 'theft' aspect). (Edit: also, the paper was written by an engineer who also had a law degree (maybe this paper was part of his degree, I forgot.) This is not some case of 'haha idiot lawyer'.)