Welcome to the Lawbringer, your weekly stop at the intersection of law and Warcraft. I am your crossing guard, trying desperately to not get run over myself.

First, I want to apologize for being a day late, but my week was spent preparing for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam. Unfortunately, the test was channeling Illidian. If I get a letter in a few weeks saying that I'm not yet responsible enough to be a lawyer, I will not be surprised.

Anyway, on to this week's promised topic: European Contract Law. We'll be approaching the same topics we covered on my side of the pond: contract formation, contract termination, and unfairness. These concepts form the basis of players' relationship with Blizzard, just like they do in the US. Whether Blizzard has the right to publish information about your avatars, ban you from the game, delete your achievements, or force you to resolve disputes in a mediation are all affected by the laws of the country in which a player resides.

The first challenge in this column is that there traditionally has been no "European" contract law; these issues were decided at a national level through the home country's common or civil law system. Trans-nationalism being all the rage, however, the politicos of the European Union have formed the Commision on European Contract Law which has drafted Principles of European Contract Law. A Common Frame of Reference "toolbox" to help various European legislatures standardize the various laws of contract across the continent to match these Principles. What this means, though, is that this law is in a state of flux -- and I am not a barrister, abogada, retchsanwalt, advokat, or avocat. Take everything in this column with a big grain of salt. And possibly a margarita to wash it down.

This column will go through each of the three topics, touching on English version of the law and then comparing it to Danish, French, and German law systems. The English system is common law formed over hundreds of years of cases, as we saw last week. It is different than the Scot or Irish legal systems, so I will not be designating it as United Kingdom. Danish law is representative of all Nordic legal tradition, a pragmatic civil law system with codes almost identical to those found in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Finland. France's law code is the Napoleonic Code of 1804, the model for Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Egypt, Louisiana, Quebec, and most South American countries. The German Civil Code of 1900 is the last of the great 19th Century codes, and serves as a basis, to greater or lesser extent, for codes in Japan, Greece, Austria, Turkey, and even the People's Republic of China. Obviously, this is not a list of every country in Europe, but it provides a good background. I'll also try to note any differences between established law and what may change with the Principles of European Contract Law. Finally, I'll describe what all this means for the European WoW community. And read very carefully; I will type this only once.

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