Korean MMO Games Hotbed For Crime?

Thanks to Frictionless Insight for pointing to a Korea Times article discussing the involvement of online games in cybercrime. According to Chang Yoon-shik, chief of Cyber Crime Investigation Team 1 at the National Police Agency (NPA), more than 22,000 of the 40,000 reported cybercrimes in MMO-crazy Korea are games-related because "online games are not treated just as online games, and their money not treated as imaginary money. A lot of cyber crimes involve cyber money, but people are buying and selling this cyber money with real cash." A particular example is given, as "On July 3, the NPA arrested two hackers... on charges of manipulating the server of an Internet game service provider to obtain 60 quadrillion won in cyber money and exchange it for 1.5 billion won [$1.2 million USD] in real money."

Comments

oookay

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... what...?

In other news

[BigBadDude]

robber were arrested when hitting a monopoly bank

Inflation

[neglige]

[...] to obtain 60 quadrillion won in cyber money and exchange it for 1.5 billion won [$1.2 million USD] in real money.

If the amount of money in an MMORG can be increased by hackers, this should result in an inflation - in the world of the MMORG. Good thing that the increased amount of money won't have any effects on the real economy (the amount of money is not changed there)... this could be quite disasterous.

On the other hand: who exchanges the fictional money into real money? The company? If so, the company needs some solid funding, because at one point in time, all the MMORG player could decide to exchange all their MMORG money. I guess that would push any company into bankrupcy.

Re:Inflation

[lafiel]

EBay is a good place. Resell large amounts of online cash into US dollars because people are willing to pay for large amounts of cash....

I sold buckets of gold in UO for a good amount of US dollars, those were good days.

Re:Inflation

[neglige]

Resell large amounts of online cash into US dollars because people are willing to pay for large amounts of cash

Hmmm... do I smell a business model here? :) Here is the idea: create a company where every employee play some MMORG and accumulates virtual money. Then sell this virtual money for hard cash. It would be interesting to see if this would actually be profitable...

And since I posted this on Slashdot, I can get this idea patented ;)

Re:Inflation

[Daetrin]

On the other hand: who exchanges the fictional money into real money? The company? If so, the company needs some solid funding, because at one point in time, all the MMORG player could decide to exchange all their MMORG money. I guess that would push any company into bankrupcy.

I'm not sure, but i would guess it works the same as MMORPGs in the US. The players trade and sell items/cash among each other, and the company has nothing to do with it. Given how much discusion there has been about games that involve financial transactions with the company in exchange for items i think we would have heard about it if there was one in Korea that had actually implemented the practice.

Re:Inflation

[trompete]

The coolest part about this (and scariest) is that we're controlling the exchange rates over EBay. I don't know whether to laugh or cry!

Re:Inflation

[Ieshan]

Most games have a EULA that prevents people from legally doing this.

While they don't have a way to enforce it on a personal level, they'd certainly do something about it if it was ever taken to a business level. :)

HI?

[Anonymous Coward]

I THINK PEOPLE SHOULD FIRST STOP USING CYBER AS A PREFIX FOR ALL THING INTERNET RELATED.

THANKS.

CYBERNETICS: A Definition

[In 1990 Heinz von Foerster was approached by Macmillan to compose an entry for their 1991 Macmillan Encyclopedia of Computers. Von Foerster recommended them to me and I composed the following text and incorporated a figure that I had created for an earlier purpose. My original text follows, which was published in a slightly re-edited form. Final text is Copyright (c) Macmillan Publishing.]

Artificial Intelligence and cybernetics: Aren't they the same thing? Or, isn't one about computers and the other about robots? The answer to these questions is emphatically, No.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) uses computer technology to strive toward the goal of machine intelligence and considers implementation as the most important result; cybernetics uses epistemology (the limits to how we know what we know) to understand the constraints of any medium (technological, biological, or social) and considers powerful descriptions as the most important result.

The field of AI came into being when the concept of universal computation [Minsky 1967], the cultural view of the brain as a computer, and the availability of digital computing machines were combined. The field of cybernetics came into being when concepts of information, feedback, and control [Wiener 1948] were generalized from specific applications (e.g. in engineering) to systems in general, including systems of living organisms, abstract intelligent processes and language.
Origins of "cybernetics"

The term itself originated in 1947 when Norbert Wiener used it to name a discipline apart from, but touching upon, such established disciplines as electrical engineering, mathematics, biology, neurophysiology, anthropology, and psychology. Wiener, Arturo Rosenblueth and Julian Bigelow needed a new word to refer to their new concept, and they adapted a Greek word meaning "steersman" to invoke the rich interaction of goals, predictions, actions, feedback and response in systems of all kinds (the term "governor" derives from the same root) [Wiener 1948]. Early applications in the control of physical systems (aiming artillery, designing electrical circuits and maneuvering simple robots) clarified the fundamental roles of these concepts in engineering; but the relevance to social systems and the softer sciences was also clear from the start. Many researchers from the 1940s through 1960 worked solidly within the tradition of cybernetics without necessarily using the term, some likely (R. Buckminster Fuller) but many less obviously (Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead).
Limits to knowing

In working to abstract concepts common to all systems, early cybernetic researchers quickly realized that "the science of observed systems" cannot be divorced from "the science of observing systems" [von Foerster 1974] --- because it is we who observe. The cybernetic approach is centrally concerned with this unavoidable limit of what we can know: our own subjectivity. In this way cybernetics is aptly called "applied epistemology". At minimum, its utility is the production of useful descriptions, and, specifically, descriptions that include the observer in the description. Cybernetic descriptions of psychology, language, arts, performance, or intelligence (to name a few) may be quite different from more conventional, hard "scientific" views --- although cybernetics can be rigorous too. Implementation may then follow in software and/or hardware, or in the design of social, managerial and other classes of interpersonal systems.
Origins of AI in cybernetics

Ironically but logically, AI and cybernetics have each gone in and out of fashion and influence in the search for machine intelligence. Cybernetics started in advance of AI, but AI has dominated for the last 25 years. Now recent difficulties in AI have led to renewed search for solutions that mirror the past approaches of cybernetics. Warr

Re:HI?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think people should first stop using cyber as a prefix for all thing internet related.

Nice cyber rant! :)

Re:HI?

[nadadogg]

at least Cyber-whatever sounds better than E-whatever. I'd much rather be prosecuted for Cyber-crime than E-crim.

Re:HI?

[Anonymous Coward]

how the fuck is this REDUNDANT or TROLL you fucking crack smoking moderator? also get that I GOT THREE TIMES 5, INSIGHTFUL TODAY with my logged in acc, I WONT BE BANNED NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU MOD ME DOWN

YOU FAIL IT, FAG

right on

[DrunkClam]

in an open society information should be just as important as anything "real". These kids have exposed what is an oversight in our modern economics. Now we can see the need for reuglatory oersight, so that online games can become part world economy. I think some diehard kids in mexico could totally make a run on some of the old hardware shipped their way every year. Turn that into a cash cow. Kill the capitalists with their own tools.

So don't have an economy in the game

[Asmodeus]

Seems like an easy solution - provide a game environment in which money is not an issue - rank or status could replace it, for example the Navy have little use (although I admit some) for money. But Naval officers don't buy warships ;-)

Re:So don't have an economy in the game

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, just like people won't post party-line BS just because slashdot has karma instead of dollars.

Dude, if it's a number, scale, rank, whatever, humans will try to compete for king of the mountain.

what the hell?

[Tuxinatorium]

Anyone crazy enough to pay $1.2 million for any sort of advantage in a silly MMO is out of their mind and deserves to be ripped off...

Re:what the hell?

[dpete4552]

Well it was more than likely sold in smaller quanities to many people.

Or would they?

[Cirrius]

This business model has been around, unharrased, for years.

http://www.ige.com/

They do a lot of selling on http://www.playerauctions.com/