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Experts Discuss Virtual Theft And Real Crime
Harlequeen writes According to the BBC, police forces across the globe are looking into whether on-line theft in MMORPGs can be considered a real crime. A law expert called in by the BBC seems to think they can, but does virtual crime need real justice?" The piece takes earlier revelations about Korean cybercrime as a starting point, and Dr Roger Leng of the University of Warwick agrees that "the law has no problems treating the intangible as valuable", suggesting: "It's possible to steal any form of property right which is not represented by tangible objects."
In an environment such as many RPGs create, "Thieves" are a class of characters. While I certainly don't support Grief-killing or otherwise, I think any legal team would have a hard time proving that the Thief class was not intended to steal, and therefore should violate any sort of law.
Furthermore, since most EULAs include statements which claim the ownership of the content to be the company, players stealing from players is not stealing in the sense that property is physical changing ownership, because the company still owns it either way.
Ummm ... I think they are referring to theft of actual items in the game by way of exploiting the software in a 'cracker'-type fashion, not in an RPG fashion. They seem to be interested in the cases where someone logs on, and their character's keep or whatever is gone, and the property of another player through an online auction, not in the sense that a 14th level thief picked the pocket of the character ... I hope this makes sense!
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There's a difference between stealing within the game environment and stealing by hacking a computer to get the game item. Where the line is drawn however is a good qeustion.
Thieving via hacking is a whole 'nother story. This is a case of where your losses occured because of something that wasn't supposed to happen: server security being compromised. In many other frameworks, this is already illegal. The article uses banking as an example, which is mostly electronic these days:
If you think about it, there are a lot of parallels to online gaming items: like money, many gaming items require time and effort to get. (With eBay auctions, good items can even be directly exchanged for money.) Like your account balance, you expect your character and items to be safely there when you return. People can consequently be pretty upset if that's not the case.The point is somewhat moot because hacking your way onto a company's server is already illegal anyway. The real problem is going to be enforcement -- given the relatively small dollar value of most of these items, and the fact that hacked game servers won't be perceived as a mainstream problem, chances are that even if such cases are acknowledged to be illegal, it'll be hard to get them investigated and prosecuted.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
I don't think it's logical to pursue a virtual crime, done in a virtual world, in real life. Note that this excludes hacking a server or a user account, which has to happen in the real world, and is therefore a matter of the "real world law".
In a virtual world, the aim is - explicitly! - to create an experience not connected to real life. That's why people play online games, to escape (if you want to call it that) from real life, and do things they can't do in reality. It's the purpose and the gist of online games. So if (mis)behaviour online affects real life, you take away the basis for those games.
Just to be clear, I don't think that running around PKing everyone (exception: FPS) and using rude language is ok. But if you misbehave online, it is sufficient to be banned from a server. No need to file a lawsuit.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
I think I'm missing something here - virtually every RPG will have some class that could act as a police force right (guards for example)? If I steal something from someone in a virtual world and they find out it was me then I would expect the guards to be informed and take the necessary steps, and I would have to work harder to avoid the guards and, if caught, expect to be punished in some way (skill reduction, attack, whatever). If they don't find out it was me, I'd expect the guards to be informed of the theft and, if it happens regularly, I'd expect them to organise themselves to try and track down who was doing it.
The virtual world shouldn't need the application of real world laws for virtual crimes because if it is working correctly it should create its own internal laws, enforced by the players or NPCs.
I disagree with the law expert. MMORPG items and money may look like property but they fail a critical test: They require no effort from the MMORPG company to create or destroy.
Property does not exist in a world where the president of the MMORPG company can wave his hand and become a "billionaire", or strip people of their possessions solely for the sake of plot. Or heck, just for fun for the programmers. For instance, when the Beta of an MMORPG ends, and all the chars are reset for the production release, if someone sued to get their Flaming Sword of Main Antagonist +34,532 back, would we think they had a case? (No.) What if in the new production version there was no Flaming Sword of Main Antagonist +34,532?
Even "intellectual property", which I also think is a misnomer (though unfortunately I haven't yet published the part where I explain how we should think of it), at least requires effort to create. (It fails to be property in other ways, but not this one.)
Moreover, I'm not aware of any property that can be legitimately destroyed legally by a simple server glitch. You can create "IP" and even if you do it on a computer and the computer crashes, you still theoretically have the rights to it (although you may not be able to exercise them); the crash destroyed your only copy of the work but not your rights, which is all you actually be said to "own". A computer glitch may convince the bank or the government you don't own your house when you do, but we still behave as if there is a higher "property"-ness, beyond just what records say; you'd have the right to correct these records, even government records. Also see squatting laws. For MMORPGs, if the property is destroyed via glitch, you have no recourse, not even in theory.
Basically, it may look like property, and it may walk like property, but it does not quack like property. Therefore, it is not a duck. I mean, therefore, it is not property.
It ought to be possible to handle in-game theft with in-game consequences. I don't have much experience with the latest crop of MMORPGs, but I'll draw on an example from Ancient Anguish, a MUD I used to play.
In Ancient Anguish, thieves existed as a character class with the ability to do certain not-nice things to other characters, such as steal their items, poison food/heals, etc. However, just like in the real world, society frowned on stealing what didn't belong to you. Hence, in-game laws existed which prohibited theft from players even though the gaming mechanisms existed. This parallels real life, where you can certainly try to steal things, but woe to you if you were caught.
The probability of success was appropriately propertional to things like the value of the item, the level and stats of the thief/victims, lighting conditions, and so forth. Unsuccessful attempts had a (non-negligible) chance of being noticed by the victim and/or bystanders. Anyone witnessing theft could file a report with the local in-game authorities, who would then place a "bounty" on the head of the thief. This resulted in a large number of PC bounty hunters (which was a popular profession) being given license to hunt down and PK the player -- kind of a rough "frontier justice". Since death resulted in loss of a level and stats, this represented a serious deterrence to thieving.
In this fashion, in-game theft could be made to parallel real theft. It was certainly possible to steal things, but you better not get caught or you'd be in trouble with the rest of society. It also taught other players that they had to be careful with their items and money, and to consider buying safeguards or insurance.
The same framework can be (and was, in AA) extended to any other sort of activity that society would frown upon, such as PK'ing or griefing. Most players agreed the approach worked very well in discouraging unwanted activity; in fact, by adding societal values to the game just like in real life, it actually helped make the game feel more realistic.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away