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Online Gamer Wins Virtual Theft Lawsuit
ThePretender writes "A Reuters article details the story of (what I believe is) the first online-gaming lawsuit won regarding virtual theft, with a Chinese court ordering a game company to 'return hard-won virtual property to a player whose game account was looted by a hacker'. Apparently, the article feels the need to throw in that the RedMoon-playing gamer's looted booty included 'a make-believe stockpile of bio-chemical weapons' for some reason... 'I exchanged the equipment with my labour, time, wisdom and money, and of course they are my belongings,' said Li Hongchen (the gamer) and the courts agreed, ordering the game company to restore his bounty." We've covered earlier stages of this lawsuit in the past.
Not sure if this bodes well, Ultima Online have had a long standing policy of not replacing lost items for any reason. Wonder if this could be legislated ;-)
OK, let me get this straight:
Person spends long hours working with computer.
Person creates virtual object.
Person loses virtual object due to crackers exploiting software bug.
Person sues maker of software for restoration of virtual object.
Person wins in court.
OK....
So, can a person sue Microsoft to restore all the word processing documents they have lost due to crashes? Can they sue Microsoft for the files lost when a web site is defaced due to an IIS bug?
Begin RANT:
All these stories of people getting so wrapped up in various online games just indicate to me that some people have
a) Too DAMN much time on their hands, and
b) a complete ABSENCE of a sense of proportion.
Just 200 years ago, most people were too focused on TRYING TO STAY ALIVE.
Now we have people with nothing better to do than to sue other people over make-believe!
Is that progress, or what?
(and that question is asked in all seriousness - I tend toward "or what" myself....)
www.eFax.com are spammers
Clever thinking, Chinese government.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
As someone who teaches cyberlaw, I find this case interesting but not unique. After all, what we're really talking about is intangible property--essentially, a contractual right to do certain things in a certain context. Almost like a license. In other words, the company set up the game to allow the player to do X, then messed up its security so that the player was prevented from doing X. Player didn't get the benefit of his agreement to use the game.
What would have been more interesting would be if the game had included a virtual "court," the player had won in that "court," and a real-world court had been used to enforce the "judgment." I'm sure that's coming one of these days. It's a logical outgrowth of situations such as that described by Julian Dibbell in "A Rape In Cyberspace," which I assign to my students each semester. {Professor Ezor}
for one thing this mean a court of law in a country (China) says virtual items are just the same as real. Likewise it means that there is a legitimate claim to such items, ie a person can own a item even if it is intangable.
while not so much a issue now, It COULD be one in the future, one that could become a very serious issue. By making things legitimate now you advoid the issues that could come later
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I personally find this ruling to be terrible and not thought out. When you are paying for an online game, you are paying for a service. Now, if the service states that under the event of bugs, hackers, or whatever, you are entitled to reimbursement and they fail to provide this, fine. Take them to court. They are breathing their end of the agreement. If on the other hand this is not a promised piece of the agreement, then this is utterly ridiculous. For online games to be viable services, they need flexibility to decide how they want to deal with problems like lost virtual property.
As an intelligent consumer you might very well make your decision about what games you play based upon the level of security they are willing to offer. Second Life for instance states that any thing you create is yours. Other games make no such claim. If you like that sort of agreement, then shell out money to Second Life and not SWG or Everquest.
If there was a true breach of contract here, great, the company got what it deserved if it did not live up the services it said it would give. If on the other hand there was no such promise then this sort of decision is a blow the online games (at least in China).
So, my understanding of most of these games is that if you kill someone and take their stuff, well, that's frowned upon, but still "ok" because it is considered part of the game. But apparently, if someone just takes your stuff, that's a different manner. I understand that in one case, it's a bug and the other it's gameplay, but I wonder what courts will make of that distinction down the road when the line becomes more grey.
This is just ridiculous.
Aside from the victim's general idiocy, aside from the ominous implications of a government (even the Chinese government) interfering with the play of an online game, there's something to be said about the crux of the man's case, the fact that he worked for the items and required compensation at their loss.
It's a game.
He paid that much to play enough to amass those items? Good for him. But that's a dumb move, and no one should be protected for it. He put all his eggs in one basket, a basket that was, no less, in someone else's hands.
He got burned, but it was no one's fault but his own. The company's servers were vulnerable to intrusion? Fine. But that's no justification for compensating this guy for playing a game and losing, no matter how it came about.
Glog!
the lawsuit was not over the theft of virtual property.
it was over whether the game maker should give a player stuff back that he claims was stolen by a hacker.
the court decided the game maker should replace the persons stuff.
It had no bearing whatsoever on whether the theft was a crime, or the alleged 'hacking' of the game was a crime. It -did- have a bearing on whether the meatspace court had jurisdiction to dictate fair compensation inside of a virtual world.
whether the court can force a game company to administrate a video game according to its rulings is the important part here.
Essentially this means that virtual world 'policies' are analogous to official legislative 'law', and therefore the court has jurisdiction to determine their fairness and application.
One can already sue a private company over discriminatory policies, but having a court decide 'fairness' of any one equally-applicable policy is quite another step. (this game maker treats all customer complaints of this type the same, it is not discrimination)
For example, consider this:
Parent A grabs the last 'uber desireable toy' from a shelf in Toys R Us, and places it in her cart. She turns around for a moment, then turns back and 'uber desireable toy' is missing. She assumes a different parent, we'll say B, nabbed it when she wasn't looking. Breaking the 'rules' of the store by taking an item from her cart.
this lawsuit is equivalent to parent B suing Toys R Us to have another 'uber desireable toy' returned to her cart. despite the following: she never actually owned the toy, she has no idea -who- took it, she can't prove it was ever actually 'stolen' from her.
According the facts of this case as presented, the 'hacker' that 'stole' the victim's items is never named in the suit, named in court, or even had his existence confirmed.
This case has nothing to do with the legality of hacking the game, or stealing bits. It only has to do with the liability of the game maker and the jurisdiction of the courts.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"