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Gamer Killed For Virtual Property
The BBC has the story of a young Chinese man who was slain over a virtual property dispute. His killer has been sentenced to life imprisonment. The Guardian Gamesblog has a deeper look at the situation with Terra Novan Ren Reynolds. From the article: "We're becoming a service property marketplace. Is this as good as a manufacturing economy? It doesn't have the moral solidity in a way. You can kind of see that shift in ethical terms. People would think that stealing an album in a shop is immoral, but stealing an mp3 isn't. The idea of property has become more intangible."
It was only a matter of time before a gsamer escalated and arguement to reality, and took it too far.
This guy had to have other issues besides just gaming, if he was willing to kill a man.
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>The idea of property has become more intangible.
er, no thanks.
this is about someone who killed someone else. the reason isn't too relevant and certainly doesn't demand redefining property.
The problem I have with this concept is that it doesn't have any firm basis, as far as I can tell. Manufacturing creates real value in the economy by mining raw materials or farming and providing for essential needs. Entertainment is completely tenuous and everyone can drop it as soon as money gets tight or as fashion dictates. It just seems that service economies could hit bigger highs but much more massive recessions, but I am not an economist and this is all just my impression of the whole thing.
How did a murder morph into a moral arguement on if digital "property" is as good as solid property? Dude's dead. Someone murdered him. That someone should get serious time or death for it.
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Neighbours shoot each other over fence posts , Wives kill husbands for working too much ,People kill each other over football games ,people kill themselves over exams ...
people some times take things far too seriously , so lets just hope people realise this and don't call for the banning of games due to the lunatic fringe who can't grasp reality
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I can only imagine the online chat for this...
OMG U stole my LEWTS!
No I didn't, you never gave me the full amount
I am going to PWN U
*BANG BANG*
It was a piece of virtual property, yes, but it was worth (and actually sold for) nearly $1000. By Chinese standards that's more than a family can save in a year.
The fact that it's just bits on a hard drive is irrelevant. Let's say that you wrote a novel on your laptop. Then let's say I copy it off your laptop (e.g., while you're in a meeting at work), put my name on it, and sell the rights to it for some $50,000. (So the monetary value is sorta in the same proportion to what you earn, as that virtual sword was for the Chinese guy.)
Wouldn't you think: "WTF? It was _mine_, not his! Who the fuck gives him the right to take and sell _my_ stuff?"
Now say you came to talk to me about it, and I basically told you "fuck off, sucks to be you, the money is mine now." Because that's what happened between those two people.
Now maybe you'd just gnash your teeth, decide to just hate me now and avoid the christmas rush, and control yourself enough to not commit manslaughter. But then realize that a lot of people don't have _that_ kind of self-control. People get into a homicidal rage for a lot less money every day.
And anyway, the fact remains, virtual or not, Person A took something owned by Person B, sold it, and pocketed the money. A lot of money. Very _real_ money. It wasn't over virtual property, it was over _real_ _money_. Period.
Now I can see how two-bit hack journalists would love to hammer on the "man killed over virtual sword in a game" idiocy. That's the kind of a crap sensationalist headline that sells subscriptions. Whereas "man killed over a shitload of real money" doesn't quite have the same edge.
But seeing the number of responses that treat it like some continuation of an in-game feud, completely ignoring the amount of _real_ _money_ involved, gets depressing at times.
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If the killer could have copied the virtual sword his friend "stole", he probably wouldn't have killed the guy. Having backups makes such thefts less damaging, so probably will reduce the violence associated with propery transfers. People get violent upon property loss, which is less necessary with virtual items. But of course no mass media corporation is going to use an event like this to evaluate our disporportionate value of property over human life. Even when the theft and murder are committed in Communist China.
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Cutting hair and painting houses are services, not objects. If you don't pay for a service, the barber or the painter are deprived of the time they could have been working for someone else.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Cost, price, and value are all separate things.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.