Slashdot Mirror
Virtual Muggings in Lineage II
electro-donkey writes "A man has been arrested in Japan after on suspicion using a bot to beat up and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash, according to this report from NewScienist.com.
"I regularly say that every form of theft and fraud in the real world will eventually be duplicated in cyberspace," says Bruce Schneier."
From the article: "By performing tasks within a game repetitively or very quickly, bots can easily outplay human-controlled characters, giving unscrupulous players an unfair advantage."
Automation is a force multiplier.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Japan is not more advanced than the US as far as Internet usage goes. (You might be thinking of South Korea, which is.) What this event shows, rather, is how draconian Japan's police is when it comes to cyber-crimes. Last year they arrested the person who created Winny, a filesharing program --- an exceptional crackdown considering that he did not commit piracy himself.
This should not be a matter for the law to get involved in, plain and simple. At worst, the guy is breaking the game's TOS (in which case it's an issue for the GMs).
The guy sold the virtual stolen items for real-world money. That makes the whole thing no longer purely virtual as it had real-world ramifications. That means that the real-world cash was earned by taking something without authorization from someone else, virtual or not.
If he simply took the item and left it with his character, I would agree with you 100%. However, he did not do that. He brought his virtual theft into the real world by getting real money. I don't see how real laws are not applicable in some way. It's now up to the Japanese court system to determine how/if real world laws can be applied.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Ehh, the people who do this kind of thing might very well have multiple machines and accounts (multi-boxing), with which they can power level whatever types of characters they need. And they study the minimax discussions so they can whip up that wizard who can slaughter a tank, and only a tank, in one shot, which may only be useful in, say, PvP invasion to knock people out of a valuable camp spot.
Hence, throwing their level 50 or whatever it is on Lineage II into a virtual "jail", or even banning that account, is, pardon the expression, virtually meaningless since they can powerlevel up another replacement in a few days.
Normal mortals will whine at the loss of such a high level character, but to them it's a minor irritant and just part of the cost of doing business.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.