When Is a Con Not a Con?

From the journals, here's some food for thought: Does a "crime" committed in an alternate world have any ramifications in the "real" world? Case in point is this article from the Gamers With Jobs site outlining the exploits of one Dentara Rask, a character in CCP's Eve Online massively multiplayer online world. According to the the article, Dentara Rask ran a Ponzi scheme within the game, amassing a large amount of on-line wealth (700 billion ISK), and then bragging about it. The question is posed: since a Ponzi scheme in real life is a punishable criminal offense, what about when it happens in a MMORPG? Assuming there are no rules within the game environment to prevent this, how would you go about punishing someone in the real world for something they did in an artificial one? And can they be punished?

Comments

Re:Cheating in video games

[Ours]

Damn right. Next thing they'll talk about puting in prison people who shoot each other in the game. Hey, murder is illegal isn't? Then why would a virtual scam be any different?

Kill them all!

[MrNaz]

A mage threw a fireball that was created in his hands from thin air. He is currently serving time on back to back offences against the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

In related news, a druid violated the law of conservation of mass by morphing into a 300lb bear and gryphon rider violated the laws of gravity by actually making some big fat retarded looking rat with no hair fly. These two individuals remain at large, and should be regarded as dangerous. If you see them please call the "I'm an idiot for applying the rules of reality to necessarily fictional games" hotline.

Down with in-game violators of the law!

Re:Not quite...

[Dun Malg]

HOWEVER, these items in online games have MASSIVE intrinisic value based on labor.

Marxist claptrap. The labor theory of value is a load of horseshit concocted by political philosophers with no appreciation for the reality of economics. A thing has no value beyond what someone is willing to pay for it. You could spend 400 hours making carefully formed and wrapped sewage popsicles, but they aren't worth $5000. Besides, the labor theory of value requires an outside authority to set the value of your labor, and in this case, CCP has already declared (via TOS) that your work is not exchangeable for money and therefore is worth nothing.