Dutch Teen Arrested for Virtual Property Theft

vuo writes "A story on the BBC website reports that Dutch police have arrested a teenager for robbery of virtual furniture worth roughly $5900. The crime took place in the virtual world/social network Habbo Hotel, a website run by Sulake Corporation. Sulake has 80 million registered users of its sites in 31 countries. ' Habbo users can create their own characters, decorate their own rooms and play a number of games, paying with Habbo Credits, which they have to buy with real cash. "It is a theft because the furniture is paid for with real money. But the only way to be a thief in Habbo is to get people's usernames and passwords and then log in and take the furniture. We got involved because of an increasing number of sites which are pretending to be Habbo. People might then try and log in and get their details stolen."'"

Comments

Black-Market Virtual Goods...

[Fireflymantis]

I wonder how much a stolen virtual chair is worth on the virtual black-market?

But really... I got to wonder what is exactly is the point of this 'theft' from the point of view of the guy who did it. Is there really money in trying to somehow re-sell any of this, or was it just for laughs?

What of Photoshop?

[Cathoderoytube]

You don't hear about anybody getting arrested for downloading copies of Photoshop anymore these days. Thankfully I can still download whatever illegal software I want and not get caught, but if I pinch a copy of a digital couch that can't actually be used for anything other than an avatar to sit on I'm looking at hard time.

Funny how life works.

Re:What of Photoshop?

[sdhankin]

When you download a copy of Photoshop, it's a copy. The site you download it from still has it.

These guys didn't make a copy - they took the original. They now have it. The original owner does not.

Phishing and fraud are irrelevant. I you phish or otherwise fraudulently obtain someone's bank account number and PIN, and subsequently empty their account of their "virtual money" (it's all just bits, right?) you have stolen from them. It is theft, pure and simple.

I really doubt the bank would "just restore the backups" in that case.

Re:What of Photoshop?

[JesseMcDonald]

These guys didn't make a copy - they took the original. They now have it. The original owner does not.

These guys didn't "take" anything: they fraudulently misrepresented themselves as someone else in order to gain access to a server. That's the only part they're actually guilty of, although they would, of course, be liable for any costs resulting from this fraud.

Phishing and fraud are irrelevant. I[f] you phish or otherwise fraudulently obtain someone's bank account number and PIN, and subsequently empty their account of their "virtual money" (it's all just bits, right?) you have stolen from them. It is theft, pure and simple.

No, it's still fraud, and the victim of the fraud is the bank. (If you look carefully you'll find that deposits, unlike the contents of a safety-deposit box, belong to the bank until they are withdrawn, not the depositor.) How the bank's misfortune at being defrauded affects the depositor depends entirely on the account agreement in place.

Argh, it's intangible!

[Joe the Lesser]

The Habbo admins/GMs/whatever can recreate the furniture for free! (I should hope so) So nothing is lost!

If there's an issue with people hacking the game, deal with it in terms of hacking, not 'theft'.

Re:Argh, it's intangible!

[4D6963]

The Habbo admins/GMs/whatever can recreate the furniture for free!

Isn't it a bit like saying "The US Mint can print as many bills as they like!" ?

Re:Argh, it's intangible!

[mrchaotica]

No, because they can also delete the stolen goods.

Oh yeah, and also it's a damn game, not real life!

Re:Argh, it's intangible!

[ColdSam]

You're ignoring the time it takes the admin to verify that data theft occurred and to recreate that object. That time is also a limited resource.

And you don't think the government couldn't also just digitally add another 10 billion dollars to the money supply if they chose to?

You get defrauded by a Nigerian scammer? No problem, just send an email to the treasury and ask them to wire the same amount of money back into your bank account. That would be a lot more efficient than trying to prosecute the scammers, wouldn't it?

Your analogy comprehension score: 3/10

Jurisdictional nightmare.

[Corpuscavernosa]

Does anyone else think this is all getting just a little bit silly?

Is someone going to be virtually fined or virtually imprisoned over this? It would be kinda cool to have your virtual character locked up in the clink and have to deal with virtual prison issues that plague real prisons. I wonder how virtual gang-prison-ass-rape would play out.

It will be really interesting to see how the laws develop in this arena. Who has jurisdiction to hear this matter? If the server is in Germany, the "theif" is in South Africa, and the "victim" is in Canada, what's the venue?

What laws are applied?

Re:Virtual jail

[oo7tushar]

I'd say yes if it was done by a virtual being but it wasn't. This was real world action in order to steal virtual property purchased with real world currency...so probably a violation of TOS and breaking of some rules by logging in as other people.

This is completely insane

[pclminion]

How the fuck can there be theft in a world where the game administrators can reinstitute the guy's property WITH THE PUSH OF A BUTTON? It's not like this kid has "deprived" anybody of anything that can't be instantly recreated. Hell, applying the word "create" is even too generous.

The lunatic who spent $5900 on "virtual furniture" needs to be committed to a small, padded cell until he can get a grip on reality. And if the game admins refuse to give the furniture back to him, toss them in jail for fraud. And charge the kid with cracking, that's all he did.

This isn't cute. It's fucking nuts, and it scares the crap out of me that people are losing their grip on reality and people might go to prison for it. Holy shit.

Re:This is completely insane

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck can there be theft in a world where the game administrators can reinstitute the guy's property WITH THE PUSH OF A BUTTON?

Because the determining factor of whether it's theft is not how easily or quickly the pilfered goods are replaced. The FDIC could replace my bank's funds WITH THE STROKE OF A PEN if it was robbed; that doesn't mean robbing it wouldn't be theft.

The lunatic who spent $5900 on "virtual furniture" needs to be committed to a small, padded cell until he can get a grip on reality

Right, because only crazy people spend money in ways you don't personally approve of. Having different values from you means one is losing their grip on reality.

Re:This is completely insane

[jjohnson]

Years of downloading MP3s has warped your moral definition of theft. It's not the practical "deprivation of use by the rightful owner" that makes it theft, it's the "taking without right" that makes it theft. Besides, while the admins *could* replace the stolen virtual furniture, they probably won't because they don't know how to deal with proving that someone's stuff got stolen, and avoiding opening another avenue for fraud of reporting fake theft.

I'll admit that the fact that it's virtual, and the deprivation of use is minimal if not non-existant, does tend to mitigate the crime. But at root it's theft.

Re:Virtual jail

[Froboz23]

If someone hacked into my bank account and stole $10,000, that could also be "fixed with a few database commands." It's just bits on a disk, but it also translates to $10,000 in the real world. So it's grand theft, and fraud. Throw the book at the guy.