Slashdot Mirror
Dutch Court Punishes Theft of Virtual Property
tsa writes "Last week, the Dutch court subjected two kids of ages 15 and 14 to 160 hours of unpaid work or 80 days in jail, because they stole virtual property from a 13-year-old boy. The boy was kicked and beaten and threatened with a knife while forced to log into Runescape and giving his assets to the two perpetrators. This ruling is the first of its kind for the Netherlands. Ars Technica has some more background information." In Japan, meanwhile, a woman has been arrested for "illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data" after (virtually) killing her (virtual) husband.
It's funny and sad...how imaginary pixels can run people's lives to do horrible things in a physical world.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
Surely the first case would have revolved around the attack by the two boys, using the knife, threats and all that. I mean, that's a pretty straightforward criminal act right there without going further to look at the proceeds of crime (data).
I know, read the article, read the article. It's early, and I'm skimming headlines.
Last week, the Dutch court subjected two kids of ages 15 and 14 to 160 hours of unpaid work or 80 days in jail, because they stole virtual property from a 13-year-old boy. The boy was kicked and beaten and threatened with a knife while forced to log into Runescape and giving his assets to the two perpetrators
Uh, so it was about virtual property and not about, uh, anything else?
They kicked/beat/threatened him with a kife and the most important crime was IP-theft. wtf. Did I mention 'wtf' ?
Requiem for the American Dream
When she virtually killed her virtual husband was it homicide of a virtual nature or was it virtually natural?
In other words, did she use a virtual weapon or was a weapon used virtually to kill her virtually virtual husband?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
This ruling is the first of its kind for the Netherlands
I doubt that. I'm sure there were other cases of teenagers being convicted for stealing something in the Netherlands. It was something of value, otherwise they wouldn't have wanted it so badly, and the victim was deprived of it. Obviously, there is the issue of beating and threatening with a knife, but even if that wasn't the case it wouldn't be any less of a theft than if they stole some physical object. Can someone tell me what is the complicated issue that tfa is talking about? Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
That explains the botnets, then!
sent anyone to jail for Assault and battery?
I find that..odd.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Erm... while I'm not too horribly offended over the theft of virtual (game) property, the fact that it was a matter of Aggravated Assault is a totally different matter.
Wait, the knife and beating happened in the real world, right?
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
Or virtual jail?
"Gimme loots or I PK u IRL lol"
160 hours of unpaid work
Surely it wouldn't have taken that long to actually get the items in-game?
The Japanese lady was actually charged for fraudulently accessing the guy's account, not for what she did after logging in.
The only thing sillier is the article itself. The story about the Japanese woman never actually says that she deleted her online "husband's" character, it repeatedly refers to the act as "killing" the avatar. Using the English language in that way should be punishable by a reading by William McGonagall.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
from T2ndFA:
The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification...
So even the real-life woman playing as the virtual woman is a man? My head is spinning.
You know that's a really good point. Does anyone know if this kind of thing has been tested in a US court yet? I'd very much like to know how this sort of reference (killing rather than deleting, stealing rather than moving/copying, etc) would stand up under litigation, or whether it would be able to be used at all. (or whether it would actually be encouraged)
If those punks had kicked, beaten and threatened that boy with a knife inside the virtual world of Runescape instead of of because of Runescape it would have been perfectly legal and they'd have gotten his stuff from his corpse and leveled up. Some punks have no common sense.
The second link is getting passed around as the Japanese woman "killing" her husband, which (rightly so) sounds ludicrous to most gamers. In reality, she logged into his account and deleted all of his characters and information, an act that is certainly worthy of some sort of punishment. Whether or not it needs to be brought to the attention of real world police is arguable, but quit making it sound like she's guilty of PvP.
No, used the ID of the real guy to whom she was digitally married.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
The summary sounds decidedly stupid. I assume that sentencing was for the punching, kicking, and knife threatening as well. Alas, the stupidity carries over to the fine article itself. Hopefully the verdict itself was saner. That said, money is not so different from virtual property, so that aspect makes perfect sense.
> stealing rather than moving/copying
Um... You are aware that moving and copying are very different things? "Moving" is essentially the definition of stealing, i.e. I move something out of your possession into mine. Copying is, however, not stealing because you still have the original (and therefore the only person 'harmed' is the copyright holder).
Remember, just because it's digital doesn't mean it can't be stolen.
No, the murderess (the woman) logged into the victim's (man, i.e. "his") account.
I wonder if the virtual divorce came about because there wasn't enough "manipulating of electronic data." Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
What made you think you had the right to kill that murloc, buddy?
You're coming downtown with me...
"Pirating" rather than "Infringing copyright" has been used in court for some time. I'm not really sure what you're asking.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
So, this is truly an illegal access (the character profile is password protected).
On the other hand, she got the password from her virtual ex, so she got the password legally.
If the game's policy forbids password sharing (most do), then her ex is also guilty (and none of them are criminally guilty, just broke the policy of the game).
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
The case of the tokyo woman involved her killing his maple story character. Anyone who has played maple story for a few minutes knows this was an act of kindness, not criminal.
But anyway, what are the chances we see the vice versa: Real murders get you virtual jail time. After all, turnaround is fair play. Making murderers play Maple Story to punish them would be fitting.
I'll give you my avatar when you take it from my cold dead hands.
I've come to trust the Dutch as a serious and civilized people, so I suspect that it more the kicking, beating, and menacing with a knife that got these bozos punished; not the 'theft of imaginary pixels'.
Let's break this down to it's simplest form: Geek gets beat up for his virtual lunch money.
Why's everyone so steamed? That's been happening since the dawn of the abacus.
I'm referring to the way these files exist on the servers involved. For example, some MMORPGs (I'm sorry I cant name any, I never know what NDA is active)never move or copy any object, because they exist somewhat plurally inside a database. When activated (an inventory is taken, an object is "worn" or "traded") the object is "constructed" in-world on the fly from it's database constituents. In this case, giving an object to someone else isn't actually doing anything except replacing a UID (something equivalent, close enough) in a field.
In this sort of a case it occurs to me that simply replacing the original UID is trivial enough that it might not technically be considered "stealing"--though if pulled off, most definitely "hacking" if it happens that an object is moved into the inventory of another person without the original "owners" consent.
I suspect this is a very important ethical issue and shouldn't be dismissed quickly, but instead studied carefully, even if the answer at first seems obvious.
From TFA: "On Sept. 6 last year"
And this in part establishes just why the new rules were instituted.
TFA merely wishes to publicize the precedent that this was tangible property stolen. Some (expletive not found) will try to twist this around to apply to copyright infringement cases now. I hope it played a little different in the Netherlands.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Why you dismally humourless wretch...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Thus spake Wikipedia -
Ooka Tadasuke (1677 - 1752) was a Japanese samurai in the service of the Tokugawa shogunate. During the reign of Tokugawa Yoshimune, as a magistrate (machi bugyo) of Edo, his roles included chief of police, judge and jury, and Yamada Magistrate (Yamada-bugyo) prior to his tenure as South Magistrate (Minami Machi-bugyo) of Edo. With the title Echizen no Kami (Governor of Echizen or Lord of the Echizen), he is often known as Ooka Echizen. He was highly respected as an incorruptible judge. In addition, he established the first fire brigade made up of commoners, and the Koishikawa Yojosho (a city hospital). Later, he advanced to the position of jisha bugyo, and subsequently became daimyo of the Nishi-Ohira Domain.
One of the most famous stories is called "The Case of the Stolen Smell" where he heard the case of a paranoid innkeeper who accused a poor student of literally stealing the fumes of his cooking by eating when the innkeeper was cooking to flavour his dull food. Although his colleagues advised Ooka to throw the case out as ridiculous, he decided to hear the case. The judge resolved the matter by ordering the student to pass the money he had in one hand to his other and ruling that the price of the smell of food is the sound of money.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
People who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.
so how did she murder his character by logging into his character? shouldn't it be forced-suicide instead of murder?
So: how about stealing bandwith? It's of the same reality as pixels, but mostly without bodily harm. Does this make leeching someones wireless as punishable? Does it make bandwith a 'good'? Yes, I'm from Holland, and I'm just curious.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
In short, yes.
In long, I'm pretty certain the news channels would air it, newspapers would have a tidbit on it and there would be a online article on it.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
However, this isn't about the parent company taking away assets though, it's about a bunch of asshole kids beating and threatening another kid to take something away from him. Seems to me that - regardless of *why* they did it, they deserve a harsher punishment than they got.
Let's see, two young adults beat up a little boy and held him up at knifepoint to steal from software, and they get community service. That's pathetic!
This is my sig.
That isn't theft, it's robbery. They battered him and forced him to perform an action. This is no different than forcing someone to operate an ATM.
"Trials defined a video game as an apparatus that displays games by manipulating the video display signal of the raster equipment: a television set, a monitor, etc. The previous computer games did not use a video display, so did not qualify as such in the courts."
Sorry folks. We've still got to wait until the middle of Hilary's second term in office to have 50 years of video games.
Is this the first time a Dutch court has punished teenagers fo violently attacking someone to steal something of value to them?
What did they do before, give them lollipops and medals of achievment?
What I don't get is what right the Japanese had to do ANYTHING to the girl. I mean,lets look at it logically for a sec,okay?
Dumbass A gives USERNAME AND PASSWORD for his character to girl B. Dumbass A then dumps girl B to get his mac on and DOESN'T BOTHER to change his account. Girl B gets pissed and uses the password and username he GAVE HER and that he DIDN'T CHANGE and gives him the online equivalent to a kick in the nuts by "killing" his character. And this is a problem because? Had he never heard about a "woman scorned"?
So is there ANYONE here who wouldn't have seen this even coming a mile away? And what kind of moron gives his passwords to his little online"wife" and then dumps her and doesn't change the password first? If the courts should do anything in that case it should be forcing Dumbass A to wear "I'm an idiot for giving out my username and password" on a t-shirt for a month of even bringing this stupidity to the cops. What saddens me is everytime I think I have seen the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to total stupidity along comes a brain trust like this that proves that if you keep digging you can always go under the barrel! What a dumbass!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Don't worry too much about the harshness of 4 weeks of unpaid labour. In the Netherlands this mainly involves leaning on a rake, smoking herbs with the rest of the municipal gardeners.
Hello Zippy :)
The only thing sillier is the article itself.
Try googling it and see what you come up with. The results are even sadder.
There are no sources in any .jp domain, and every other reference appears to be a rewrite of the AP news release. Compare http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5002721.ece for example.
It was NOT reported in the Japan Times and I've usually found that to be a decent news source. And yes, I tried searching there first.
Sigh. True journalism is dead.
"The boy was kicked and beaten and threatened with a knife."
Gee... maybe some of that is illegal? Regardless of what they stole?
He was beaten, kicked and threatened with a knife! That is what those guys were convicted for.
If just the virtual items had been stolen, possibly nothing would have come of it. But there was beating anf kicking and threatening with a knife. I would say that should be punishable, regardless of intent.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I've been very annoyed with the Dutch newspaper reports on this issue. All the headlines I've seen were talking about 'Virtual theft punished for the first time', which is, of course, nonsense. I'm glad /. did better.
Theft of 'virtual property' is nothing special. Lot's of things, like my bank balance, are only represented by bits and bytes these days. If you steal it, you're still a real life thief.
The theft, intimidation and violence were very real and very punishable. Any other decision would've been an outrage.
Killing someone in Quake (or whatever FPS is fashionable these days) is obviously virtual murder and not punishable outside the game.
X.
I imagine the court didn't look kindly on the mugging. What was stolen was largely irrelevant.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Man, that horde pally who ganked me last night while I was harmlessly farming for engineering schematics is going to pay now. I'm going to get Weinstein, Feinstein, and Bernstein on the case. They virtually killed me! Then he got his two friends to camp me while he "assaulted" my avatar (re: teabagging me).
I can see the High Court of Azeroth awarding me full custody of his Netherwing Mount, and 5,000 gold for my pain and suffering!
And they said zombies weren't real!