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Dutch Court Punishes Theft of Virtual Property

Posted by timothy on from the pick-a-fight-your-first-day-with-the-toughest-avatar dept.

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.

50 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. It's funny and sad... by VeNoM0619 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:It's funny and sad... by Waste55 · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's funny and sad...how imaginary pixels can run people's lives to do horrible things in a physical world.

      Imaginary?! What are these tiny dots I keep starting at while I type?! Someone must have slipped something into my drink! ;)

    2. Re:It's funny and sad... by TeacherOfHeroes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Its not as if real money is any more tangible when its sitting in a bank account.

      Are things like wow gold really anything more than the electronic equivalent of gift certificates nowadays or banks that printed their own bank notes way back when? Surely the theft of either of those would be taken seriously - I don't see why this should be any different.

    3. Re:It's funny and sad... by Pikiwedia.net · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm in big trouble! I've commited murder in numerous games, used weapons of mass destruction in civilization.

    4. Re:It's funny and sad... by A+Pancake · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How did this get modded insightful?

      For the most part religious people are brought up to believe their specific religion.

      There is a rather large difference between being raised and indoctrinated to believe something all your life compared to taking a video game seriously.Even the most fanatic 14 year old still knows what he's playing is not real and deep down may know it doesn't matter.

      This has nothing to do with virtual property and everythign to do with some brat teen having a sense of entitlement that preceeds his understanding of consequences.

      The decision wasn't likely "Hey, this is so important to me personally that I need to use violence to achieve this goal" but more likely "Our whole group of friends plays Runescape and if we do this we can be the best and everyone will love us." The only thing virutal property or virtual worlds would have played into it is that the perps may have expected to get off easy if caught because no real property was stolen.

    5. Re:It's funny and sad... by vux984 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Its not as if real money is any more tangible when its sitting in a bank account.

      Good point.

      Are things like wow gold really anything more than the electronic equivalent of gift certificates nowadays or banks that printed their own bank notes way back when?

      Not "more". LESS.

      Surely the theft of either of those would be taken seriously - I don't see why this should be any different.

      Because you don't "own" your WoW account. Its not your "property" to start with. You are paying Blizzard for access to THEIR GAME. And according them, everything in your account is THEIRs.

      So if blizzard decides X is too powerful or valuable or whatever they can, at their option, simply remove them from the game, or substitute another item, or change the parameters of the item, etc, etc. And you can't say squat. They can also simply 'ban' you.

      The same simply isn't true of your bank account. Your bank can't just decide you aren't a customer, and close your account. Transfering your funds to another account, or perhaps even just "deleting" them.

      So while we EXPECT the contents of our bank account to be treated as real property. We don't really expect the contents of our WoW account to be held to the same legal standard. And I'm not sure we WANT to.

      If Blizz catches you cheating, and bans you, should you be allowed to sue them for "damages"?

    6. Re:It's funny and sad... by lysergic.acid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      so the kid was physically assaulted with a deadly weapon, but the court decided to charge the perpetrators for stealing the victim's Runescape items? is it just me or are the court's priorities just a little screwed up?

      i'd much rather lose some virtual money/items than get stabbed or beat up. christ, the company that runs Runescape can just restore the the items back to the kid who was robbed. heck, they could just create new items to give to him. it's not like it costs them anything to make those items.

    7. Re:It's funny and sad... by 32771 · · Score: 2, Funny

      The parent must have suggested we stick to a one dimensional arrangement of pixels where there is no such thing as an imaginary dimension. Just like you should only use good old fashioned real numbers, everything else is just sinister.

      --
      Je me souviens.
    8. Re:It's funny and sad... by TheoMurpse · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In that case, perhaps we don't make "theft" of online property a crime, but we allow people to sue in tort for it. Tort has always been the great, equitable equalizer throughout history. Why not permit a suit to be filed in this case, too?

      Be careful of slippery slope arguments here. I saw someone above say that treating WoW gold as real could lead to treating avatars as real people. Sure, it could conceivably lead to that result. However, consider this:

      Coveting your neighbor's wife is not illegal. However, murder is. Are we not worried that allowing the ninth commandment of the Christian Bible to be broken will lead to allowing the seventh commandment (prohibition on murder) to be broken. It's silly, but conceivable. In fact, I think it is equally conceivable compared with the theft-and-avatar-murder analogy of the person above.

      The only reason this presents any novel issue of law is the fact that this is done in a virtual world. We must determine what the nature of the virtual world is (i.e., whether actions in the virtual world count as "real" actions, where actions in the world take place in the real world, if they in fact take place at all, etc.).

      Who would have jurisdiction in a case where someone from China plays WoW (say, a server in the US) and kills a Russian player. Which court has jurisdiction? The US, Russia, or China? I would posit that, as the old legal principle of equitable justice says, we should go with what is fairest to all parties involved.

      In this case, we have a corporation that (likely) doesn't give a shit about what happened on their servers from a legal standpoint. Thus, we have a Chinese and a Russian player. Well, we (the US, and presumably most other countries) already have legal doctrines that determine where trials take place in international disputes.

      I'm perfectly happy with a "theft of WoW gold" offense being merely a tort, not a crime.

      If Blizz catches you cheating, and bans you, should you be allowed to sue them for "damages"?

      If the contract/license you enter into with Blizzard when setting up the account doesn't waive your right to sue them for such an act (i.e., through a "revocation of service" or "waiver of claims in tort" clause), then you ought to be able to sue them.

      Can you give me a good reason why you shouldn't be able to? Don't give me the hogwash about "it's their world." Without a license provision, estoppel should give you the right to sue them. The elements of estoppel are:

      1. Defendant induced an expectation on the part of the Plaintiff
      2. Plaintiff relied on the expectation
      3. Were the expectation false, the Plaintiff would be harmed

      It seems to me that in this case, absent a license/contract provision, this would be a textbook example of estoppel.

    9. Re:It's funny and sad... by lysergic.acid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      i think that shows how skewed our culture's value system is.

      it's considered worse for a teenage computer geek to hack into a business network our of curiosity, unintentionally impeding commerce for a few days (which the company analysts will claim has cost tends of millions of dollars in damages), than it is for someone to rape or murder another person. the legal punishment for non-malicious curiosity-motivated computer crimes are far worse than the sentences given to violent offenders.

      this seems completely unbalanced to me. do most people really think non-malicious computer crimes (i'm not talking about spamming, spreading viruses, DDoS, etc.) are worse than things like rape/murder/assault/etc? it also seems like the courts treat financial damages to the corporate sector far more severely than murder & rape, the victims of which are usually the poor. what do other think about the relative severity of these different types of crimes?

    10. Re:It's funny and sad... by vux984 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Can you give me a good reason why you shouldn't be able to? Don't give me the hogwash about "it's their world." Without a license provision, estoppel should give you the right to sue them. The elements of estoppel are:

            1. Defendant induced an expectation on the part of the Plaintiff
            2. Plaintiff relied on the expectation
            3. Were the expectation false, the Plaintiff would be harmed

      It seems to me that in this case, absent a license/contract provision, this would be a textbook example of estoppel.

      At what point does offering access to a game constitute 'inducing an expectation' that the game items you might acquire somehow belong to you? If you pay to join a soccer leage does that create the expectation that when someone passes you the ball that its yours to sell ebay?

      If you join a bridge club, and they deal you a hand, are the cards now yours? Can you sell them? What about selling them to another player at the table? Is that ok? If the host decides not to allow you to do that, is that estoppel? What if the host kicks you out of the club?

      Do minor leagues all over the country need to establish contracts stating that any equipment or items you make or obtain during the game still belong to the club?

      See... a lot of the issues with WoW aren't even 'virtual property issues'. WoW is no different from a physical game in a lot of respects. If I go play a scrabble tournament, the letter tiles I draw aren't mine to sell on the open market.

      Hell, there are even games out there that allow players to trade "game assets"... if I play monopoly I'm actually allowed within the rules to buy property from other players. But even in monopoly I can't just pull out a some US currency when I run out of monopoly money to pay the rent on my turn, nor can I head to Toy-R-Us to pick up a pack of extra monopoly money to fund my Boardwalk purchase.

      I'm not sure why you think WoW should even need a "contract" to enforce what should be an obvious "rule of the game".

    11. Re:It's funny and sad... by mysidia · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It seems to me that if someone has given you their username and password, then you implicitly are entrusted with the authority to login and do the things that person can do. Including things like routine maintenance; creation and deletion of avatars.

      Deleting someone's avatar when they don't want it to be done may be despicable, but if they gave the credentials, and failed to explicitly revoke the authorization, it seems the person's access was authorized...

      C++ programmers (MMORPG programmers) will now have to think twice before they "delete" that person object.

      Next thing we'll hear is about game operators being charged with a crime, due to deleting a character, or due to gold msysteriously disappearing from a player's inventory.

      Not to mention the crime of failing to report amounts paid/exchanged in barter with the player on a 1099, when a player obtains or trades item with shops in the game.

    12. Re:It's funny and sad... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, I didn't read the FA, but it sounds like this is probably more about the fact that these two assholes beat and robbed another boy. Even minus the theft, they'd still have been in trouble for assaulting someone, and virtual or not, they took that which did not belong to them.

      It's a bit of a stretch to say, well, it should be taxed because a couple of bullies got charged with stealing it. And the actual crime here occurred in meatspace, not in the virtual environment.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    13. Re:It's funny and sad... by TheoMurpse · · Score: 2, Interesting

      At what point does offering access to a game constitute 'inducing an expectation' that the game items you might acquire somehow belong to you? If you pay to join a soccer leage does that create the expectation that when someone passes you the ball that its yours to sell ebay?

      The typical legal standard for answering a question like that is "reasonability." I.e., would a reasonable person be induced?

      In your soccer case, a reasonable person would not be induced. In the WoW case, it may actually be true that a reasonable person would be induced. That is precisely the reason we have a jury of peers--to answer as to what is reasonable.

      The answers to the rest of your questions follow straight from this legal theory. I.e., would a reasonable person think a soccer ball kicked to them was theirs? Would a reasonable bridge player think the cards now belonged to them?

      I mean, shit, I didn't even change the legal doctrine at all! You're proposing questions that have been answered by my estoppel doctrine for hundreds of years. Did you think the law never addressed these issues before? My extension into WoW doesn't rely on any modification of the estoppel doctrine.

      As for your analogy to other games, it is possibly distinguishable on the same reasonability issue. I feel pretty safe saying that a reasonable person (as determined by a jury) would not think the tiles in Scrabble are theirs.

      The issue is, as always, Would a reasonable person think that gold won in WoW belongs to them?

    14. Re:It's funny and sad... by Vastad · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What do you mean no presence? And why would you focus on the virtual goods or currency itself? Why ignore the context?

      Would you tell thousands of players of MMOs that their sense of fair play is misguided because players that use gold farming services and items bought with "real" currency don't have a "presence" in the real world?

      What about how these gold farming services are provided? Does anyone actually know how its done? How do we know there isn't some sort of sweatshop set-up in some neighbourhood in Guangdong where the "farmers" toil at a desk with no worker's rights and no health plans of any sort and being paid a pitiful percentage of what's charged?

      real money can buy real things

      What does "real money" represent? It's a unit representation of our time and labour which we then exchange for goods and services. So just what do you think people going to gold farming services are buying? They are paying for time and labour of course! Just so they don't have to invest their own. How is the time and labour invested to get that certain mount or special weapon in an MMO "not real" in meatspace? Isn't it obvious why honest players are in uproar and how some brat teen doesn't want to work that hard?

      As VoidCrow says, if you have a huge surplus of virtual currency, you can sell it for real currency. I'd say that qualifies for presence beyond the game itself. If it didn't, gold farming services wouldn't be profitable. I don't understand why you were modded up at all.

    15. Re:It's funny and sad... by liledevil · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Message from the netherlands, and this has been in the news for a couple of days over here as well.
      The i aint going into whether or legal system is good, if our priorities are screwed up, whether our sentences are too high or too low, but just a little feedback from the dutch sources.
      please dont hold me for not using the proper words for everything, i will try to explain this as good as I can.
      The sentence the 2 boys got was for stealing property with violence.
      The motivation of the judge was that like with real-life property you had to go thru some kind of effort to obtain these items and being able to use them afterwards, therefor it is property and had some kind of value(ingame gold, status, emotional)
      His motivation for calling it theft was that the boy who got beaten and threatened wasnt able to use the "property" after this, saying his property wasnt within reach for him and therefor stolen.

      I hope this clearifies any questions about how the judgement was made.

      sources(in dutch):
      http://games.fok.nl/news.php?newsid=27831
      http://tweakers.net/nieuws/56315/jongeren-veroordeeld-tot-werkstraffen-wegens-diefstal-virtuele-goederen.html
      http://webwereld.nl/articles/53099/taakstraf-ge-ist-voor-digitale-diefstal.html

    16. Re:It's funny and sad... by Lars+T. · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Most countries have (often quite recently) added hacker paragraphs to their criminal law which make deletion, manipulation or even plain access to somebody else's (private) data against their will an offense. Even if he gave her the password, he didn't want her to access his account anymore. Yes, it was stupid not to change the password (just like it is stupid to break up with a girlfriend and tell her to simply leave the key to your apartment you gave her in the mail box) - but stupidity is not a crime nor is the stupidity of the victim a good defense.

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    17. Re:It's funny and sad... by JosKarith · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So... if you break up with someone and they use the house key you forgot you gave them the time that you needed them to water your plants to break in and cut the crotch out of all your clothes and pour bleach in all your plant pots you'd be fine with that. Cos' you know, you gave them that key - so you gave them implicit permission to leave a fresh steming turd under your pillow...
      The guy in this story forgot 1 basic rule - if you break up with someone, no matter how amicable it is, change _all_ your passwords. Amicable is all well and good but drunk lonely people do stupid things at 3am.

      --
      'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
    18. Re:It's funny and sad... by delt0r · · Score: 2, Informative

      So if i beat the crap out of you till you *give* me your PIN number, I then have permission to take the money?

      FTA, beatings were involved.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    19. Re:It's funny and sad... by svenveer · · Score: 2, Informative

      "virtual or not, they took that which did not belong to them" Which was exactly what the court considered. Under dutch jurisprudence a "good" is something that is "owned by" someone and that has a value to the person that owns it. This value is not necessary a monetary value as in the case of virtual objects. The fact that the virtual items are considered goods constitutes the crime of robbery (larceny aggravated by force).

  2. Not Punished for the Violence? by GaryPatterson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Not Punished for the Violence? by Artraze · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the point is that the theft counted as part of the offense. In other words, rather than being viewed as assault, it was viewed as a mugging.

    2. Re:Not Punished for the Violence? by AlXtreme · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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).

      They were also charged for the violence, conditional jail-time of 1 and 2 months. Source for the dutchies.

      --
      This sig is intentionally left blank
    3. Re:Not Punished for the Violence? by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 4, Funny

      It does seem odd. To make that fair the judge should have
      the bailiff beat the attackers with a night stick
      and then sentence them to a virtual jail.

    4. Re:Not Punished for the Violence? by Acapulco · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree totally. In the article, not *once* they mention if there would be charges or sentence for the violence. It's obviously bad enough that this kids stole something (vritual or not), but I would think that the important part was the violent one.

      Does anyone know how many kids are bullied in schools everywhere by someone, so they can get their epic ultra-leet items? and getting away with it?

      I have no idea about the latter, but it's sure as hell not anywhere near 0%. So stealing virtual items it's not really news, but doing it with so much violence.

      --
      Slashdot. Unreadable news to annoy nerds. - wonkey_monkey
    5. Re:Not Punished for the Violence? by anomnomnomymous · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The question was wether the virtual asset could be considered as a 'real' asset: And thus robbery could be charged.

      --
      When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
  3. Hmm... by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Hmm... by borizz · · Score: 4, Informative

      On the radio, they quoted the judge as saying that virtual property gives joy, you've worked to earn it and in this case, if one person has it another can't have it (well, the admins could easily clone it, but that's beside the point). So in essence, they said it's a lot like real tangible property.

    2. Re:Hmm... by borizz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Under this new Dutch ruling, I don't know. I hope they'll make an exception for when the game mechanics allow you to. In the Dutch case, the steal was not done by any programmed means for stealing, but just by putting a knife to someones body part and force them to use in-game give or drop. However, I'm not sure. We certainly have our share of I-don't-understand-the-internet-and-computers, Ted Stevens style judges.

  4. wtf? by easyTree · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
    1. Re:wtf? by mmalove · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm not sure whether the Dutch also charged the kids with assault, but I think the focus of the story, which has appeared in a couple other places on the net, is repeatedly that the judge made a point to allow the prosecution to push a theft charge for the virtual goods. I too am perplexed however that the bigger focus is on stealing the pixels and not beating the kid up and threatening him with a lethal weapon. But I guess it's the former that is newsworthy because it's setting a precident - there's nothing new about a judge claiming assault and battery is illegal.

      Keep in mind, there is still a huge difference between playing a game poorly and getting scammed/duped, vs someone using physical, out of game intervention to steal your virtual property. The former can be entirely within the ruleset of the game, such as in EVE, the latter would lead to clearly dangerous implications if considered legal. I really don't think this will skip to players being prosecuted for playing like a jerk, as long as it stays in game.

      --
      You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
    2. Re:wtf? by DerWulf · · Score: 2, Informative

      My knowledge about the justice system isn't great but at least I know that there is a difference between assault and robbery ... In germany you can get away with 6 month for assault but can expect a minimum sentence of 1 years for robbery.

      --

      ___
      No power in the 'verse can stop me
  5. Theft is theft by clarkkent09 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Theft is theft by LandDolphin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "How do you steal an item that doesn't really exist (a.k.a. virtual)?"

      So, if I take your Credit card and charge it up, I did not steal anything because the physical money never exsisted?

      Or how about MP3's? Do those have any value? There as virtual as anything in a game is. Just 1's and 0's like the items in a game and the money on your credit cards.

      --
      Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
    2. Re:Theft is theft by NoobixCube · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I know I'll be taking an unpopular stance on Slashdot in saying this, but I think it needs to be said (not to say I'm correct, but rather that it's another view point).

      I don't believe in imaginary property, but I do believe in virtual property. The distinction is, imaginary property is infinitely reproducible, like an mp3 file. When you can sell the infinitely reproducible, you have a license to print money. It probably would have much larger implications for the economy if all movies and music were suddenly digitally distributed. No physical media costs, no transport costs, no staff costs in shops. All of those people suddenly get cut out of the chain and have to find a new source of income. I'm not an economists, so I can't see the full effect of this ripple effect.

      On the other hand, in an online game, you use a currency, and the items you possess have value. An admin of a game could infinitely reproduce these items, but to the player they still have a quantifiable cost and amount of work that went into obtaining or producing it.

      This isn't a simple case of in-game theft; I think the lion's share of the verdict was more to do with the assault than the theft. The thing that bothers me most about this though isn't that it recognizes virtual property as real, but that it sets a very small precedent (I say small because the verdict wasn't entirely about the theft, but the assault) for national laws extending into online games. What next? Animal cruelty laws begin to extend to in-game creatures? People being charged with assault in the real world for attacking in a PvP area?

      For legal purposes, I think online games should be defined as a foreign nation. No actual property or currency crosses the border into your real country of residence, since it all exists in game, and the Rules of Conduct or Terms of Service or whatever the game wants to call them should contain some clear-cut "laws" for that "nation".

      --
      Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
  6. Re:bah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    in Soviet Russia virtual property steals you!

    That explains the botnets, then!

  7. I didn't know the Dutch had Ag Assault by LithiumX · · Score: 4, Funny

    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".
  8. Re:OK? by TinFoilMan · · Score: 2, Funny

    No, it was Mr. Mustard in the Kitchen with a pipe.

    --
    In my other life, I eat cats.
  9. What a treat... by Emb3rz · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Gimme loots or I PK u IRL lol"

  10. Digital crime? by psychicninja · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Japanese lady was actually charged for fraudulently accessing the guy's account, not for what she did after logging in.

  11. Re:I would like to take this opportunity by BPPG · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?
  12. RL: Where the women playing women are really men by acon1modm · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

  13. Kids these days by J.R.+Random · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  14. Bad Article Summary by MWoody · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  15. Re:OK? by whitehatlurker · · Score: 2, Funny

    No, it was Kernel Panic in the linked library with the named pipe! Gee.

    --
    .. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
  16. She logged on with this virtual ex's character by someone1234 · · Score: 2

    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
  17. As C Heston said... by elfin_spectre · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'll give you my avatar when you take it from my cold dead hands.

  18. Re:The Dutch ahve never by borizz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We have, but that's not news-worthy. The stealing virtual goods (regardless of how I feel about it) is the new part that is being reported.

  19. imaginary pixels..not the beating and menacing? by Simonetta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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'.

  20. This contradicts earlier precedent! by RevWaldo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!