Virtual goods

[Farscape]

Dutch youths convicted of virtual theft06:55 AEST Wed Oct 22 2008
A Dutch court has convicted two youths of theft for stealing virtual items in a computer game and sentenced them to community service.

Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions about the legal status of "virtual goods."

The Leeuwarden District Court said the culprits, 15 and 14 years old, coerced a 13-year-old boy into transferring a "virtual amulet and a virtual mask" from the online adventure game RuneScape to their game accounts.

"These virtual goods are goods (under Dutch law), so this is theft," the court said Tuesday in a summary of its ruling.

Identities of the minors were not released.

The 15-year-old was sentenced to 200 hours service, and the 14-year-old to 160 hours.

 

[pavel.vesely]

Thank you for text. I have had seen links, but it did not work.

On the UO contra virtual theft side, when you open account, and several times later, like when upgrading accout, you aggree to ToC where you:
1. forfeit any rigths you have in respect of EA and/or UO,
2. agree that theft is part of game.

On the other side many countries have some laws which precede any private agreement/contracts and we customers cannot be stripped of some rigths.

 

[Nexus]

Thank you for text. I have had seen links, but it did not work.

On the UO contra virtual theft side, when you open account, and several times later, like when upgrading accout, you aggree to ToC where you:
1. forfeit any rigths you have in respect of EA and/or UO,
2. agree that theft is part of game.

On the other side many countries have some laws which precede any private agreement/contracts and we customers cannot be stripped of some rigths.

That's completely defendant on how the ToS is written and where you live..in recent months a Federal Court here in the US has ruled against a game publisher that their ToS wasn't legally binding because it constituted a Contract of Adhesion. Their ToS wasn't vastly different from UO's in context, and that case was about ownership of virtual goods.....

 

[BlissMarie]

That's very interesting to me. It must have been an old theft, because for a long time now (a year, maybe) Runescape hasn't allowed unbalanced trades.

In order to combat real world trading, Runescape made drastic changes to their game. They were having a terrible time with gold farmers and bots scripting resources. Those resources, in game gold from sale of the resources and highly valued items were being sold for real money.

Now they only allow low cost items, valued at only a few thousand gp, to be transferred at no cost to another character. There can only be a small difference in the amount of gold traded and the pre-established value of the item. They also fixed it to where you can't see valuable items that are dropped on the ground, so there is no drop trading.

The masks have a value of several million gold, so no masks have been traded recently without the person receiving the value of the item in the return trade window.

I am glad to see the courts acted on this though.

By the way, Runscape is made by Jagex and is in England.

 

[Farscape]

That's very interesting to me. It must have been an old theft, because for a long time now (a year, maybe) Runescape hasn't allowed unbalanced trades.

In order to combat real world trading, Runescape made drastic changes to their game. They were having a terrible time with gold farmers and bots scripting resources. Those resources, in game gold from sale of the resources and highly valued items were being sold for real money.

Now they only allow low cost items, valued at only a few thousand gp, to be transferred at no cost to another character. There can only be a small difference in the amount of gold traded and the pre-established value of the item. They also fixed it to where you can't see valuable items that are dropped on the ground, so there is no drop trading.

The masks have a value of several million gold, so no masks have been traded recently without the person receiving the value of the item in the return trade window.

I am glad to see the courts acted on this though.

By the way, Runscape is made by Jagex and is in England.

There are some cases still to go before the courts so i think we shall see more of this in the future