Dutch Court Punishes Theft of Virtual Property 276
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Punished for the Violence? (Score:5, 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.
Hmm... (Score:3, 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?
Theft is theft (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:I would like to take this opportunity (Score:3, 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.
Re:Not Punished for the Violence? (Score:5, 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.
Re:Not Punished for the Violence? (Score:5, Insightful)
They were also charged for the violence, conditional jail-time of 1 and 2 months. Source [www.nu.nl] for the dutchies.
Bad Article Summary (Score:4, 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.
Re:Not Punished for the Violence? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:It's funny and sad... (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.
Re:Not Punished for the Violence? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:wtf? (Score:3, 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.
Re:Theft is theft (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The Dutch ahve never (Score:3, Insightful)
imaginary pixels..not the beating and menacing? (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'.
Re:It's funny and sad... (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.
Re:It's funny and sad... (Score:3, 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".
Re:It's funny and sad... (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 [games.fok.nl]
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/56315/jongeren-veroordeeld-tot-werkstraffen-wegens-diefstal-virtuele-goederen.html [tweakers.net]
http://webwereld.nl/articles/53099/taakstraf-ge-ist-voor-digitale-diefstal.html [webwereld.nl]
Re:It's funny and sad... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.