Hacker Trial: Virtual Theft

Touching on auction controversy, the Black Hat computer security conference hosted a Hacker Court:

this year they've decided to put a virtual-economic spin on the facts of the imaginary case: The defendant stands accused of hacking into a fellow MMORPG player's game account and transfering to his own the legendary "Staff of Viagra," a rare game item worth $5000 on the eBay market.

From Julian Dibbells' Play Money.

Edward Castronova testified to the value of items in a virtual economy. To read his web site, it seems he came out on the winning side - there was judged to be a real world economic impact to the hijacking of virtual goods.

Comments

[jane]

it's also fascinating to see Julian's numbers on the UO goods market. in his sidebar he writes that he'll be dutifully reporting income from sales of imaginary goods to the IRS next April. i'd like to see the auditor's face as he tries to figure that one out!

Julian, we'll miss you when you go back to South Bend!

[loneblogger]

I wrote a short piece on this issue. It's been bugging me for far too long. Virtual crime meets real world punishment, and yet the gaming companies still won't let players sell items on eBay.

Grrr.

[Volume 3 Xanos]

What would happen if the defendant had stolen the item in game instead, presumably successfully. In the video game world a thief is a (well, maybe not noble) profession, but the result would have been the same - Someone has an item that belongs to someone else. In game (s)he may get away with it, but there could well be incriminating data stored in our world on the virtual perpetrator.

Now, I'm not saying the scenarios aren't different; it's just interesting to see that the same result can happen in two ways and one will get the person punished (outside the game) and the other I imagine wouldn't.

For those responding to this I do recognise the difference between "player" and "character" and the different set of rules each lives by.

[Rogue PickPocket]

I think the real distinction that people miss is the one between game and life. So a hacker stole you staff in the "unlawful" way. Deal with it. IT'S JUST A GAME. And if the item is so rare. Find who's using it and take it back.

[kuwang]

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