Stealing in Virtual Worlds is a Real Crime
January 20, 2009 by srfto
Here in the States there is a 11 year old boy named Timmy. Timmy plays the game Runescape Online and he is a very high level character in the game. Timmy received $140 dollars from Christmas given to him by his family and he went to buy high level weapons and armors in the game. After awhile another high level player saw what Timmy was wearing and was impressed with his items. The high level player as Timmy to go to a private area and ask him to join his guild which is a pretty famous guild in the game. As you can see you should know where this will lead to.
The high level player told Timmy the only way to join the guild is to sign up on some websites. Timmy checked it out and was really excited to join the guild so he went to some sites which the player gave him and it directed him to a site which looks exactly the same as the official Runescape site. This “official” Runescape site asked Timmy for account name and password. Right there and then he lost all his items that he paid for and spent a lot of his time to work for. Now here in the States we don’t track down these frauds and nobody really cares that Timmy lost his items that he spend real money and real time to attain those items. Although, it does seem morally wrong for a grown up to build a site and lead children to put in their personal information.
Now if this happens in Holland it will be a totally different story. Yahoo reports that a court in Holland has convicted two teenagers of stealing virtual items in RuneScape. The 15 and 14-year-old boys actually threatened a 13-year-old boy into a transferring his items into their accounts in RuneScape. The two older teens beat and kicked the 13-year-old until he agreed to transfer the items to them.
The court convicted both of them to a total of 360 hours of community service for theft. The court ruling said ” Under Dutch laws these virtual goods are goods, so this is considered a theft.”
Source (in Dutch)
http://www.nrcnext.nl/nieuws/multimedia/article2032761.ece/Virtuele_diefstal_voor_het_eerst_bestraft
Here is another example where a Dutch 17-year-old stole over $5,000 dollars worth of furniture sfrom Habbo Hotel where 6 million people from different countries hang out. They actually move other player’s furniture’s into their own Habbo Hotel pad. The way the kids scam the other players is by using a method called phishing. They would create websites that mimic the Habbo login, then the victims would login with their real account information. The 17-year-old then could put the victim’s furniture into his place within the game.
The Dutch court then again ruled this as theft because the victims paid real money for these virtual goods.
Source http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094764.stm
That case seem more like Timmy’s case, but Timmy couldn’t get any officials to help.
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just letting the court know that spending real money on virtual items is against the runescape law, and is dealt with a permanent ban of the player…so little timmy should be banned for life, not just have his items stolen…and if thats the case, i rather see someone else get his items then watch them go to waste on his banned account…ez
Well in all fairness, little Timmy is too young to be playing online games anyway. It’s called responsible parenting and it’s something little Timmy needed.
Rofl who the hell spends money on a shitty game like runescape…especially 140$
his name reminds me of a certain somone on south park