"They immediately went to the alleged perpetrator's house and shot him dead.

No, of course they didn't."

Awwww...you had me so excited for that half second or so! :)

I used to play FFXI and I know that if you lose your rare items and gil, it will piss you off. I don't know if the gov't should recognize virtual theft in this matter, but something should be done. Dunno what, but I'd be pissed if I wasted like 100 + hours to get those items and such and then one day they are just gone.

MMO's are scarry. I tend to stay away from them...

Crybaby.

The pic should have another taru doing the /panic motion!

Hes got a point though. If the law isnt set in black and white when it comes to such incidents only more will arise by those who know its possible to get away with the "crime".

It's a pandora's box. The second you start acknowledging the implied value in MMO weapons, you're going to have the IRS knocking on your door to tax it, and MMO developers heading for higher ground.

Think about what it means to be running a game that people have legitimate investments in. If they ban you, now you have a legal claim against them because they've actually taken your valuable goods. They're open to lawsuits disputing the ban.

@generic_login: As soon as I read that I was like "Fahey wrote this."

Is an MP3 file an example of "virtual goods"?

Does it have a real monetary value?

time = money.

guess someone spent a fortune on that character and lost it all due to lack of security.

well, easy come, easy go!

Ummm, computer ettiquete 102: keep your password secret and something nobody could guess. This is his own fault, nothing more

This has to be 102 though, because as well all know 101 is always bring a rez =)

why would you give out an account name and password to anyone?
this guy is just plain stupid.

Well, nothing that was stolen was his property. Read the EULA. You own nothing of the MMO content, nothing.

I think the limited resources of law enforcement are better spent enforcing real money and real property instead of fictitious items that could be deleted at any time by the game's servers and moderators. Eventually, the servers for this game were going to be shut down and all the accounts closed, so it is not like he "owned" the products. If anything, he was just renting them from the game maker and had the right to use them. The second police start arresting people for stealing gil or killing players in-game, is the second I stop playing video games.

It is a crime and should be investigated. But you know what else should be investigated? MMOs charging money for things.

Anything that people will pay money for does indeed have a $ value. These items that were stolen qualify. Ridiculous? Maybe, but that doesn't make it untrue. That's where we are, and we aren't going back. Should the police have done something? That depends on what we as a culture value more. Justice for such crimes, or avoiding the injustice of taxing such items. I'd like to think that we can all see that leaving the law out of this is of greater benefit to more people. Not that our opinions count. The only reason we don't have laws yet is because politicians don't understand "virtual goods". All it takes is one go-getter in Washington to change all that and the next thing you know we'll all be claiming our virtual gold on our W-whatevers.

@GeckoUK: That's is a good point. I'm sure there's a legal difference, but I can't figure out what it is right now. When the RIAA comes after me, can I use this excuse?

@Sparx88: Actually, right now Final Fantasy 11 is being hit hard with advertising scripts (everyone should use Firefox and noscript!). Advertisers include scripts that are tailored to rip off passwords from FF11 from legitimate web resource sites.

It's kinda equivalent to say going to a 3rd party news site like Kotaku or Wired and they rip your password to your Xbox live account.

Technically shouldn't this bring up point that people who sell MMO equipment are illegitimate?

And that's why you never share your account info, folks.

They've considered taxing game items already, but thought better of it for now. Still, it's irrefutable that they have real world value because... you can go sell them for real world cash without even making a great effort to find a buyer. If they tax any part of it though, it should be those transactions. I know I've never bought or sold a game item, but as weak a move as I think it is, I can't deny the potential cash value of these items.

I can relate. My little brother deleted my Oblivion save game, I nearly went to the police about that!

I do think people should be able to launch a criminal investigation when someone steals an MMO account. This becomes especially true considering the government wants to / is already taxing ebay sellers.

The law has failed. The only answer now is vigilante justice.

Sure this guy got away with stealing, but if stealing virtual property is made a prosecutable crime it opens the door to all kinds of unpleasant possibilities.

It also could just be a matter of numbers. The RIAA sues people for having a ton of MP3s, and those are intangible.

I really don't know where to stand on this.

nothing against the dood, but he shoulda changed his password..
yeah i know the guy was his friend and stuff..
if you ever give out your password for any reason,
you should change it right after that person is done...

If the government was going to tax it (MMO transactions), they need to implement a secure trading site for MMO transactions. That way, they can track stolen goods easier as most buyers would demand the usage of a safe 3rd party / government to regulate these transactions. All buyers would demand it as they would be protected from losing items that need to be returned cause they were stolen. Sellers would use it as people can tip of about stolen goods and defending themselves in court would cost, well, a whole lot of money.

@Gouki4u:

I always agree with Vigilante justice.

"No, of course they didn't. Explaining that virtual goods have no real monetary value, they refused to do anything."

Bullshit. I take it that no one from the Blaine, Wisconsin police dept. have ever been in the market for high level WoW characters before.

You lose. No /Panic picture?.

Onto the topic. I don't understand how you can have zero common sense. His method is effective as Tide, which I have found this weekend; it is not very effective.

@GeckoUK: You bring up a really interesting point there. If a game item doesn't have monetary value, can a computer file really have any?

We have a prinny, Kurtis, a Prinny God and Laharl, do I see a pattern here?
By the way, this post is a bit out of topic...

I'm unable to fully describe my displeasure with the situation - not with the way the police handled it, either.

Account security is the owner's responsibility. I'm unsure how Luurs' friend gained access to his account, but most often it's because his username/password was stored in an unsecured location (which is dumb) or because Luurs chose to share his account info (which is also dumb). Maybe, MAYBE his friend keylogged his system, but again that's something he's responsible for.

I'm not without sympathy, but going to the police with this is kind of silly since not all of the MMO companies that actually hold ownership over the virtual property offer reimbursals, it's unlikely the police will do anything, either.

@ara: While that might be the case, it should still be a crime to access someone else's account without their permission. That would be like saying that any other account that you paid for, that you maintained, could be compromised without punishment. I'm betting that if you, let's say, swiped a superior's login at a place of business and started screwing around with their work or the company's data assets, there'd be some arresting involved.

The company owning the game should also, in good will, replace things that are stolen and destroyed in this manner, especially if someone goes through the effort to make a police report. It's not like they can't do a few minutes of research to see the guy isn't trying to scam them for free stuff, and click a few keystrokes to make it reappear.

virtual goods have no real value eh?

guess that means piracy is legal. guess that means no laws can exist to protect intellectual property.

guess that means patents have no legal value.

when it comes down to it though it's FFXI. If he's played that game for long enough to get that much value, then he now has an excuse to upgrade to WoW.

Blizzard is good about this stuff and would have probably replaced his character.

Back to the main issue though, no they should not tax this stuff. If they did, then it would be a safeguard for people who get their accounts stolen, but at the same time thats why you are smart about this stuff and avoid downloading mods, clicking on links/ads on non-official websites, and giving your passwords to your 'friends'.

What happened to this guy is he did something that wasn't "MMO-smart" and he paid the price for it.

OmGz sum1 haxx0red ma gilz!

I fear the day the government starts to tax video game items, Cause it means that the end is near. If they tax you for what you have, what happens to the companies that have the servers that contain all the items? what about the monsters that drop them? do we tax them too? If the government taxs video game property it is basically telling me that Dragons do exist and therefore are taxable(miricle on 34th street agurement).

It is never going happen, though this article did make me laugh.

@Automageddon: The guy with the Orange prinny is a Prinny Capitan. Prinny Gods are more gold-ish in colour.

What we need is a big-sis prinny, and a Gordon, Jennifer, Thursday, Etna, and Flonne (Maybe 2).

I guess you can say that I "virtualy care"..... My caring is kinda real, but not really real....

If they were to tax virtual goods and gold, then they should receive virtual game money. Then the government could build heavily armored armies, virtually. No sense in giving them real money when you don't really have any official means to make real money out of it yourself. It's like playing console rpgs and being taxed because you found gold in a chest, in-game. Sheesh.

@z357x, su.: Ok, then I'll turn to Big-Sis Prinny, I'll sacrifice my sexuality to the cause!

Um...does he know that if he contacts Square Enix, they'll take care of it?

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't virtual goods already taxed in a way? I mean if I go buy gold from IGE, that becomes income for them and they have to pay taxes on it right?

I understand the fear of owing Uncle Sam some cash every time you loot an epic but I think the real world application is you're taxing services.

IGE doesn't provide a good, they provide a service. You pay for their time grinding gold or items or levels. It's the same as buying and account from a private seller. You're buying a service from them, the service of playing up this character.

It's a little weird in that you're paying for something already done, and it does seem like the provider is selling a tangible thing. But I really think treating it like a service and not goods is the way we're going (have gone) in this case.

@Ampillion lives a life much like No More Heroes.: True, account violation is different case. This can be called social engineering and the charge should be hacking. Or something.

If he was stolen without giving his account name and password I would be sorry for him.

"hey dudes here´s my credit card number tee hee!"

doh.

@ara: Sorry, correction to that. Don't know where I got the impression that the account holder told the user/pswd to his friend. Time to take a nap it seems.

The police are correct in that the stolen items have no monetary value. The EULA for many online games state that all in-game entities, such as characters and items, are fully owned by the company. The user's is paying a monthly subscription to access the service. Legally, nothing was stolen, except Blaine's time invested in acquiring those items. The thing is, if it can be shown that Blaine willingly shared his account information with his friend, his account could be terminated as well, since that it also a violation of the ToS.

The virtual goods ultimately belong to Square Enix,

Virtual goods/currency has no LEGALLY recognised real world value, and is effectively controlled and distributed by Square.

So it comes down to Square Enix to police/settle 'virtual theft' or 'virtual crime' that occurs within FFXI, NOT the police or the governments. In effect Square IS the government of FFXI in this case, any external involvement by enforcement agencies could ONLY be done based on a breach of contract, the EULA (The Law Of The Land dum dum dum!!!), the formal contract between the subscriber and the government (Square Enix).

Thats my 2 pence.

If someone hacked blizzards servers and wiped everything clean, i'm sure blizzard would pursue legal charges. i think thats what he meant by the "ibm" analogy. for all we know, the guy used a keylogger to steal his roomates password. i dunno if paying for the goods is appropiate, but it should be considered "hacking" or something like that

I definitely don't want my virtual goods taxed. I've actually read some research papers about virtual world economies. I was shocked to find out that some virtual currency is worth more than some countries' real world currency when converted. Interesting site here. [swi.indiana.edu]

I think all wars should be waged online. Then again, that never happened with soccer, so I guess asking that of gaming would be unrealistic.

Plus, then Japan and Korea would rule the world. Let's face it.

This sucks, but as stated before, he doesn't own it, GM's wont help if he gave his pasword to someone or lost it. It still sux though, what he needs is a baseball bat and a mean streak.

I agree with Ara. It's not theft if none of it, in fact, belongs to you.

Virtual Items = Data
Data is worth money. If not, the time invested in the creation of data certainly is. I don't want to even guess how many data entry professionals and server administrators exist based on this concept.