Virtual Muggings in Lineage II

electro-donkey writes "A man has been arrested in Japan after on suspicion using a bot to beat up and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash, according to this report from NewScienist.com. "I regularly say that every form of theft and fraud in the real world will eventually be duplicated in cyberspace," says Bruce Schneier."

Re:Question 1

[Stanistani]

From the article: "By performing tasks within a game repetitively or very quickly, bots can easily outplay human-controlled characters, giving unscrupulous players an unfair advantage."
Automation is a force multiplier.

Is this a crime?

[Transcendor]

Well that's the question.
There are three crime scenarios one could apply to this:

1. theft
2. mugging
3. fraud

As far as I'm concerned, theft means to me taking someone's possesions without asking. Mugging is like theft, but instead of simply not asking you use or threathen to use violence against your victim or a object /subject of special value to the victim. Actually, using a bot to automatically slash RPG-Characters cannot be called voilence because it does neither include physical violence nor a form of psychical violence. (Yes, I know it's annoying, but it's only a game)
after all, there's fraud left. Fraud is to take advantage of somebody's missing or wrong information. After all- users of the game propably didn't expect someone to bot 'em up... but who's betraying who here? I think they could possibly blame the author of the game, for not telling them explicitely that they could get virtually stolen.

Get Guild Wars Instead

[ivanjs]

Guild Wars [geekronomicon.com] instances each area to each player (except towns and communities where you can't carry weapons anyway), making it impossible for cyber thugs to pull these ridiculous stunts.

Re:How is this illegal?

[superpulpsicle]

This is Japan. They have the lowest crime rate in the world and tolerate alot less than US would.

misleading headline, as usual.

[Bethor]

He was arrested for "hacking", not for mugging people in game.

Re:Real life crime will be more dramatic than onli

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2004-03- 19 [penny-arcade.com]

Re:Where the fault lies...

[Mr. Slippery]

No designer=anything goes morality-wise.

Not at all. There are many ethical systems that don't rely on supernaturalism: utilitarianism, Kantian rationalism, existentialism, and others.

Re:Japan ....tsk ....tsk

[pilkul]

Japan is not more advanced than the US as far as Internet usage goes. (You might be thinking of South Korea, which is.) What this event shows, rather, is how draconian Japan's police is when it comes to cyber-crimes. Last year they arrested the person who created Winny, a filesharing program --- an exceptional crackdown considering that he did not commit piracy himself.

No, it might very well be a matter for the law.

[WidescreenFreak]

This should not be a matter for the law to get involved in, plain and simple. At worst, the guy is breaking the game's TOS (in which case it's an issue for the GMs).

The guy sold the virtual stolen items for real-world money. That makes the whole thing no longer purely virtual as it had real-world ramifications. That means that the real-world cash was earned by taking something without authorization from someone else, virtual or not.

If he simply took the item and left it with his character, I would agree with you 100%. However, he did not do that. He brought his virtual theft into the real world by getting real money. I don't see how real laws are not applicable in some way. It's now up to the Japanese court system to determine how/if real world laws can be applied.

Re:Where the fault lies...

[utopianfiat]

What if he was just a really good player doing the exact same thing? Then he wouldn't get arrested.
Let's separate the good from the bad here:
OKAY THINGS TO DO -
a) Steal people's virtual shit
b) Sell people's virtual shit at auction, regardless of how it is obtained (stolen, found, won)

NOT OKAY THINGS TO DO -
a) use a bot

So the only REAL offense made here was using a bot, which should theoretically only result in a termination of EULA and revoking license. There's no *fraud* here, just a guy who exploited the system.
It's not like these are counterfeit items...

Re:Where the fault lies...

[Adammil2000]

"Just because some people like it enough ( MMORPG nerds ) to pay for it doesnt make it have a real actual value." The fact that someone is willing to pay for it means it *does* have actual real value. That's almost the only useful meaning of "value", that someone is willing to buy something. Heck, I think people paying hundreds of dollars to sit in a certain seat for a sporting event is dumb, but other people pay big money for it, thus it has real value. They don't even get to take the seat with them, but they pay more than the seat costs. However, I see two problems: 1. Someone broke the rules of the game using a bot (I assume their EULA says you can't do this or otherwise he didn't cheat and this is moot.) 2. The people who got robbed act like they either didn't want or didn't know they could be killed and looted. Sounds like they need these folks need a click-through agreement screen at logon that tells them they can get killed and looted, or choose not to play. Someone getting arrested over this is an eye-opener to me. How this is actually a crime, unless it is simply a EULA violation enforceable by law, is beyond me. What if they guy didn't use a bot, would it still be considered a crime?

Re:Since it's a virtual crime...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Ehh, the people who do this kind of thing might very well have multiple machines and accounts (multi-boxing), with which they can power level whatever types of characters they need. And they study the minimax discussions so they can whip up that wizard who can slaughter a tank, and only a tank, in one shot, which may only be useful in, say, PvP invasion to knock people out of a valuable camp spot.

Hence, throwing their level 50 or whatever it is on Lineage II into a virtual "jail", or even banning that account, is, pardon the expression, virtually meaningless since they can powerlevel up another replacement in a few days.

Normal mortals will whine at the loss of such a high level character, but to them it's a minor irritant and just part of the cost of doing business.

Re:Where the fault lies...

[Salus Victus]

The article never says NCSoft called the cops. You're assuming. I suspect the "victim" had friends, and he's the one who's pulling the strings in law enforcement. NCSoft just coughed up the requested information.

Also, you don't know the game, so I'll inform you: Lineage II doesn't require you to buy anything (except a computer, internet connection, and a unique copy of the game). People can, and do, sell items/characters/accounts for real life money, but NCSoft strongly prohibits those activities (and deletes accounts when they catch you ... but it's awfully hard to catch someone).

They also do use bot-detectors, as described in the article, but it's very hard to distinguish between someone killing monster after monster after monster, hour after hour, and a bot doing it. Anything the detector can be programmed to look for, the bot can be programmed to avoid (like adding in random pauses, or sending random tells, or calling "afk" a stopping for a few seconds).