Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

use Perl Log In

Log In

[ Create a new account ]

Aristotle (5147)

Aristotle
  pagaltzis@gmx.de
http://plasmasturm.org/
Blah blah blah blah blah [technorati.com]

Journal of Aristotle (5147)

Thursday August 18, 2005
05:57 PM

Real imaginary theft

[ #26359 ]

The New Scientist reports:

Several players had their characters beaten and robbed of valuable virtual objects, which could have included the Earring of Wisdom or the Shield of Nightmare. The items were then fenced through a Japanese auction website, according to NCsoft, which makes Lineage II. The assailant was a character controlled by a software bot, rather than a human player, making it unbeatable.

Funny how it comes so soon after Bruce Schneier said that he maintains that

every form of theft and fraud in the real world will eventually be duplicated in cyberspace. Perhaps every method of stealing real money will eventually be used to steal imaginary money, too.

It’s interesting how this starts out with imaginary characters stealing imaginary objects – but crosses over to earning realworld cash. Of course, that’s always the goal – “follow the money” and so on.


List all Journal entries
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Real imaginary theft 4 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.

  • Some may think I'm crazy, but I agree with the police for arresting the guy. Sure, this is only a game and the things stolen had no "physical" presense. However, people worked to earn these things, they derived pleasure from them and they clearly have a monetary value as evidenced by the fact that the guy was able to sell them.

    What's intriguing to me, though, is the people who run these online worlds. While they work to stop this sort of stuff, they still have liability. Further, as more people immer

    • His arrest was justified indeed.

      You have interesting points about the role of the creators and administrators in the ecosystem. I hadn’t thought of that at all. Hm…

  • A great LeGuin quote on capitalism, from The Dispossessed [wikipedia.org]. The speaker is visiting a capitalist planet called "Urras".

    ...there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter in, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is 'superior' to the other, or trying to prove it. You cann

    • From a weblog I saw just days ago, via Justin Mason [taint.org]: John Rogers [blogspot.com] writes about hybrid cars [blogspot.com]:

      Kevin Drum [washingtonmonthly.com] recently quoted (and no, I’m way too stoned to track it down) a study which re-iterated that there’s no “real” advantage to buying a hybrid. It’s only just as convenient – so if you’re driving a hybrid, you’re doing it for some other reason than financial incentive.

      That made me think: what a perfect example of just how fucking useless as a society we

Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.