You deleted my what!

In a digital twist on the idea of a ex-lover cutting up one’s clothes before leaving, a story is doing the rounds that suggests that a woman “deleted” her ex-lover’s Lineage items, weapons and clothes. According to the stories she has been arrested for unauthorised access to the account and has admitted the crime.

I don’t know what the connection is but the last story about virtual crime that I remember also involved the Toyama prefectural police dept.

Quick though: It makes ATITDs Test of Marriage seem all the more interesting.

Comments

[Dmitri Williams]

1.

Legal thought: She capriciously destroyed valuable property and should be prosecuted for it. As better minds than me have noted, "Play Money" is for real. If you can tax it, you can sue over it, right?

Snarky thought: She could have cut off something worse.

[F. Randall Farmer]

2.

Dmitri Williams>"Play Money" is for real. If you can tax it, you can sue over it, right?

:: sigh ::

No principality on this planet is currently taxing virutual items or virtual currency.

If the story is true, the woman is guilty of "unauthorised access", if her local government has laws against such.

Lets not confuse breaking and entering with destruction of property.

[Peter Edelmann]

3.

Original source for story on Mainichi at
http://www12.mainichi.co.jp/news/mdn/search-news/921947/Fukushima20lineage-0-1.html

[ren]

4.

Dmitri > Legal thought: She capriciously destroyed valuable property and should be prosecuted for it. As better minds than me have noted, "Play Money" is for real. If you can tax it, you can sue over it, right?

This time it really is welcome to TN. I don’t think that Japan has recognised virtual stuff as property (yet!!!). If it occurred in Korea it would be a different matter. But for now most authorities have to rely on good ‘old’ hacking laws.

Peter > Original source
Thx, I was trying to track down source for it.

[greglas]

5.

Ren> I don’t know what the connection is...

Someone put out an APB on Hiroshi Yamaguchi so we can clear this up.

Randy> Lets not confuse breaking and entering with destruction of property.

It already is confused -- see Hiroshi's comment on the previous post about this. We're talking about computer trespass here, and trespass, at least at English common law, was an action for *damages* resulting from the invasion of property.

In the U.S., the CFAA (the federal trespass law) has a damage requirement, and the common law of cybertrespass has a damage requirement (at least in California). I've talked with cyberlaw scholars in China, and they seem to agree that a showing of damage should be central to a claim of computer trespass. Like Hiroshi said, I don't think that the police in Japan would pay attention to this kind of thing if they didn't think there were damages.

Of course, whether there actually *were* damages is a separate issue.

[Jeff Cole]

6.

Greg: Of course, whether there actually *were* damages is a separate issue.

Per our standing difference, I suggest the issue (not separate) is what is the proper measure of damages. =P

Jeff

[greglas]

7.

Okay -- I'm actually fine with that formulation. ;-)

[magicback]

8.

I think that if the lawyers can demonstrate the lady did X to cause Y harm/damage of Z then a $ value can place on Z.

I don't think this case advanced virtual property as commonly accepted legal tender of value (I shouldn't be using law terms as IANAL). Plainly stated: I think this case only points to the fact that a value can be placed on virtual property to assess damages.

[Shane aka "Ptenkhet"]

9.

In Telling 1 of ATITD, one marriage did break up in a spectacular fashion.

The two people in question had played together in a different MMORPG previously. The woman, Kayla, developed a crush on the man, GarrettH, who did not reciprocate.

So when GarrettH moved to ATITD, Kayla followed, changed her name, and pretended she didn't know GarrettH. She got close to him and eventually they got married ingame.

In ATITD, being married means you can log on as the other person and have access to all their stuff. There is no divorce.

Their marriage seemed to be going well. GarrettH and Kayla built a huge vineyard with a maze and held wine-tasting parties. Then one day, GarrettH finds out who Kayla really is, and tells her he's not happy about being cyber-stalked.

Jilted, Kayla takes revenge on GarrettH. She logs in as him, uses all his travel time, and strands him in South Egypt. The next time he logs in he has to run for several hours to get home, after which she logs in and strands him again.

There is a substance in ATITD called a Serpent Cocktail. Drinking it gets you 24 hours of travel time, but you have to take an antidote every so often, or your character dies. The more cocktails you drink, the shorter the interval you have to drink the antidote gets, eventually requiring you to drink every day. Several people died last telling because they forgot to take their antidote.

Kayla would drink a serpent cocktail as GarrettH every day. After he found out, he did the same thing to her. Kayla did publically admit to doing this.

What this episode really showed was the impotence of the demipharaoh system. Players elected DP were given the power to ban 7 players from the game, presumably griefers. However, the way people got elected DP was by promising not to ban anybody. So even though Kayla publically admitted poisoning her husband, no DP would ban her.