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.
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 immerse themselves in online worlds, those who run them take on roles more akin to governments. They need to manage the economies, police "illegal" activity, promote legal immigration, discourage illegal immigration and many other things.
Going even further, they must function as benevolent gods. Make an admin mad? She can delete you. She can wipe out anything you own, reduce you to poverty, ruin your health, etc. As virtual worlds become more realistic, I wonder how virtual society is going to evolve? It should be interesting.
Re:
Aristotle on 2005-08-19T01:46:39
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…
...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 cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person -- yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box -- Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrappings of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and, what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others. I have been in Hell at last.
Re:
Aristotle on 2005-08-19T09:39:50
From a weblog I saw just days ago, via Justin Mason: John Rogers writes about hybrid cars:
Kevin Drum 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’ve become. We can’t even bring ourselves to do the right thing when it’s only JUST as convenient as doing the wrong thing. And that’s not even considered odd. Even sadder.
Of course, Le Guin’s quotation reaches further than this. And she speaks painful truth. I find consolation only in the fact that mankind is not nearly thoroughly corroded yet. The degree to which corrosion has progressed in Western society is alarming anyway, though.
I haven’t read any of her books; maybe I should look into them.
If you’re looking for a sci-fi author with socially critical stories and you haven’t checked him out, have a look at John Brunner. His stories are near-future fiction written decades ago, so reality has overtaken or avoided his extrapolations at point, but they’re far from obsolete. (Like Heinlein’s works, in a way.)
