The Glade 4.0

I listened to the whole thing as I was dressing the other day. I thought it interesting, in the sort of way I'd think it interesting listening to anyone who pursues an activity others find reprehensible. And just for the record, I don't find trading virtual currency reprehensible in the least.

Its also interesting reading about the hate generated by this activity. Do carry on.

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In time, this too shall pass.

The stolen property in question is the stolen credit card information or other account information. If you're making a profit off that, it's still the same as stolen property even if Blizzard ultimately owns all of it, because you're still not entitled to the use of it. You don't own an apartment you rent either, but that doesn't mean someone else can sleep in your bed when you aren't home.

You also do "own" (for lack of a better term) the time spent on the account, and control over it. If you pay for an account, and abide by the terms of use, Blizzard has to let you log in and use it. If someone else does that, they're stealing your right to utilize that account.

If you, as a gold seller, can't determine if the gold you're selling comes from stolen accounts or not, you're traffiking in stolen property. Blizzard's policies do not in any way override real-world fraud with real money.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Interesting theory, DE. It requires a leap of faith that a lack of evidence equals evidence though.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Not exactly. What I mean is, you know that at least some of it has to come from account theft. Lenas pointed out that there's know way to really be sure what gold is and isn't from those sources so it would wreck the business model. If you'r selling gold (unless you farmed it all yourself I guess) you know you're selling some that must come from account theft, just not how much of it, as it's fungible.

Don't take what I'm saying too far; I'm not saying you're doing it in a way that would be reasonable to convict someone on. I mean you're doing the same thing from a moral standpoint.

That's why I used the strip club analogy. Going to the strip club may not be inherently bad, but don't kid yourself that you're not tolerating anything shady. Same with the club owner; you may run a legit business, but don't kid yourself that everyone working and coming in there is legit, especially if you look the other way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's no biggie, it's just funny to me, equating virtual to material in an argument.

I've no interest in paying real money for game gold. Never have. To me, it's just a game. The funny thing is, the guy in the interview, the folks that buy from him and those that hate him take it so seriously. They all have so much more in common with themselves than with me.

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In time, this too shall pass.

It would be funny to me too if it weren't intertwined with real credit card and identity theft.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not funny "ha-ha", it's funny in the sense that it's a foreign condition that's difficult for me to understand.

The "real credit card and identity theft" thing would need to be quantified before I'll make a connection between the two. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence but nothing that describes the real scope as far as I know.

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In time, this too shall pass.

The need for account authenticators indicates how common account theft is, and there's not a hell of a lot of reason for there to be so much account theft without real-world profit going on. People don't hack account at such rates to get a bunch of level 80s to play themselves.

Blizzard's official stance of gold selling

While I don't know that Blizzard publicly releases rates of account theft as possible trade secret, it certainly has become enough of a phenomenon for account security to become a prominent issue for it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Unauthorized account access and "real credit card and identity theft" are two different things.

One gets you access to my virtual property that can be restored with a press of a button - no real loss to me or Blizzard, and the other is a real world issue.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Almost without exception when an account is actually hacked, it's stripped of anything that is valuable.

You can't disassociate the two. Once you have accessed my account, you can see my account profile. YOu know my email address, my phone number, my billing info, etc..

And to say that having an account hacked is no loss to blizzard is crazy. They spend a considerable amount of time and money dealing with customers whose accounts have been hacked. Customer Service time, conducting investigations, etc... that is all time and money that could be spent supporting and improving the game in other ways, or even lowering costs to consumers.

The bottom line is, that having your virtual characters, items or currency stolen has real world costs associated with it to both the game provider, and the consumer.

Luckily, I don't have to. You have to prove an association.

Seriously though, hacking a game account vs credit card and identity theft are miles apart as far as risk is concerned. There's no reason to assume a connection unless there's evidence.

Is there any information necessary for identity theft available in your account profile that isn't available in the phone book? I'm thinking not.

And, there's no material loss, by definition.

Besides, I'm against account hacking, so don't take this as supporting that activity. I'm saying that trading in virtual currency isn't reprehensible. I see it as serving a need of the gaming community, even if it's not quite honorable. Pretty much in the same league as pawn shops. Sure, there's a possibility there is trade in stolen goods, but it's not a given.

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In time, this too shall pass.

By stealing that playtime, they've committed real-world credit card fraud. You used a real credit card to pay for the account that allowed you to create all that stuff on your account.

The fact that the stuff on the account itself ultimately belongs to Blizzard is irrelevant. The rights to access it are between you and Blizzard, and anyone else doing so is committing real world theft and fraud because you paid for the rights with real money.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Credit card information. Yes, a lot of the time it's blocked out, but I'm quite certain that people who can crack passwords can crack that too.

Again, it's not the trading in virtual currency that's reprehensible. In and of itself that's just an issue of quality of gameplay. It's the fact that it's connected to real-world crime. If you buy gold, don't try to kid yourself that you're not encouraging that sort of thing. You may not be just as guilty as the guy that actually hacks, but your hands aren't lily white either.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Um... that's a huge stretch. Like, miles and miles of stretching.
They can commit murder, too, but there's still the onus on you to show it's a real problem and not some few anecdotes. I've looked and can't find anything.

It's a crime, for sure. Unauthorized access laws are being broken. More than that... well, I've not seen any US prosecutions for accessing a game account. None. I'm not saying it hasn't been done, but in a cursory search I'm not seeing it.

And cracking hacking isn't really what's going on... it's more like social engineering and trojan apps, looks to me.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 6364&sid=1

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In time, this too shall pass.

How? You payed for the account. The time on it is yours. Gaining unauthorized access to it is fraud, or possibly theft of a service. It may not meet any statutory definition of it, but it still is, morally.



It's a big enough problem that Blizzard has devoted considerable resources to dealing with it. The fact that I can't cite a specific percentage of accounts that have been hacked doesn't mean it's "anecdotal."

Moreover, even if it is anecdotal, it's still a problem. You're just quibbling over the scope of the problem. Your murder example is silly; if there's only a few murders a year does that mean murder is somehow not a problem?



I'm not talking about the legal ramifications; I'm saying it's morally the same thing and trying to pretend it's a minor foible just ebcause it's a video game is giving douchewagons a pass.



I'm not quibbling over the definition of the method used to accomplish it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's so singularly opinionated though. It's wrong 'cause you think it's wrong, not because there was a significant crime committed or that there's evidence that something of such significance occurs. It's a minor foible and folks who specialize in investigating and prosecuting real crimes obviously have better things to do with their time as evidenced by the amount of effort to prevent it vs. the number of prosecutions for it.

It IS just a video game, and the admitted douchbaggery notwithstanding, it's not morally equivalent to anything other than exactly what it is - unauthorized access to a computer account on a video game system. You're the only one that gives you a free pass to promote it to a higher level of criminal behavior like "credit card fraud" just to satisfy your emotional needs for moral outrage. Other than for yourself and, of course, those few others who take it more seriously than it merits it's not a problem. That's obvious because trading in virtual currency is a huge business, were the majority as opinionated as yourself, it wouldn't be.

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In time, this too shall pass.

We're discussing whether or not people are being douchebags when they buy, sell, or are otherwise involved with the gold trade, so of course it's singluarly opinionated. Am I not allowed to consider people douchebags now?

I already said I'm not talking about actually prosecuting people, but in any case, your assessment of it as a "minor foible" lacks ll the evidence you've been demanding of me.



My emotional need for moral outrage? The only moral outrage I see going on here is you getting your panties bunched up in your snatch because I dare connect something that's "hurr hurr only a video game" with the effects it actually does have in real life.

As for the last part, alcohol is a huge business. However, drunk driving is clearly a minor foible, and if the majority were as opinionated as me that it's wrong, alcohol wouldn't be such a big business.

You've got to be kidding me.

Buying gold may not be the same as actually stealing accounts and credit card information, but it definitely makes it more common. If it happened to you, you'd be changing your tune pretty damn fast.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Sure you are. I've even agreed with you, I've just been objecting to your exaggerations.

I've not seen any evidence there has ever been a prosecution for virtual currency trading. That tells me something.

I thought we agreed that you've not supplied the evidence? I've looked and not found any evidence either. None. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, of course, but it leads me to believe it's not prevalent. As to the "moral outrage", well, yeah, that's conjecture on my part. It's all I've been able to come up with to explain equating the gold trade with real world material loss.

See, that's what keeps this discussion going... using absolutes like "definitely". I'd agree with "possibly" but absolutes... well, that's something that requires evidence that I've not seen, so I shy away from them where possible.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I'm not exaggerating any more than you are trivializing. I'm making my own moral assessment. Stealing time on a video game is not "just a video game". It's stealing time that a person has paid real money for, and the fact that the time is time on a video game is really irrelevant.



It tells you that it's not against the law to trade virtual currency? No one has been arguing that it is. That doesn't establish that people trading online currency are not intertwined with dredit card fraud.



We agreed no such thing. I did supply evidence that the problem is serious enough that Blizzard has devoted significant efforts to deal with it. The only thing we've agreed is that there are no statistics. Evidence does not have to be statistics. Are you really trying to tell me that you cannot figure out that if a company is taking significant steps to prevent unauthorized use of its systems, that unauthorized use of its systems is a problem?

As for equating the gold trade with real material loss, no one is doing that. What's being pointed out is that some of the gold that's traded is supplied by real-world material loss.

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I've already shown you evidence. You're just not accepting it because its not in the form of a statistic. As for definitely, if you're arguing that a financial incentive to hack accounts does not make hacking accounts more common, you need to provide some evidence that account hackers lack normal human motivations, because you're indirectly making that claim.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

DE, I get it that you don't have a problem asserting the folks that trade virtual currency are guilty of theft, credit card fraud, illegal computer access and douchbaggery. I also get it that you aren't actually suggesting folks get prosecuted for it.

I feel those positions, except for the douchbaggery claim, are inconsistent. I sure the hell wouldn't suggest that someone committing a crime go without prosecution.

Yes, I need some material proof.

No, I know you think that, but it's not true. If my in-game items were stolen it'd be insignificant. I'd call customer service and report it, wait whatever amount of time it took, and *poof*, there it would be.

If someone got my credit card info, why would they go through the trouble of logging on to my WoW account and stripping my character of some virtual currency? They'd have my freaking credit card info, for crying out loud!

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In time, this too shall pass.

Evidently you only get 50% of it. I don't think that people who trade in virtual currency are guilty of credit card theft, fraud, or illegal computer access, necessarily. They might be guilty of it. They are, however, guilty of encouraging it.



I'm not entirely certain that what they (those that actually are involved in the theft end of things) are doing necessarily meets the statutory definition of the crime, or is possible to prosecute with a reasonable chance of conviction. That doesn't, in my mind, exempt them from moral castigation.



I've shown material evidence. Blizzard is taking significant, expensive steps to combat this. If that's not enough evidence for you, why not?



You wouldn't be the least bit upset that someone had gained access to your personal information, and wasted your time by doign something totally unauthorized?

I think that attitude would be rather uncommon.



Because then they could charge an assload of **** up on the credit card AND sell your online **** and make even more money.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm just seeing an emotional argument and innuendo DE. How many of the 12 million active WoW accounts have been hacked? If someone claims that currency traders aren't legitimate businesses because they encourage hacking, it would seem to me that more than an appeal to emotion to support the conclusion would be in order.

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In time, this too shall pass.

If you're seeing an emotional argument, that's your problem because I'm not making one, except insofar as my personal conclusions about the morality and social acceptability of account hacking and gold selling are concerned. It is hardly an emotional argument to point out that Blizzard has taken signficant steps, which in turn speaks to the severity of the problem of account hacking.



That information is not publicly available. Why you are insisting it must not be a signficant problem simply because Blizzard is witholding that information is beyond me. It seem you are insisting on information you know can't be provided (not because it doesn't exist, but because it's inaccessible) in order to claim that it must not be a serious problem.

You do understand that the fact that a third party won't release the information you want means that you are simply being obstinate by refusing to accept what information IS available? We are allowed to draw reasonable conclusions based on the information available.



I haven't appealed to emotion to support the conclusion. I've pointed out the fact that Blizzard considers it serious enough to take significant, expensive steps to del with it.

You don't really understand what appeal to emotion means, do you?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Sure I do, DE. It's when you are unable to point to any solid evidence to support the argument that's there is a significant issue, you agree that there isn't any criminal prosecution appropriate, yet continue with the ZOMG! Credit card haXX0rz!

I just don't believe scuttlebutt, DE. I need to see the black and white of the issue before I hunt for snipe. I don't think what Blizzard is doing is all that expensive, having implemented computer security for large environments before, and I think Blizzard does what it does to pacify it's customer base and frankly I would expect no less.

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In time, this too shall pass.