EVE General Discussion

Not when it's legal, or irrelevant to the case.

Profiteering on someone else's intellectual property, especially when that act is prohibited by the contract you have with them, is legal now? And the judge bringing it up in the case doesn't make it relevant? We must live on different planets. Hi from Earth!!

As far as fraud, she is not guilty of it until she is found guilty of it. The ONLY entity that can bring fraud charges against her is the entity that was defrauded. So the only bearing her being a gold farmer would have would be if Blizzard, CCP or whoever brought criminal charges against her and she was found guilty in a court of law. Everyone is entitled to due process. Otherwise, it's a complete non-issue in this case because her fraud would be considered hearsay. Yes, she confessed to being a gold seller but without formal criminal charges (which only the mmo company could press) and a conviction, it means absolutely nothing.

This case is about the insurance company believing that she staging the theft. Any violation of EULA would be meaningless because there were no criminal charges and without criminal charges (and a conviction) you cannot assert that the assets were gained as a result of criminal activity.

Until someone steals it. FIAT currency: 1 Gold: 0.

Citation very much needed. The judge is obviously unqualified to rule on the legality, and (according to your article) the AAMI representative is not asserting that her profession breaks Australian or international law; it's a pretty safe bet her profession is not subject to criminal rulings at this time.

The relevant gaming companies could come after her for damages, sure, but a basic tenant of contract law everywhere is that party C cannot enforce the contract between parties A and B.



I'll sling harsh words at bad journalists for skewing public perception on a particular topic as much as I want to, thanks. The media has a horrible track record on anything remotely related to EULAs; they villainize hackers, hype corporate wins, and completely ignore consumer rights victories. The people ranting about NSA shenanigans don't seem to realize that corporations are treading the same line (and I say this as someone genuinely uninterested in the relevant politics). Journalists are either playing dumb or are dumb; probably the later.

At no point does any gold farmer transfer ownership of the intellectual property of the game company. The assets are still in the game. IP violation is when you take, for example, the art assets of EVE Online to use in your web browser based game. I am not a lawyer, so I have no idea whether gold farming could be compared to unlicensed trade in share or stock certificates, for example.

I am curious as to the relevance of the source of money to the legitimacy of the ownership of the gold bars. I hope the judge isn't conflating the concepts of "gold farming" with "resource extraction". St Barbara would surely be interested in ways to supplement their Sons of Gwalia property with gold farmed from MMOs.

um no,
my computer was stolen, email and game accounts hacked, all concurrent with the burglary, too convenient. the judge should instead slam her with a tax audit on top of insurance fraud.

http://theweek.com/article/index/238746/the-white-houses-nerd-delighting-death-star-petition-response

of course it can. just needs loads of.

Again, you're making assumptions about journalists that don't apply to all journalists. Until you're doing the job yourself, though, you don't have half a clue. I've been reading all the points of discussion here and they've all been regarding the content of the events that took place. You seem the only one quick to cast stones at a completely uninvolved party. I tend to find that people who hate journalists are the ones that have been exposed for doing something stupid by a journalistic investigation. Everyone else that has a problem with journalists is an uninformed idiot, with the exception of those few well enough informed to understand that just like you can't bunch all hackers into one type of person, likewise you can't bunch all journalists into one group of people.

For one, I wasn't trying to skew any perception. As you can see from this thread, this thread hasn't become an echo chamber of my idea, and people are thinking for themselves just fine. I can also tell, though, that you aren't very well exposed to Australian journalism. We have our bad eggs, sure. You can't have a human race without having a few bad eggs. But you seem to be an avid follower of this NSA stuff and an advocate for 'hackers', some of whom are indeed criminals, but some of whom have done great things for the population of the free world. Such as Julian Assange, who is as much a journalist as he is a hacker. He's also Australian.

As for contracts in Australia, I concede I used the wrong word. It is not a crime to breach a contract, but a contract is enforceable under Australian Civil Law. A breach of contract occurs when you enter into a contract and then you don't carry out your obligations under the contract. You can be sued if you breached a contract. Being found in breach of contract in court does go on your criminal record, which then becomes a consideration with other parties that you either have existing agreements with or wish to set up a new one, and these records are reviewed, especially when it comes to property rental

That's a really good point. As per the OP, regardless of the legality of their actions, I still applaud them.