EVE General Discussion

The court ruled that:

Virtual items have value in virtual of the effort and time invested in obtaining them
The value in Virtual items is recognised by those that play the game (including the defendents who went to the trouble to take them)
The Virtual items were under the exclusive control of the player – who was relieved of this control
The court made reference to cases of electricity theft which is a similar intangible good but certainly has properties of power and control, and consequently can be stolen.

Really? I'm Dutch too and I missed that, have a linky?

Of course there is a difference in hacking someone's account and stealing his game stuff and stealing it/destroying it in the game within the game rules.


On another note and I cannot stress this enough, if EULA does not comply with local laws, law always 'wins'.

This case is significant because it changes the relationship between individuals and service providers in respect of digital objects. That is, RuneScape’s contract clearly states that the players of the game do not own the game or any of the digital objects within it, whether they control them or not. This has long been a contentious matter as there is a large trade in the sale of objects between players for hard currency, so called Real Money Trading (RMT).

This ruling means that there is a degree of control that someone can have over an object which is sufficient for that object to be stolen. The question that has puzzled both the industry and academics for many years is: if a digital object is capable of being stolen, does this mean that other rights accrue to a player? For example, irrespective of what the contract says, can a player:

sell an object?
claim rights if an object is deleted or changed by company?
claim compensation if a game is closed?

For the moment, this matter is restricted both to The Netherlands and to the specific matter of theft. However in China and South Korea there have been similar types of cases which have made it to the courts, in these judges have displayed a general trend to grant more rights to players than are stated in their contract and to see digital objects as being akin to physical property in certain important respects. The fact that a case in the EU has got to such a senior court and has ruled along the same lines is likely to carry some weight with other cases that may occur in the West.

For details of the Chinese, Korean and other cases see tVPN’s white paper on Virtual Objects and Public Policy which examines both cases and statute in detail.

None of that succeeds in refuting my point.

Here, I'll help you. Finish this sentence:

"Binding contracts aren't binding because..."

The "A" in EULA means "Agreement". If you click yes in the checkbox, then you have agreed to those terms. None of which are unusual enough to warrant a legal exception being made.

You don't know what you are talking about.

There is a reason law degrees take years of study to get, and the ignorance in your assumptions about these matters demonstrate concretely why that is. You are not understanding the important legal distinctions riddled all over this issue.

Clicking a box is not just clicking a box.
Signing a contract also does not actually legally bind you to everything written therein.
Your understanding and approach to these issues is so elementary as to be almost laughable.
You know so little, that you can't even comprehend how little it is that you actually understand.

dear boring people in the thread, please stop being boring



no. let's laugh at what happened, let's criticise him for his bad attitude, but let's not harass the dude

Nope. Its really not that simple at all. But I don't expect you to understand that.

Finish the sentence:

"A binding contract is not binding because..."

Who throws away money like that unless it isn't theirs?