How is GGG going to stop D2JSP and similar scum?

"

el_puno wrote:

i might simply be impossible to hunt down item shops for some arguments i delivered to you. wich by the way is an essence of a chat i had with a dear friend of mine who worked as a lawyer for years. whats your background? theft is a strong word if u can't proof it. but u hold it in your mouth like it's a given fact. its your point of view. nuthing more nuthing less.

i gave u some clear arguments(ok my english is not that sharp but i hope u get my points). u didnt answer them..
i know u 100% sure of your standpoint and u'll keep it. but that doesn't count anything in front of court.. proof is the thing that counts.. remember o.j. simpson?

No, I understand you, it's just irrelevant. Yes, it would be very difficult in court. That doesn't make it not illegal, it just makes it difficult in court.

And the legality has nothing to do with whether or not it's cheating.

"

el_puno wrote:

i btw support your vision of a legit game/gameplay.

Cool :)

"

Raycheetah wrote:

I've never done any online gaming (the missus and I only play D2 TCIP), so I had no idea RM prices got that high. Just curious, what is/are "08 Valks"? =0[.]o=

Personally, I'm dubious about his claim of $1000, since there are dupe methods in Diablo II and the supply should be too good for that, but maybe the dupers are holding themselves back to keep prices high; I wouldn't know and haven't looked into these things.

But a ".08 Valk" refers to the unique Valkyrie Wing Spired Helm from version 1.08 (IIRC, the original LoD version); the item still exists, but has very different statsas of 1.10.

The old Valk had pretty simple stats: 30% faster everything (IIRC, that was all it had). Cast rate, attack speed, hit recovery, run/walk, I think it might have even had block speed. Which doesn't sound like much, but it's incredible how much it frees up your other equipment slots to have so much of so many different important numbers taken care of in one slot. Thus, they are quite valuable, and the number of legitimate .08 Valks left on the Realms is... it must be very low, if there are any left.

Of course, dupes are available, apparently at exorbitant prices.

"

Raycheetah wrote:

"

dust7 wrote:

"

Raycheetah wrote:

Okay, actually, the murder dun surprise me (I can easily imagine some posters killing for a Beta key), but, 473 pounds? That's over US$500!

Nothing too special. I have seen certain D2 items go for 2k $. 08 Valks still go for about 1k $.

I've never done any online gaming (the missus and I only play D2 TCIP), so I had no idea RM prices got that high. Just curious, what is/are "08 Valks"? =0[.]o=

Patch 1.08 Valkyrie Wing. Cannot drop anymore since years.

"

if you don't agree with this statement, you should just go; you don't understand anything

Lol... I kind of stopped reading the rest of the post after that comment.

"

DragoonWraith wrote:

"

el_puno wrote:

i might simply be impossible to hunt down item shops for some arguments i delivered to you. wich by the way is an essence of a chat i had with a dear friend of mine who worked as a lawyer for years. whats your background? theft is a strong word if u can't proof it. but u hold it in your mouth like it's a given fact. its your point of view. nuthing more nuthing less.

i gave u some clear arguments(ok my english is not that sharp but i hope u get my points). u didnt answer them..
i know u 100% sure of your standpoint and u'll keep it. but that doesn't count anything in front of court.. proof is the thing that counts.. remember o.j. simpson?

No, I understand you, it's just irrelevant. Yes, it would be very difficult in court. That doesn't make it not illegal, it just makes it difficult in court.

And the legality has nothing to do with whether or not it's cheating.

cheating or not.. your question was: How is GGG going to stop D2JSP and similar scum?
answer: not via legal actions thats for sure. (but thats what u dreaming about)

hopefully by ingame architecture or clever programming/design to prevent bots and 3rd party programms. d2 is some years old now. ggg should have learned from the past. but in the end it comes down to the popularity of this game. if there are enough users we will have scamms all over the place. sad but true. just like in RL ppl are greedy and bad thats the reality.

btw i highly doubt that selling your (playing) time is indeed illegal.

"

el_puno wrote:

cheating or not.. your question was: How is GGG going to stop D2JSP and similar scum?
answer: not via legal actions thats for sure. (but thats what u dreaming about)

No, I know that; I mentioned it as a dream and some people have side-tracked the discussion that way. I don't expect that to happen.

"

el_puno wrote:

hopefully by ingame architecture or clever programming/design to prevent bots and 3rd party programms. d2 is some years old now. ggg should have learned from the past. but in the end it comes down to the popularity of this game. if there are enough users we will have scamms all over the place. sad but true. just like in RL ppl are greedy and bad thats the reality.

This is more what I was talking about: how can the game be set up to prevent this.

"

el_puno wrote:

btw i highly doubt that selling your (playing) time is indeed illegal.

Of course, a relatively small proportion of the FG out there was "earned" by spending time, since it was almost all gotten with bots or dupes, so there is that.

But more importantly, the "selling time" thing is a red herring and inaccurate.

If one were employing the cheaters on D2JSP to find you items, you could make that argument, but you aren't paying them for their time, you are paying them for what was found with that time. They have the item, and they are selling it to you. You could only make the case that you were hiring them to find it if they didn't have it, and they went and found it and you were paying them by the hour or whatever for however long it took them to get it.

As is, it's very clearly and obviously money for items. I strongly doubt that any court would be fooled by that obfuscation any more than they would be by hiding behind FG.


Anyway, getting back to this:

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

So does this mean The Company has waived certain property rights or what?

No, it has exercised them, by delineating exactly those who don't have those rights may behave. It still reserves those rights (in the form of being able to change its policies later).

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

But it does matter: the notions of sell and theft rely on what it means to be property and all that. That's largely where intellectual property donnybrooks spring from (especially nowadays with old assumptions about property being falsified).

OK, another assertion: courts have found that "virtual property" does, in fact, remain the property of the company that owns the game. Even games that allow you to buy items for real money are not actually transferring you any property.

The Chinese case that was quoted was the first time I'd heard of a case where a court ruled that the item belonged to the player. That's a Chinese court, though, and does not really impact this discussion since GGG is from New Zealand, and the servers and most of the players are in the US.

So if items are not the property of the players, but the property of the developers, then the players do not have the right to sell those items except how the developers allow them to (i.e. for other in-game items). To do so is to exercise a property right that belongs to them and not you.

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

Ok so it's entirely property rights and somehow The Company has lost or is unable to exercise their property rights regarding property because someone has done something without transferring rights from The Company to a third party?

You're not allowed to profit off of another person's property.

Consider if you rented something, a video or whatever. You do not own that video. You would not be allowed to make money by renting it out to yet more people, or make money by showing it in a theater and charging admission: you don't have either of those rights. The big FBI or Interpol warning at the beginning makes a point of reminding you that you don't have those rights (actually, you don't have the right to show it in a theater even if you buy the video yourself).

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

Well that doesn't really answer the question. Does The Company (TC) own all names, including copyright or trademark infringing ones, prior to character creation? Do they have to authorize, explicitly, what motivations I use in choosing a name? Is it wrong for me to accept $10 for naming a character or account dwdwdwdwdw, and is it ok to accept only friendship in exchange?

I'd say it's more a matter of them owning the character, and therefore that name as a part of the character. It's not that the own the text string you chose, so much as they own the name field that you put it into — hence them being able to say, rename your character if the name was deemed offensive.

Generally speaking, to my knowledge, why you do something doesn't matter. To go back to the movie example, you're not allowed to show the movie to a large audience, even if you charge them nothing; that right is retained by the studio. They can and have sued people for doing so, citing damages in the form of people who saw the movie without having to pay for it and now weren't going to pay for it. This line of arguing is... problematic (see the ridiculously trumped up charges that the MPAA/RIAA have tried to nail pirates with), but so far it's had some success in court, as far as I am aware.

Though actually, since I did some fact checking there: it seems copyright infringement law does not actually refer to "theft", so my definition of "theft" as exercising another's property rights is incorrect from a legal point of view. However, the use of "theft" in this case should be familiar to everyone, since the MPAA/RIAA use it quite a lot in their crusade against piracy.

Further note: I don't really support the MPAA/RIAA. Piracy is definitely both wrong and illegal, but the anti-piracy efforts by those organizations has actually been worse, in my opinion. They came up purely by way of example.

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

But if they have such a strong case, why does it matter that it's untested, and why such difficulty with damages? Uncertainty like that seems to suggest the case isn't as strong.

As previously discussed, the difficulty is in determining the value of the damages, not in showing the general principle of the thing. The general principle isn't worth paying lawyers over, though.

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

:((((((((((((((((((((((((

Well? I mean, come on, I do have other things to do. I did specifically stipulate that without looking things up, you have no good reason to believe me.

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

nah we're focused mostly on legality here right now :|

Red herring, as I've said. I've tried to meet you half way by responding, but really we're discussing something without a lot of evidence or expertise.

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

"

Didn't say I agreed with it; it was an aside.

ok. I still think it might have some ramifications re: what with them property nonsenses and all

I don't actually remember what this was about... I can't look back and check from the Edit Post dialog, either...

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

But damages which are very difficult to quantify can be problematic.
They might be:
a) so small as to be negligible, in which case what exactly is the problem?
b) not really damages -- the argument for them being so tenuous as to produce damages for almost anything
c) large, but difficult to calculate -- and thus possibly miscalculated (and potentially abused)
d) large, easy to calculate
e) some other option

I'm kinda using 'real damages' there to mean d, which is the real money case. An item in a world where you don't pay for items, though, doesn't seem to have much, if any value. It seems like it might fall into the other categories. And that's where it enters the world of possibly not harming TC.

Already discussed in a previous post.

"

DragoonWraith wrote:

But a ".08 Valk" refers to the unique Valkyrie Wing Spired Helm from version 1.08 (IIRC, the original LoD version); the item still exists, but has very different statsas of 1.10.

The old Valk had pretty simple stats: 30% faster everything (IIRC, that was all it had). Cast rate, attack speed, hit recovery, run/walk, I think it might have even had block speed. Which doesn't sound like much, but it's incredible how much it frees up your other equipment slots to have so much of so many different important numbers taken care of in one slot. Thus, they are quite valuable, and the number of legitimate .08 Valks left on the Realms is... it must be very low, if there are any left.

Of course, dupes are available, apparently at exorbitant prices.

"

dust7 wrote:

Patch 1.08 Valkyrie Wing. Cannot drop anymore since years.

Thanks, folks! I kinda figgered the "08" referred to the patch version (I play 1.09d; wish I'd stuck at b). Yeah, I'd socket a resistance gegaw in a helm like that hat, too, mebbe an Um rune. =^[.]^=

"

el_puno wrote:

"

DragoonWraith wrote:

"

el_puno wrote:

i might simply be impossible to hunt down item shops for some arguments i delivered to you. wich by the way is an essence of a chat i had with a dear friend of mine who worked as a lawyer for years. whats your background? theft is a strong word if u can't proof it. but u hold it in your mouth like it's a given fact. its your point of view. nuthing more nuthing less.

i gave u some clear arguments(ok my english is not that sharp but i hope u get my points). u didnt answer them..
i know u 100% sure of your standpoint and u'll keep it. but that doesn't count anything in front of court.. proof is the thing that counts.. remember o.j. simpson?

No, I understand you, it's just irrelevant. Yes, it would be very difficult in court. That doesn't make it not illegal, it just makes it difficult in court.

And the legality has nothing to do with whether or not it's cheating.

cheating or not.. your question was: How is GGG going to stop D2JSP and similar scum?
answer: not via legal actions thats for sure. (but thats what u dreaming about)

hopefully by ingame architecture or clever programming/design to prevent bots and 3rd party programms. d2 is some years old now. ggg should have learned from the past. but in the end it comes down to the popularity of this game. if there are enough users we will have scamms all over the place. sad but true. just like in RL ppl are greedy and bad thats the reality.

btw i highly doubt that selling your (playing) time is indeed illegal.

I agree with this statement 100%. Clever programming can in many ways prevent people from being able to script bots or similar third-party programs. It goes the same with web site development. Clever programming can prevent SQL vulnerabilities from showing up that can be used by malicious users for SQL injection.

In terms of in-game mechanisms, verification controls seemed to work pretty well in the past to some degree. If the developers of PoE even take this issue of third-party stuff seriously, they will probably have already created some sort of procedure or security policy through their tech team to at least begin to deal with it.


And to whoever said 08 valks cost $1000 I hope that was a joke lol ;(. There is 1 site still in existence that deals with d2 users selling their items for large amounts of money, but it is a very risky business and only done through trusted "members" of the site. Perm 08 valks though last I checked will go anywhere from $150-300

"

sherkhan wrote:

Year 4. Same debate.

Yet no post in this thread for well over 3 years, yet for some reason you decided to resurrect it from the dead with nothing more then 4 little words and nothing to add.

Hoooooooly crap, some people are salty as hell that people are selling items. Look, here's the operative difference between D2 and PoE: In D2, the items have been created via cheating. The items are fake, and people are paying money for cheated items.

In PoE, all the items are real.

As far as I'm aware, no duplication cheat has been discovered in PoE, and thus every item that is bought, sold, traded, or vendored as trash and deleted is a real item that the current owner can do whatever s/he wants to within the game. Buying and selling and trading items doesn't wreck a game economy; CHEATING items wrecks a game economy.

But yeah, thread necromancy, etc. Not sure why you felt the need; were you trying to get us talking about this again?

"

Loreweaver wrote:

As far as I'm aware, no duplication cheat has been discovered in PoE, and thus every item that is bought, sold, traded, or vendored as trash and deleted is a real item that the current owner can do whatever s/he wants to within the game. Buying and selling and trading items doesn't wreck a game economy; CHEATING items wrecks a game economy.