Latest News with Tag 'Law'

From the mainstream media:

"(CNN) -- Your husband, an avid gamer and techie, dies of a heart attack, leaving his vast online life ­-- one you don't know much about ­-- in limbo.

His accounts, to which you don't know the passwords, go idle. His e-mails go unanswered, his online multiplayer games go on without him and bidders on his eBay items don't know why they can't get an answer from the seller.

Web site domains that he has purchased, some of which are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,­ will expire, and you may never know.

It's a scenario that's becoming more likely as we spend more of our lives online. And it's raising more questions about what happens to our online lives after we log off for the final time.

Until now...."

The news report is about a few new companies such as "Legacy Locker" which is a sort of will for your digital assets.

"A Legacy Locker account costs $29.99 a year. Users can set up their accounts at www.legacylocker.com to specify who gets access to their posthumous online information, along with "legacy letters," or messages, that can be sent to loved ones "

It's only a matter of time until grandchildren start fighting over grandma's level 100 World of Warcraft Champion Mage with millions of gold and a great deal of Second Life real estate.

One of the fears of the anti-RMT crowd deals with the potential of player v. player lawsuits. If your character and virtual sword is worth a real world amount, then what happens if you wish to role-play (the MMO legal equivalent of pleading "insanity") as thief in a MMO and cheat someone, steal something from them, or use some exploit to grief them. If they for example lost their sword or their character suffered some loss could you sue them in court?

This question came up in the class action lawsuit where WoW players sued IGE in Hernandez v. IGE. In that case World of Warcraft players filed a class action lawsuit against IGE as a third-party beneficiary of the EULA contract IGE signed with Blizzard everytime an employee logged into the game. However that case settled out of court so the question was never answered. Can individual users/players of an EULA/TOU sue each other for violations?

It seems the recent court case: Jackson v. American Plaza Corp has provided a probable answer. The case ruled that one Craigslist member could not sue another for a violation of Craiglist's TOU (Terms of Use). This should provide precedent should an MMO player ever try to sue another for "damages" (in the form of lost real world RMT value) for breaking an MMO's EULA such as "griefing". 

For a full analysis head on over to: E-Commerce and Tech-Law Blog

BBC reports that a US court has found MDY (creators of WoWGlider; a bot program for World of Warcraft) responsible for $6 million dollars in damages owed to Blizzard.

Ars Technia comments:
"This is troubling and creates a chilling precedent. It basically says that the copy of the software created in your system's RAM is okay under the license, and when you break the EULA by using software like MMOGlider the license is revoked, and you are suddenly left playing an unlicensed copy of the game. This turns what is a normal terms-of-service issue into a copyright issue, and could potentially affect anyone running an instance of this software. Blizzard now has the option of going after anyone it believes is running a bot for copyright infringement. While at first glance unlikely, we've recently learned that Activision Blizzard has become very aggressive in its copyright litigation. "

For further commentary and a full background on the case check out our friends over at Vritually Blind.