Chinese gamer wins suit for return of his virtual property

[Stelliform]

This article at CNN, tells how a Chinese gamer had his on-line virtual property stolen by a hacker. After the game company wouldn't help, he sued and the judge found that he should be returned his property.

I wonder if this will act as any precedent validating "property" held in an on-line game. (If I missed any U.S. precedents please forgive me.)

 

[mactastic]

I wonder if this would open said "property" up to being taxed by the government....

 

[alset]

Originally posted by mactastic
I wonder if this would open said "property" up to being taxed by the government....

Scary thought. Not likely, IMO, but this is the first time I have ever heard of such an idea. I don't figure they could tax it unless you had a monetary exchange to obtain it - say from eBay or a website that specialized in filtering out items.

Dan

 

[krimson]

HAHA, it's funny because my mum always asks me, "have you heard of that those online gmes, where you can store "heaven money" and stuff? yeah, someone is complaining that they got their "heaven money" stolen by hackers."

she'll ask me every few months, and I always tell her I admin on a "MUD", and then she bombards me with the same questions every time...

i can show her that article, and maybe she'll stop asking me questions.

 

[wdlove]

I think that the judge made the correct decision, intellectual property should be protected. If it was not protected, we would loose out on a lot of innovation. The law has just not caught up with this new technology, the web.