elveston priory

In a somewhat bizarre story out of the Netherlands, a teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing 4,000 euros worth of virtual furniture on Habbo Hotel … seriously! To do the deed, the teen is accused of stealing the victim's account information to gain access to the "furniture." What does one do with stolen virtual furniture? Move it to their own virtual room of course.

All joking aside, with virtual worlds now having significant amounts of real currency flowing through them, it raises the question:

Do virtual worlds like Habbo need government regulation?
• Yes
• No
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Be on the lookout for The Daily Poll in the afternoon every day Monday thru Friday. If you'd like to sponsor "The Daily Poll" or any future contests, please contact Adam Hirsch.

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User comment: By: koreman

This is no matter of any extra government regulation. At least in Holland that is. Somebody stole a password to gain unauthorized access into a user account. That is illegal in the Netherlands, called 'computervredebreuk'. The teen will probably be prosecuted for unauthorized access and not for stealing 4000 Euro worth of virtual goods in a game world. He probably will be fined for his deeds. For more serious acts -like massive copyright infringement, industrial theft etc.- there are already more serious penalties.

User comment: By: Apple Blog » Blog Archive » The Daily Poll: Should Virtual Worlds be Regulated?

[...] Original post by Adam Ostrow [...]

User comment: By: FiZ

This is a touchy matter, but with games that allow people to funnel real currencies into virtual property (beyond simply paying an incremental membership due), there should be legal repercussions for the violation of said "property" no matter how ridiculous we think it sounds. Either that, or the property should be transfered back from the thief to original owner and the perpetrator could simply be charged with the myriad of normal software license violations.