The RuneScape Case: Is A Virtual Item A Good?

Virtual reality is a big part of peoples lives nowadays in Dutch society. People game, date, shop and bank in virtual reality, virtual environments created by computers. As law follows social change, in the last decade two big cases in Holland were about virtual reality in a gaming environment. One of the, the RuneScape case. The RuneScape case is about two minors that used violence and threats of violence to force another player to log into the game of RuneScape. After the victim logged in to the game one of the defendants transferred virtual items and virtual money from the victims account to their own. The case is about real violence, but the theft was virtual. The violence occurred outside of the context of the game, so the act was at least a criminal assault. Because, under Dutch law, theft already involves violent behavior, assault is only used when there has been serious violence. It is a bit odd that the judge did not mention that the act was a way of extortion. The boy was forced to give his goods. In Dutch law extortion is punished in exactly the same way as theft with violence, so this does not make any substantial difference. What is interesting about this case is the strategy the defense chose. Instead of pleading for a lower punishment defense raised a very difficult legal question: Is a virtual item a good? The defense was based on four main arguments: - Virtual items are not goods - Virtual items are information - The point of the game is to take objects from each other - The virtual items are and remain the property of the publisher of the game not the victim or the!defendant, hence they could not have been stolen 1) Virtual items are not goods The court decided that the virtual items have value because it costs time and effort to obtain them. 3.5. Before assessing these complaints it should be noted that the Court of Appeal has established the following: - it cost the victim time and effort to obtain the virtual amulet and mask. The value of the item is recognized by the players of the game and by the ones that took the effort to steal the item. The value is recognized by the other players of the game and the defendants that stole the item. Also the player was under exclusive control of the items. These objects were of genuine value to him and he, the defendant and the co-accused all wanted fervently to possess them;

The player was under exclusive control of the items. The victim had exclusive de facto control over the virtual amulet and mask because these could only be accessed by logging into his RuneScape account. Through the actions of the defendant, the objects passed out of the control of the victim and into the control of the defendant. This violated the victim's uninterrupted enjoyment of exclusive control over these virtual objects;

2) Virtual items are information The court agreed that the items are data, but also said that the fact that virtual items have data like properties does not mean that they dont also have properties that make them capable of being stolen. The court also again went into the value to other players and the time it costs to obtain these items. 3.6.1. The assertion that the objects are not goods because they consist of 'bits and bytes' is untenable. The virtual nature of these objects does not in itself preclude them being considered goods within the meaning of article 310 of the Criminal Code. The appeal court's ruling on this matter is thoroughly reasoned and is in no way incorrect in its interpretation of the law. The Supreme Court bases this conclusion in part on the fact that the appeal court established that 'for the victim, the defendant and his coaccused, the possessions they collect in the game hold genuine value, which can be taken away from them' and that 'this concerns items of value accumulated over the course of the game, which were obtained or can be obtained through time and effort' and that the victim had 'exclusive de facto control' over the objects within the game environment and lost control of those objects through the actions of the defendant and the co-accused. 3) The point of the game is to take objects from each other The court agreed, but also said that this stealing was outside of the context of the game. 2.3 It is also relevant that the rules of RuneScape do not provide a method of acquiring these goods as is done in this case. The taking away of the items was done outside the context of the game. It is thus not a virtual actions within a virtual world [...]. 4) The virtual items are and remain the property of the publisher of the game not the victim or the!defendant, hence they could not have been stolen The court agreed that under the RuneScape terms and conditions, the virtual items in the game are owned by the publisher of RuneScape, but also said the items are under exclusive dominion of the player before the items were removed from him, even though Runescape is the owner from an intellectual property perspective. The court referred to stealing money or a passport, both owned by the state, also being a criminal act.

2.3 III) Another argument the defense made is that there is no ownership nor possession of the virtual goods, but only a right to use the RuneScape game. Changing ownership of virtual property rights does not change in the physical world. The game, and everything thats happens inside the game, is owned and will remain with the owner, Jagex Ltd.. in the UK. In this way, the defense is the opinion, that the court should create a more narrow meaning to the term ownership in Article 310 of the Penal Code. The court notes that the player in the actual game had exclusive dominion and thus had the goods. Only he could, by logging on his RuneScape account, get access to and give away the amulet and the mask. He is affected in undisturbed enjoyment of the goods and power by the theft. A passport, which is property of the State of the Netherlands, can also be stolen. The court concluded: due to the digitization of society, a virtual reality has been created, all aspects of which cannot be dismissed as mere illusion where the commission of criminal acts are not be possible In his book, Kijk Zelf Maar: Beeldgebruik in de Rechtspleging, P.J. van den Hoven goes deeper into this relationship between virtual reality and the actual reality. As an example he uses the prosecutor of this case, Miss Petra Hoekstra. In the maggazine Opportun, a magazine published by the body of public defenders, is very frank about how she perceived the case. m. What is this about? What is the problem? were her initial thoughts. She had never heard of the game. Hoekstra tells: You see these cases more often with minors, for example when they have a fight on msn and one of them blocks the other. Not so long ago, I had a boy in court that was furious because of such an event. He had the feeling he was not heard anymore and beat the person that blocked him in MSN up. He said that it was like he did not exist anymore. Very bizarre, but apparently the virtual world is a important part of the minors life nowadays. For them it is reality. In the RuneScape case I did not have a second of doubt if the virtual amulet or mask had value and if you thus could steal them, while that was the most important question in the whole case. I do not think that you should have the illusion that you will ever understand something like this. It is a generation gap, we were not raised with the internet and have a totally different frame or reference. For my as a public prosecutor this was an eye-opener. Van den Hoven observes that nowadays for many of us virtual realities are integrated in our reality. The world of RuneScape is, for these boys, a part of their social reality. In the Runescape you see that we are programmed to find experiences that amend to our experiences and values, highly remarkable. In most of our observations we do not see the experience and values behind them. For example the way Petra Hoekstra could not intergrade the virtual world in her real world. For her the virtual world was simply everything that could not intergrade with reality, but even for her transferring your money on your phone to your friends bank account is just as real as giving him money. You could say this is different because then there is a real relationship with reality in banking, but digital banking has the same relationship with reality, that RuneScape has to the boys.

Yeludi Moszcowicz has a different view on the case. In the magazine, Strafblad, he argued that the prosecutor and the judge have made a big mistake. A virtual reality is an imaginary reality and you cannot steal imaginary things. If you can steal items from a in-game character, then what would deleting the character mean...murder? He also thinks that since this is a game, stealing the items is not real stealing, it is simply not fair play. Just like when somebody steals money from the bank in the game Monopoly. Another example he uses is virtual sex, what is the two boys forced the other boy to have virtual sex with another player in Second Life, would this be rape? If you can have a virtual item, you can also have a virtual body! A very similar case, with a very different outcome, is the Chinese Li Hongchen v. Beijing Arctic Ice Technology Development Co. Ltd. case. 44. This case has the same key question as the RuneScape case. In this case an item was taken through account hacking. Again the hacking was still real, the theft was virtual. Here the player sued the gaming company for not returning the item in a civil case. The Chinese court decided that virtual items are a pile of data and do not constitute a thing under Chinese Civil Law.