Indie Lineage 2 Servers Shut Down 29
Gamasutra reports on efforts by NCSoft and the FBI to shut down independently-run Lineage 2 servers. The servers, run by an outfit called 'L2Extreme' were making a profit off of the unauthorized MMOG operation. Gamasutra had the chance to talk with FBI agent Thompson from Austin office. From the article: "Regarding the Lineage II server code, Thompson explained that it was 'really not determined' who had originally made it available, but the L2Extreme creators were 'certainly someone who was using [NCSoft's proprietary code] — that is at least part of the investigation.'"
Re:Ars and UO (Score:3, Interesting)
It's partially NCSoft's fault... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's also worth noting that not just koreans play this game... there is a huge populace of spanish speaking, european, as well as north american people that play this game, especially on these 'indie' servers.
Re:Why Say "Indie"? (Score:2, Interesting)
This has always been a curious argument to me. All property is like a bundle of rights. For example, you can lease your land to someone else. That person does not have all the rights to the land, but they do possess some rights, even against the true owner.
Or, let's say you have a car. You can sell that car to someone, that is, sell all the rights you possess to that car to someone. You can also transfer something less than all the rights you possess. For example, you could allow someone use of the car for a particular fee, or for a particular period of time.
A copyright is similarly a piece of property. The thing the copyright protects is not tangible, to be sure, but the copyright itself is most certainly property. You can sell it, or you can transfer certain rights that it encompasses.
If you're arguing over nominclature, the word "theft" can be a legally specific term defined in a certain way in a state's criminal code, but that is hardly dispositive of the issue. It might also be "criminal conversion" or "larceny".
In any case, copyright infringement does indeed involve depriving someone of a right granted by law, and that is the exclusive right to copy, distribute, perform, etc. that work (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/ usc_sec_17_00000106----000-.html). If someone besides the copyright holder performs one of those actions, the copyright holder is deprived of the exclusive right. There are, of course, defenses to violation of that right, just as there are defenses to theft. It does not make it less of a property right.