From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird (.819)

www.newsoftheweird.com

WEEK OF OCTOBER 19, 2003

LEAD STORY

According to a September BBC report, police in South Korea are investigating some of the 22,000 complaints made already this year by computer gamers that characters and property that they have acquired in such all-consuming games as "EverQuest" and "Ultima Online" have been stolen by hackers and sold to other gamers to make their own playing more successful. Experts say such theft of "intangibles" should be punishable by law, but the value of the stolen property might be inconsequential, except to those players whose entire lives revolve around a game and for whom the acquisition of a character or property might have involved hundreds of hours of playing. [BBC News, 9-29-03]