[MUD-Dev] Re: Online vs Offline (was CoH and others)

[Matt Mihaly]

J C Lawrence wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 12:54:03 -0700
> Matt Mihaly <matt at ironrealms.com> wrote:

>> God forbid any of us employ ethics that do not boil down to the
>> ends justifying the means!

> Certainly crying "No fair!" is a common reaction.

> A critical difference is that stealing and selling the cat puts
> you liable to police and civil prosecution, as well as fraud
> charges from EBay and any related financial services.  That's a
> pretty chunky risk and negative value model compared to what I
> wrote.

Eh, it all comes down to simple financial sense in both cases. If I
think I can get away with it, as the Chinese thieves clearly do,
then the risk from my perspective is low. My judgement of the risk
may be off, of course, but I'd be employing the same ethical
structure (or lack thereof) that this Chinese fellow is.

> I doubt you'd be surprised to find people using the keys who
> hadn't paid for them.  Why then China?  The risk is minimal to
> non-existent, the ROI is tangible, and the cost is near zero.
> They're faced with a choice: pay $20/month for a key to get the
> cool stuff, or just pick it up for free and still get the cool
> stuff.

No, I wouldn't be surprised if people stole the keys. I would, of
course, ban them from the game for it. I've considered using a honey
trap like that to try to weed out the less desirable elements of the
world before, actually.

> This is of course a variant on the MP3/file-sharing argument.
> That debate is still unresolved. I doubt software/access piracy
> will conclude much earlier, especially internationally.

Yep, I consider stealing music files quite reprehensible as well.

--matt
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