Realism concerning scamming

[Roderick]

Regarding recent development and discussion about scamming and scamming rules I've decided to write a small piece about scamming and the legal systems that are in place in real life to prohibit scams of valuable property, followed by a realistic suggestion for server implementation.

In property law, a distinction can be made between two types of goods:
1. Registered property; and
2. Unregistered property.

Registered property is property that needs registration in designated, government-maintained register, that serve as conclusive evidence of property title. A known example of registered property is real estate. The most common group of people that are able to register property in these kind of registers are notaries. However, a notary would both guide and overview the transaction and make sure both parties see their agreement through. The notary will only register the property in the name of the new owner after having recieved the purchase amount of the property. To compare this to an in character scam situation: in real life a buyer would never recieve legal ownership of the property if the house hasn't been registered in the name of the new owner, whereas if a house is being transfered from one character to another it isn't. An obvious counter-argument would be the fact a person decided to sell the house for $1 and therefore the new owner would be registered but in my humble opinion that completely breaks immersion together with a realistic part of roleplaying a real estate transfer. Obviously, in real life unregistered property - from something simple as a pack of Snickers to a quite expensive watch is sensitive to scamming. Roleplay about scamming unregistered property could be great roleplay and shouldn't be immersive at all!

Regarding out of character scamming I have another concern. In quite a few countries (South Korea, China and quite recently, The Netherlands) virtual property is, in fact, considered property (full case here). Because of the facts that virtual items have value in virtual of the effort and time invested in obtaining them, the value in virtual items is recognised by those that play the game (including the defendents who went to the trouble to take them) and the virtual items were under the exclusive control of the player – who was relieved of this control virtual property was declared property. What this means is that virtual property is also property as meant and regulated in theft under criminal law. Even though the defendant argued that taking these kind of virtual items was a main part of the game, the court ruled that the way the property was taken was "out of context of the game" - which, quite frankly, out of character scamming is completely in a roleplaying server. Eclipse Roleplay has in their rulebook out of character scamming is forbidden, however it seems the administration team is quite reluctant in actually maintaining this rule. A few examples here and here.

Core suggestions:

1. Forbid out of character scamming altogether and act on it. This is a roleplay server. You should know the difference between in character dealings and out of character dealings. Aside from that, as explained for people from some countries that play on ECRP out of character scamming could not be legal;
2. Make scamming possible only for unregistered property. Scamming with registered property is not realistic and breaks immersion quite a lot.

[Reckless311]

26 minutes ago, Roderick said:

Regarding recent development and discussion about scamming and scamming rules I've decided to write a small piece about scamming and the legal systems that are in place in real life to prohibit scams of valuable property, followed by a realistic suggestion for server implementation.

In property law, a distinction can be made between two types of goods:
1. Registered property; and
2. Unregistered property.Registered property is property that needs registration in designated, government-maintained register, that serve as conclusive evidence of property title. A known example of registered property is real estate. The most common group of people that are able to register property in these kind of registers are notaries. However, a notary would both guide and overview the transaction and make sure both parties see their agreement through. The notary will only register the property in the name of the new owner after having recieved the purchase amount of the property. To compare this to an in character scam situation: in real life a buyer would never recieve legal ownership of the property if the house hasn't been registered in the name of the new owner, whereas if a house is being transfered from one character to another it isn't.

Um, a notary doesn't register property, only the property accounting office does that with a signed deed.  (At least in the US)  Notaries simply certify that the signatures were made in front of them.  So when you sell the property, you sign over the deed to the property, that now becomes property of whomever holds it.  They then go to the local courthouse (PAO) and register it.  

 

31 minutes ago, Roderick said:

Core suggestions:

1. Forbid out of character scamming altogether and act on it. This is a roleplay server. You should know the difference between in character dealings and out of character dealings. Aside from that, as explained for people from some countries that play on ECRP out of character scamming could not be legal;
2. Make scamming possible only for unregistered property. Scamming with registered property is not realistic and breaks immersion quite a lot.

I agree that OOC scamming should be banned and enforced.  This is metagaming after all.  

Talk about breaking immersion, this changing of how the real estate world works would totally destroy reality in favor of a way to keep things in a virtual world.  

+1 for #1  

-1 for #2

 

[BallinByNature]

Scamming OOC is against the rules in the current rule book.

Scamming with property IC, is an IC issue.

Thanks for your suggestion.