We know theft is against the law, and we know that when you download a song or a game without paying for it, there's a good chance that it's copyright infringement. But what about when you steal a virtual item? Dutch courts had an interesting case to deal with when two youths were sued for stealing in-game items from another youngster, forcing him to give up items in the game Runescape. The youths were sentenced to community service for their crimes. In other words, theft of the virtual item has led to real-world consequences, a first for the Netherlands.

There are other criminal aspects of this case, as it has been reported that the victim gave up the items after being physically assaulted in his room and threatened with a knife if he didn't comply. The case in question, however, dealt only with the stolen items, in this case an amulet and a mask. The 15-year-old and the 14-year-old were sentenced to 200 and 160 hours of community service, respectively. Most significantly, the court treated the Runescape goods as though they were material items: "these virtual goods are goods (under Dutch law), so this is theft." This sets a strong precedent (at least in The Netherlands): these goods have real-world value, and they "belong" to you inasmuch as it's a crime to take them from you by force.

This seems to be a very open-and-shut case, as it involves physical assault in addition to the theft, but cases rooted in virtual worlds may increasingly find themselves before meatspace judges. Take EVE Online, for instance. The game has been home to many cases of virtual fraud, and in some cases the "crime" takes place over months, involving industrial espionage or plain-old social engineering to grab cash, plans, or simply destroy in-game property. EVE is a completely open, not to mention brutally competitive, world.

When these issues pop up, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but in most cases gamers see it simply as being part of the game. The issue comes up with in-game currency being traded for real currency, or even items or accounts being sold for real money. While such action is against the End User Licensing Agreement of nearly all online games, a quick Google search shows that buying items or currency in any game is a simple matter. Could these in-game heists be considered real-world fraud?

In another case, Linden Labs repossessed virtual land from a user named Marc Bragg who bought the land by fiddling with URLs and making purchases on lots that Linden Labs didn't mean to be publicly available. Bragg sued, and Linden Labs ended up reinstating the land, although the rest of the details of the settlement have remained confidential. In another case in Second Life, a man sued another user who ripped off designs for in-game objects, which again have real-world value and are often sold. In that case, the defendant ended up paying $525 in damages.

As long as in-game items can be easily translated into real-world value, we'll continue to see online crime as often as we find it in the real world. Maybe even more so, as "criminals" may think the court systems and the police are not educated in online gaming, or the law as it pertains to in-game items and cash.

What's odd about the Dutch case is that as recently as late last year, Terra Nova published an opinion piece detailing Dutch wariness toward treating virtual items as real things, or thinking of deprivation of those items as theft. "As long as the original owner loses something of value (such as virtual items) due to the act of another individual who gains possession over the item, it should in my opinion be qualified as theft, no matter whether the locus delicti is in the physical or the virtual world," the author wrote.

While the courts have finally caught up with that opinion, more problematic aspects of treating in-game items as property will likely be fought out across a number of future cases.