wahmbulance "When Clementine realizes she has been hacked she bursts into tears. "I feel like I just witnessed my own murder," she remarks to her mother." wahmbulance
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An Excerpt:
"Sherman insists the company "takes this responsibility very seriously. It's complex because it’s the Internet and difficult to protect everyone 100 percent securely." On one level, he suggests, it's a valuable lesson to learn early to protect your account. "But on the other hand," he admits, "the time spent by users and the things they do here are really valuable to them. We go to extra efforts to educate users and make it a safe environment."
To Litigate Or Not?
Benjamin Duranske, a legal expert on virtual worlds, and author of the upcoming Virtually Blind, reviews the case. He believes that Clementine/Bluebird would have had a claim against Gaia, but that while it is "reasonable, it is not practical." Clementine's loss – meaningful to her – is less than $60, although that relatively small sum had been converted into more than $130,000 in Gaia gold, attesting to Clementine's collecting skills, passion and commitment. Unless a class action lawsuit were to be drafted, the cost of recovery would exceed any 'real' damages. But he sees larger issues at stake. Most states take a position of nullifying the Terms of Service (TOS) of sites targeted to youth. TOS's are meant to be written with their audience in mind but this is a near-impossible feat when you're writing to a 13-year-old, plus users are, in fact, minors. In this case, Duranske argues, Gaia did their best to warn users throughout the site not to share their password. But what they failed to deal with was a hallmark of youth: apart from the rare rebel, most kids will defer to a figure of authority. If someone posing as a parental or authority figure makes a demand, they submit. And assets? Duranske and I first became acquainted during the Second Life bank collapse -- $200,000 real U.S. dollars were stolen and they have yet to be recovered. It's undetermined, then, if a virtual world host is responsible for compensating/reimbursing users when third parties steal their virtual booty. Even more questionable is what responsibility virtual worlds might have for mental duress caused by members' losses."
