im in law school.
this IS theft, in the legal sense.
actual criminal charges could be filed.
i

@2

It is theft, but Blizzard owns everything in game. They would have to follow through and file a lawsuit in every case. On top of that, they are dealing with people in foreign countries. It's too much trouble for what it's worth.

Not sure why I don't have reply buttons to all of the posts, but this is in reply to Thander who wrote:
"It is theft, but Blizzard owns everything in game. They would have to follow through and file a lawsuit in every case. "

Criminal charges are not brought by individuals in the US. Blizzard or a person who's account was hacked would bring notice to the police, who would decide whether or not to investigate. If they did investigate and found evidence of a crime, they would bring it to their District Attorney who would then decide whether or not to charge a case, and against whom.

Assuming that what you have here involves hacking into people's accounts to gain access to the information therein, and the property therein, digital or otherwise - you would have some form of theft or burglary.

Burglary is unlawfully entering a place to commit a crime - so the act of entering into an account illegally itself might be this, though that would depend on the individual statute in the area, and whether or not a special statute had been created since the rise of the online age to cover computer hacking.

Taking of toons, holding digital property hostage, and so on, are all forms of fraud, blackmail, theft, and so on - depending on the particulars. Even possibly identity theft.

Once someone notifies the police of a specific incident, it is out of Blizzard's hands. Blizzard could even try to prevent prosecution, an unwise move, but would have no say in the matter.

That is different from civil suits. Criminal law is enforced by the state, civil by the citizen.

@4

Not necessarily. Follow the legal logic through.

Blizzard own all the materials in game. Just because you earned a Tier6 armor set, or 9000g in game, it remains Blizzard's virtual property.

Bastard scum goldstealer comes in and takes your account. They steal all your gold and send it to one of their toons.

Blizzard still own all the gold. They did when you had access to it, they do when the thieves have access to it, they do when the people they sell it to have it. They have not lost it at any point. You never owned it. Ergo, it cannot be stolen from you.

See the hitch? Blizzard are, very sensibly, arguing they own everything in game, which stops you legally selling it. But it also means theft is legally impossible.

Now, here, however, they are suspending the access of someone to the account. That, I suspect, can easily be defined as criminal.

Same, except to gold buyers. They're the ones actually creating this problem.

Sellers only exist because of really really lazy people willing to buy gold. Eliminate them, and the seling goes away.

Nothing bugs me more then people who get all huffy about selling, but don't mind that their buddy down the street bought 2000g. Where do you think that 2000g came from?

Right because it isn't trivial to rent chunks of IP's and get new ones when they get banned. The more corrupt ISP's wont even do anything to stop hackers/spammers who are using a shared IP pool and so Blizzard risk cutting large chunks of paying customers off to stop a few baddies.

like the guy who buys crack, puts it in lil baggies, he was just organizing it right?? o.O you sound alot like a gold buyer, or a gold seller! the point is that they do these things and its wrong, blizzard could be taking it alot harder to them...

One problem with your logic: how does he transfer it to a trial account, when trials accounts can't trade, use the Mail, or the AH?