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ArcheAge criminal system features jail time, player juries, and more
Bad behavior in free-form sandbox games is inevitable, but ArcheAge is adding an interesting wrinkle in the form of a criminal system which includes trials, prison time, and pirate status for repeat offenders. When you steal from protected property or kill a faction member, you leave behind clues in the form of blood or footprints. When a certain amount of said clues are turned in as evidence against you, you'll be faced with a choice of either a trial or immediate jail time upon your next death or login. Trials may increase or decrease your jail time depending on what the jurors (level 30 players who accept an invite) decide. If you end up doing time, you can kill rats, play soccer, or try to escape. While incarcerated, you lose access to your hotbars, and the penalty remains in effect for an unspecified time should you make a successful escape. While there are still several aspects of the criminal system that remain unclear, you can get a glimpse of it via the German-language video after the cut. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
Nintendo counterfeiter gets 32 months in another castle
Justin Success-Brooks hasn't quite lived up to his name, at least in terms of staying out of jail. After pleading guilty last month to selling thousands of counterfeit Nintendo games in the UK, Success-Brooks has been sentenced to 32 months of jailtime.This was no mere case of someone copying a homebrew cartridge: Success-Brooks was convicted of selling counterfeited games (in conjunction with a few dealers in China) through 18 different websites, and continued to do so after being warned by Nintendo and the UK Border Agency. At one point Success-Brooks had his stock seized, and he then continued to sell the fake games through a different website.Success-Brooks is officially sentenced to 32 months, though he's been told to expect to serve just half of the time. Francesca Levett, one of the prosecutors in the case, said the real victim here isn't necessarily Nintendo, but legitimate online game retailers, forced to compete with counterfeit sellers. "Nintendo may be big enough to weather the storm," she said to the Guardian, but "the damage that this has done to the reputation of online retailers is untold and incalculable."
The Perfect Ten: MMO prisons
Chillin' in the clink. Spending time in stoney lonesome. Thrown into the slammer. Checking in to the big house. Doing (perfect) 10 to life in the hole. Learning the ropes in juvie. Prison: The only fun thing about it is the slang that people have come up to describe it. And while you may never actually want to spend any time in the crowbar hotel in real life, chances are you've already done so in MMOs. Jails are an ever-popular locale in online gaming, and they almost always deal with an epidemic of escaped -- yet still milling around casually -- prisoners. So in today's Perfect Ten, we talked to the warden and got you a special glimpse into pixelated pokeys, if only to scare you straight. No more exploits and bots for you, young man or woman!
Pirate Bay founders lose final appeal in Sweden, prison looms on the horizon
It looks like Pirate Bay's legal drama has finally come to a close in Sweden, where the Supreme Court today turned down the site's final appeal. At the center of the case are the file sharing site's founders -- Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström -- who have been battling Swedish prosecutors for quite a few years now. After being convicted of facilitating copyright infringement, the trio was initially sentenced to prison. They appealed the ruling in 2010 and, though they failed to overturn it, managed to see their 12-month sentences reduced by between two and eight months. Today, though, their final attempts were shot down, with the Court's dismissal. The fines and prison terms remain the same: ten months for Neij, eight months for Sunde and four for Lundström. There's also a fourth co-founder involved, Gottfrid Svartholm, who has been absent from several hearings. Under today's ruling, his original 12-month sentence will stand, and the four men will have to pay a total of $6.8 million in damages. Because the case has dragged on for at least five years, however, there's a chance that the sentences could be reduced by 12 months (bringing them down to zero), as is common in the Swedish legal system. The decision on this matter, however, remains with the court. TorrentFreak reports that at least one defendant intends to appeal to the European Court of Justice, though the results wouldn't have any effect on Sweden's decision.
South Korea plans trial run of robot prison guards
This isn't the first time we've seen a prison turn to robots for a little assistance, but South Korea looks to be going a bit further than most with its latest robotic endeavor. The country's Ministry of Justice has announced that it will be conducting a one-month trial run of robot guards at a prison in the city of Pohang starting in March -- a project that's expected to cost one billion won (or about $863,000). "The robots are not terminators," as the university professor in charge of the endeavor told The Wall Street Journal, but rather monitors that will patrol the corridors of the jail and alert the human guards if they detect any unusual activity. Inmates will also be able to use the robots to communicate with the guards, and the folks behind the bots are apparently doing their best to keep things from turning into too much of a dystopian future -- they're now said to working on making the robots appear more "humane and friendly."
WiFi hacker lands 18-year prison sentence, sex offender status for campaign of cyber vengeance
Look, we understand that being accused of pedophilia is horrible but, if you're not keen on spending time in the pokey, it's probably not best to exact your revenge by hacking and framing your accusers for making terrorist threats or downloading child pornography. That was the unfortunate route chosen by Minnesotan Barry Ardolf, whose neighbors Matt and Bethany Kostolnik went to the police after he allegedly kissed their four-year-old son on the lips. Ardolf broke into the couple's Wi-Fi and e-mail accounts, and used them to post porn on MySpace, send threats to Joe Biden, and explicit come-ons to Matt's coworkers. Now the 46-year-old cyberbully is facing 18 years in prison, a tough sentence for a first time offender sure, but an investigation revealed the Kostolniks were not his first victims. In addition to his lengthy stay in jail Ardolf will also have to register as a sex offender -- an irony we're sure isn't lost on him. [Thanks, Alan] [Image courtesy Jason Morrison]
Three sent to prison in China over iPad 2 leaks
A Chinese court has sentenced three people to prison for collaborating to steal information from Foxconn about the iPad 2 before it was unveiled to the public. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Shenzhen Bao'an People's Court found that the general manager of MacTop Electronics Company illegally offered a Foxconn employee 20,000 yuan, or about US$3,000, plus discounts on MacTop products for information on the iPad 2 last September. The Foxconn employee then paid another Foxconn employee who worked in the research and development department for digital images of the iPad 2's back cover. Cover accessory manufactures can typically make a killing if they have their covers for new Apple devices out the day the new product ships, which makes information, such as the dimensions of a new iOS device, very valuable. The general manager of MacTop was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined 150,000 yuan. The two Foxconn employees were sentenced to 14 months and 13 months, respectively, and fined 100,000 yuan and 30,000 yuan. There was no word on how the investigation led to the three employees, but Foxconn did issue a statement saying, "We cannot comment on matters of internal security, but Foxconn takes its commitment to protecting its intellectual property as well as that of its customers very seriously and undertakes all appropriate actions to safeguard against any violations."
America's 'panic button' to wipe phones of democracy activists, perturb repressive governments
So, here's the scene. You're out at [insert city center here], completely neglecting any and all work duties, throwing Molotov cocktails at the building of the State you've grown to hate. It's a protest in every sense of the word, and you're rallying the troops via Twitter and Facebook. It's actually not an uncommon painting these days, and while America's not into promoting violence, it is into keeping the personal information of democracy activists secure. According to a fresh Reuters report, the US State Department is currently developing a software-based "panic button" that would wipe a phone's address book and beam out emergency alerts to fellow protesters if they were apprehended. The goal here is to protect the privacy of those captured while promoting their best interests, and to let others know that trouble is brewing. There's no clear indication of the status here, but something tells us that it'd be useful yesterday for a certain region of the globe.
Hacker nets two years in jail after pilfering £7 million in virtual poker chips
Crime, it just doesn't pay. Well, actually it does, to the tune of £53,612, but then you get caught and you have to work off that salary with two years at Her Majesty's pleasure. One Ashley Mitchell, an enterprising 29-year old from Devon, England, managed to break into Farmville maker Zynga's mainframe, hijack the identities of two of its staffers, and procure for himself a cool £7 million ($11.4m) in virtual poker chips. He then proceeded to sell about a third of them for the above sum, while consuming a big chunk of the rest in satisfying his own gambling habit. Ashley already had a history of digital malfeasance, having previously hacked into the systems of Torbay Council, his former employer, and is now on the receiving end of a two-year prison term for his current crime plus the activation of a 30-week suspended sentence. There's a warning in this tale of woe for us all, however -- Monsieur Mitchell piggybacked on his neighbors' unsecured WiFi networks in order to do his dastardly deeds. Slap a password on that router, won't you?
Ohio man jailed for selling copied games
If you bought a bootleg copy of a PC game for the low, low price of $9.95 and you live in the Powell, Ohio area, it's possible you bought it from Qiang "Michael" Bi. First and foremost, please don't buy pirated games. Second of all, you won't have any more opportunities to purchase his illegal wares (or warez), as Bi was sentenced to 30 months in prison "for selling illegally copied computer games between 2005 and 2009" this week. According to federal agents (via 10tv), Bi purchased legit retail copies of various "computer games," duplicated said games illegally, and then sold copies for $9.95 each through eBay and Amazon. Bi admitted guilt to three separate counts -- mail fraud, copyright infringement, and aggravated identity theft -- and will pay $367,000 to the court, in addition to forfeiting his home, vehicle, and "electronic equipment." Though no specific publishers are identified, Bi will also have to repay game publishers who lost money due to his actions.
'Managed access' trial screens prison phone calls without jamming the airwaves
Yeah, we've been to this rodeo before... kind of. If you'll recall, prisons have had one heck of a time getting the Feds to sign off on a new law that would allow cellphone jamming equipment to be installed on their premises, and due to a 1934 law that allows only federal agencies to jam public airways, they've had little choice but to sit and wait. A bill is resting in the House right now that would allow pilot jamming programs to commence, but given that it's unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon, South Carolina's prison director (Jon Ozmint) is eying something else. In fact, he's already trying something else. A "managed access" trial has begun in the Palmetto State (as well as Mississippi), which routes mobile calls originating in the prison to a third-party provider that check's each number to see if it's on a whitelist; if it doesn't make the cut, the call is blocked. Jon's still pushing for jamming, but it looks as if this second-rate system may just be good enough to convince most criminals to stop trying to reach the outside world. Or at least add yet another level of frustration to their lives. [Image courtesy of Wired]
Teen archer launches cellphone-laced arrows into Brazilian jail
Sometimes we sit around at Engadget HQ and do informal, anonymous surveys of our favorite gadgets of all time. Cell phones are unsurprisingly always at the top of the list. But the bow and arrow always comes in a close second -- call us closet traditionalists. Anyway, seems like a gang in Sao Paulo trained a 17-year-old to shoot arrows with cell phones strapped to the tips over a prison wall to communications-starved inmates. Apparently the misguided teen got at least four phones in before he fired one at a cop's back. Whoops! Still, dang. We much prefer this practicality of this old-new mashup to, say, steampunk flash drives. [Image credit: Robert van der Steeg's flickr]
Wolfhound sniffs out inmates' cellphones much better than an actual wolfhound would (video)
Are you the warden of a small-town prison, or perhaps an irate movie theater usher who's sick of ungrateful patrons interrupting Step Up 3D because they can't be bothered to turn of their handsets? Cellphone jamming is, for the most part, still out of the question, so Berkeley Varitronics has introduced a little something called the Wolfhound. Previously known as the Bloodhound, the device lets you hone in on RF signals, which means it won't help you if phones are powered down, but if your perp has one on standby, or if they're talking, texting, or surfing the web, you're golden. Interested? Of course you are! Hit the company up for a price quote -- but not before checking the video after the break.
Raytheon's 'pain ray' to be installed in LA County jail, Charlie Sheen contemplating move to Portland
Raytheon's been cranking on its 10,000 pound Silent Guardian for years now, and we always try to keep abreast of its... progress. The device, popularly known as a 'pain gun,' is a non-lethal weapon designed to deliver an overwhelming heat to say, members of a mob scene or rioters at a prison, causing an immediate flight response. The Air Force, which helped test the device, has assured the world of its safety, and recently the devices went on sale. So what's next for the Silent Guardian? Installation at the LA County jail in Castaic, where a large scale riot recently broke out, injuring more than 20 people and lasting well over an hour. Now, we're in no position to form an opinion about whether the pain ray is going to help situations like these or not, but we're pretty sure of one thing: it'll likely have little to no effect the next time Britney Spears is brought in.
PlayStation tattoo gun mod gets inmate a stern rebuke, admiration from his cell block
When an inmate at Brook House Immigration Removal Centre near Gatwick, West Sussex, England, needed access to a tattoo gun (presumably banned in UK lockups, just as they are in the US) inspiration struck. According to The Sun, the inmate used the motor of a PlayStation's optical drive to move a sharpened ball-point pen. Sure, there are better ways to get ink -- such as waiting to be released -- but it ain't exactly a prison tattoo if you don't get it in prison. The paper goes on to say that from time to time a similar contraption made from "Nintendo consoles" turns up stateside, although the only such device we've ever seen was in an episode of The Wire, and it was made from an old cassette player. Either way, this is one mod we surely won't see from Ben Heck any time soon.
Wisconsin jail outlaws Dungeons & Dragons
[Image: Wiki Commons] And here we thought Wisconsin couldn't get any more depressing. Kevin T. Singer, an inmate at Wisconsin's Waupun prison, has been upset with a policy enacted in 2004 that banned all Dungeons & Dragons in the jail. Officials there cited the game promotes gang behavior and subsequently confiscated all of Singer's D&D materials. Singer's long been a fan of the pen-and-paper game and tried to appeal the policy, but the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals filed in favor of the prison on Monday, stating that its policy wasn't unreasonable. Singer argued that the ruling is a violation of his First Ammendment rights, but we guess he failed to gain respect for his cause when he signed his appeal with his elvish mage's name: Gilchall Helehuialagos. [Via G4]
Canadian judge confiscates problem child's Wii as bail
This doesn't just happen in the movies, folks -- it also happens in Canada! Judge Marvin Garfinkle has agreed to release a rather problematic child on bail, granted he provides the court with his beloved console as collateral. The Winnipeg Sun reports that the 12 year old -- whose name has not been released -- has forked over his Wii and, among honoring court dates, must pledge to remain out of trouble, reside with his grandma and participate in a bail management program. For being 12 years old, the kid certainly has acquired quite an adult-sized rap sheet over the last year, which includes assault, vandalism and even a case of disobeying court order by going to school when he wasn't supposed to. [Via Yahoo]
Former Gizmondo exec Stefan Eriksson gets 1.5 year sentence, movie might now have ending
Will this be the final chapter in the infamous and incredibly entertaining tale of former Gizmondo head Bo Stefan "Fiery Ferrari Crasher" Eriksson? Doubtful, but with any luck it'll serve as a decent thread to wrap up that optioned movie on his life. An Uppsala, Sweden District Court has sentenced the man to 1.5 years in prison for his most recent round of escapades, which include illegal threats, attempted blackmail, and robbery. Assuming he starts jail fairly soon, mark your calendars and place your bets, we're expecting a whole new slew of comical misdeeds to hit the news feeds by March 2011 -- and no, we still don't think a new Gizmondo will be out by then. [Thanks, piraya]
The Pirate Bay founders sentenced to prison, website soldiers on
In what's being described as a landmark verdict, four men responsible for assisting throngs of dubious internet users to download all sorts of copyrighted material are being ushered off to prison cells for twelve whole months. The Stockholm district court in Sweden found the defendants guilty not of hosting materially illegally, but of "providing a website with sophisticated search functions, simple download and storage capabilities, and a tracker linked to the website [that helped users commit copyright violations]." As expected, the foursome seems unaffected by the ruling, with Peter Sunde (shown) tweeting that "it used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release." After jail, the crew will be forced by pay 30 million kronor ($3.56 million) to a number of entertainment companies, which is far less than those firms were hoping for. Curiously, we're told that the verdict didn't include an order to shut down The Pirate Bay website, and you can pretty much bank on an appeal being filed in record time.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
LG, Chunghwa Picture Tubes execs to serve jail time for LCD price fixing conspiracy
LG and Chunghwa Picture Tubes already confessed to being involved in a scandalous LCD price fixing conspiracy, and now the US Department of Justice is laying down the hammer on four of the dirty-handed executives. Chang Suk Chung (LG), Chieng-Hon "Frank" Lin (Chunghwa), Chih-Chun "C.C." Liu (Chunghwa) and Hsueh-Lung "Brian" Lee (Chunghwa) have all entered plea agreements which will see them serving a "term of imprisonment" as well as paying a criminal fine and assisting the US government in its ongoing TFT-LCD investigation. 'Course, those pleas must all be approved by the court, but it's pretty safe to say these fellows will be spending a least a moment or two behind steel bars. Fun, fun.[Via DigitalTrends]
