Is it legal to sell game items for real money? Me and my friends play WoW, LoL etc(online games).. Is it legal to sell in-game items for real money? I know it's a small case and probably won't be chased after but in terms of law, is it perfectly legal? In the games terms and conditions it states that it will result in a ban of the account. Can game developers sue me for providing the service or is the ban of the account their limit?
The answer to this question would also heavily depend on which country the transaction is occurring. Supreme court of South Korea ruled in July 2009 that exchanging virtual currency for real world currency is legal, even though doing so was against the game's terms of service. Consequently, players cannot be held legally liable for trading their virtual currency into real money if the game is being serviced in South Korea. This however, does not mean the company cannot suspend your account for doing so. Likely, other countries have different laws about this type of transaction, which you should look into. Source: Official ruling of the case (in Korean)
Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. Link https://www.copyright.gov/registration/other-digital-content/
Your friend's relationship with the game company is one of contract. You don't say what the contract terms are, so it's impossible to say whether they were breached by your friend or the company. In any case, it is likely that the only remedy your friend could seek is damages, probably limited to whatever outstanding portion of the subscription they have not had the benefit of. It seems unlikely that it will be a large enough amount to be worth pursuing. As a private company the game provider can choose to contract with who they wish, or not as the case may be (unless they can be shown to be discriminating against protected characteristics).
I've had a good look at the Vagrancy Act, and I have to say that i can't find the text that you're looking for. It's possibly been repealed, in which case it's not, in fact, the law - even if it were, it is unlikely that this provision would have applied to most games, as it appears to be Games or pretended Games of Chance that it targets.
It is possible to abandon copyright ... maybe. However, this game has not been abandoned. When the owner of the company was liquidated, the copyright became the legal property of the liquidator in trust for the creditors. It is for him or her to decide how to deal with the property but the copyright still exists until 70 years after the author(s) death. If you allow downloads you are breaching copyright unless you have permission (or you meet the Fair Dealing criteria - you probably don't). The person to seek permission from is the liquidator od the company. If you get sued they do not need to demonstrate financial loss - copyright claims can either be pursued for actual or statutory damages, that is, a fixed amount per violation. In addition, in egregious cases, copyright violation is a crime prosecutable by the state.
Let’s say I go to a cash machine, ask for £100, and the machine gives me £10,000. I use my banking app and see that £100 left my account, not £10,000. At this point I haven’t done anything illegal. If I asked for another £100 and got £10,000 again, that might be illegal. But the extra £9,900 are not mine. They are the bank’s money. If I try to keep it, that is simply theft.
Intellectual property law varies considerably by jurisdiction, and doesn't just involve copyright, but also trademarks, and patents. The first problem you are going to run into is that "Risko!" is probably protected as a commercial trademark rather than copyright. In the US at least, making minor changes to a trademark generally doesn't get you off the hook for unlicensed use. The owner of the "Risko!" trademark could bring suit against you for trademark infringement and it would be up to a judge or possibly a jury to decide whether "Risko" is different enough from "Risko!" that confusion would be unlikely. If they won the suit they could collect damages and their legal costs. There was a protracted and important trademark lawsuit in the US over the names "Monopoly" and "Anti-Monopoly" for board games. An economist, Ralph Anspach, had introduced a game he called "Anti-monopoly". He was sued by the Parker Brothers company for infringing on their trademark for "Monopoly". After 10 years the US Supreme Court ruled in Anspach's favor, finding that "Monopoly" had become a generic term for a type of board game and was no longer a valid trademark. You can't necessarily count on being "small potatoes" so that they'll simply ignore your possible infringement. In US law, failure to enforce their trademark rights can lead to the loss of trademark rights and remedies, so companies are less likely to let minor infringements slide. The situation in Italy may be different. Your artwork and graphical components are another potential problem. Those probably are covered by copyright. Again, the holder of the copyright for the "Risko!" artwork could sue you for violating their copyright on the artwork. A judge or jury would then evaluate whether your artwork was "derivative" of the "Risko!" artwork. If the court finds that your artwork is derivative, you might have to pay damages and legal costs. There are actually a ton of Risk inspired games already available online, but they seem to stay away from names that sounds anything like "Risk" and anything that looks like the Risk artwork.
AD&amp;D, like all games, is covered under copyright. HOWEVER, games are not treated the same as books and other works. Rules of a game, including "stats" and other information required to play the game, are NOT protected by copyright. This is Copyright Law, and has nothing to do with a license which a work is published under. Artwork is fully protected by copyright, as is any setting descriptions. In the context of the D&amp;D franchise, the actual wording of any rulebooks, monster descriptions, game modules, and such are all protected by copyright, so you can't wholesale cut-and-paste things. But, that does not extend to the various mechanics of the game. Armor Class, Hit Dice, etc. are all mechanics, and CANNOT be protected. That includes values assigned to monsters or characters or such. A company cannot also protect the particular layout of those statistics, if that layout is considered generic in nature. In the case we are talking about, a table listing the statistics is NOT protected, as it does nothing more than list those statistics, and contains no original, protected material of WotC. In addition, uniquely created monsters, characters, etc. all have their name protected, but not their statistics. But generic names thereof cannot be protected. It is perfectly permissible to have a clone copy of a Drow and call them a Dark Elf (a generic name). One could not copy the description of the Drow from a Monster Manual, but the idea of a Dark Elf cannot be protected, nor can the statistics thereof. It is explicitly permissible by Copyright Law to clone the rules to a game, which in the context of D&amp;D includes a generic name for anything trademarked (thus, no Drow, and no Dungeon Master, but Dark Elf and Game Master), the mechanisms used to play the game -- including the terms used to reference them -- and all related numerical statistics associated with those components of the game. All of this is in addition to any rights the OGL gives you. These rights CANNOT be restricted by the OGL, as they are basic Copyright Law rights, not license rights. I've been writing D&amp;D expansions and such for over 4 decades now (since the late 1980s), and this is what I've repeatedly been told by various Copyright lawyers. In short, provided you don't use the text description of a particular monster (and instead write your own one, using the same concept of what the monster is), and you don't use a trademarked name for it, it is possible to "scrape copy" the statistic summary section of any Monster Manual or the like. Here's an explicit parallel: the game of Monopoly. When creating a clone of Monopoly, here's what you CAN do: Copy the basic layout of the board - a square with the properties laid out in a path around the edge. Arrange the properties as they currently are, WITH THE CURRENT NAMES on them. Each property's name is not possible to protect, as they are generic names. Free Parking, Jail, and Go To Jail, and Go can all be labeled and placed accordingly. Chance and Community Chest cards can be named as such, and referred to as such. The text on the cards is also (mostly) usable. The costs and values of all Chance, Community Chest, and properties can be copied. The rules of movement, going to jail, etc. can all be copied. Have pieces that are Hats, Dogs, Cars, etc, and both Hotels and Houses, and explicitly refer to them by those names. Here's what you CANNOT do: Use the particular color scheme of the board Use any artwork, including the drawings on any cards. Use the particular graphic presentation of a card. Copy the design of any piece, except the House/Hotel which, insofar as they are very generic, can be extremely similar. You can only use the word "Monopoly" in the context of referring to the Parker Brothers game, not in any other context, as it is trademarked. The specific wording of the rulebook cannot be duplicated. You have to write the rules in your own words. The wording of certain Community Chest and Chance cards, where they are not just generic game instructions, cannot be duplicated. E.g. "Grand Opera Night—Collect $50 from every player for opening night seats" cannot be duplicated, but you can have any other wording for something that would gain you $50 per player. Now, see how that works in comparison to D&amp;D?