Is the game company required to help and take actions for a player who got scammed in the game for virtual currencies? According to the answers in this question, you are legally responsible when scamming someone for virtual goods in a game. However, in most of the cases it is very hard to actually get any information about a player, who he or she is, which just makes it useless. However the game company do have all the information about the situation, the player, the transaction, chat conversation and so on. They have all the tools to solve this. But they refuse to. My friend was just scammed in a scenario like this, and since he couldn't verify exactly who the player is, there is not much to go on, except contacting the ones in charge of the game company. Their Customer support replies like this in an e-mail converstaion: Please understand that thieving or scamming isn't illegal and therefore I can neither punish the other player nor compensate you for your lost ***** Coins. The company is based in Germany. Also notice that the virtual coins are initially purchased with real money (80 euro) from the game website. Something to note is that the only reason my friend wanted to buy this virtual item from a player in the first place is because: The item is very rare and/or shouldn't even exist in that area. It only exists there because of bugs (that the game owner solved and are aware of, but they keep the items to exist there). This gives the seller an opportunity to scam. There is a myth about this item in that area, and the game company strategically wants it to stay a myth, so they never actually say if is possible to retain or not (people have tried for 10 years and failed) It is not possible to trade virtual coins to an item in this area in the game. It is only possible to send or give the item or virtual coins in advance. The players did have a deal. So to wrap up: Is the game company required to help you in a situation like this, where you have the evidence of being scammed for virtual currencies, and can you require them to take actions? (I.e give you the money back, or similar) Edit: I am not claiming the company is responsible, however the other player who failed to complete his deal of the contract, is unreachable except with the help of the company. Also note that the game isn't about stealing or scamming, if you lose items due to death in the game then it's part of it. However in this case it's more of a one to one deal/contract (written contract), with real life money involved (except they were converted to virtual coins first), that question has been answered here though.
Possibly The game company has almost certainly excluded liability under the contract you entered. There may be some consumer protection that you have that they cannot exclude - I don’t know enough about German law to meaningfully comment. Notwithstanding, if you were to initiate legal action against the, as yet, unknown wrongdoer, you could subpoena the relevant records from the game company with a court order. No matter what privacy or other protections the other person has, the game company must obey the order or be in contempt. Without such an order the game company is right that they can’t disclose details of other users. As a practical matter, it will cost several hundred € to initiate legal action and several thousand to pursue it to the end. And you might lose. A better response is to treat the lost €80 as a relatively cheap life lesson - many people lose a lot more learning to recognise scams.
No. Money Laundering is the act of taking money that was made as a result of criminal activity and turning it into "clean" money. There are a number of ways this occurs, and there may be ways to do it with casino chips, but you haven't demonstrated that your money is "Dirty" to begin with. If you have a $100 dollar chip from a Vegas Casino, it means that the original casino where it was purchased will redeem it for $100 dollars in currency. Nevada is unique in the United States as Casinos operating in the state must honor chips between different casinos so it's possible to buy a Chip at Casino A, go to Casino B, and redeem the chip there. This allows Las Vegas to use them as a sort of alternative currency and so long as the person you are doing business with accepts it as a form of payment, you are allowed to use it same as cash. Collecting Casino chips is a hobby of some people and you can find them on places like Ebay, often times for more value than the face value of the chip. Like Currency, nothing says that you have to buy the chip at face value, so rare, old, or chips with defects may be worth many times over their current face value to the right collector. It would only be money laundering if that $100 dollars was obtained through illegal activity and you were using the chip as a way to gamble to make your legitimate earnings on tax reports. While you can launder any value of money, the people who do so are normally doing so with 10,000s of dollars (the value most banks will notify the government if deposited in a single transaction... and they will take notice if you're doing more frequent smaller transactions to avoid that detection). If you have ever seen "Breaking Bad" there are a few scenes where Money Laundering is explained, but the idea is to take a business that has a large use of hard currency exchange (Arcades, Nail Salons, and Car Washes are all discussed in show as perfect business examples) in which dirty money is mixed with legitimate earnings and deposited into the bank. As cash does not have a paper trail, you can't determine which bills were earned at the arcade verses through other means. As long as your bookie is legitimate, Sports Gambling is legal in Vegas (You can even bet the Superbowl Coin toss) and as long as you report it as taxable income, you're not committing any crimes.
The board is more complicated than you describe. It is a somewhat stylized world map, broken up into regions that do not necessarily correspond to countries. They have names that don't necessarily express what the region is geographically (particularly Ukraine, which extends far to the north of real-world Ukraine). There are defined water routes between certain regions that do not touch. Someone else starting from a world map would be very unlikely to duplicate the Risk board. I believe your friend's board would count as a derivative work. Now, the copyright holder is highly unlikely to come after your friend. I've seen stories of people who made their own X boards, publicized them, and the game company did nothing about it. The company (Hasbro? they own most of those games) would likely consider it as an extra bit of publicity.
The section you quote as clearly saying a thing is not clearly saying the thing. However: you cannot pass on or resell any license keys seems to say a thing clearly. However, one could argue that it's the sharer of the account who is in the wrong, and not the person receiving and passing on the account. I'd say that that piece of the agreement, combined with this: must not... let other people get access to anything we've made in a way that is unfair or unreasonable says that, yes, they are out of bounds.
Getting permission from the game owner would be a sensible approach. If you get it, great. Then you could do it with the owner's blessing. It's possible to do your write up without the owner's permission, but then you have to be much more careful. For instance, the names of games cannot be copyrighted. No one can prevent you from writing "A Guide to Bridge," or "A Guide to Chess," etc. On the other hand, some games are trademarked, in which case you will need to attach a TM (trademark) symbol when referring to them. In this case, see a lawyer. You are also allowed to discuss the game itself "in your own words," but you must be careful not to "plagiarize" anything from the rules, or the official game description. That is, while you can refer to specific aspects of a game, such as building houses and hotels, the leash on copying is fairly short, as little as five words. This does not refer to five words in a common sequence referring to a single thought like "The United States of America," but it could refer to five words in an original or unusual sequence such as "I think therefore I am," by Rene Descartes, or "X houses and Y hotels," where the numbers X and Y define the number of houses and hotels in a certain board game trademarked (I believe) by Parker Brothers.
This kind of quotation, for commentary, criticism, or reference, is generally allowed without obtaining permission. In the US, this falls under fair use (see 17 USC 107. In the UK and most commonwealth countries, it falls under fair dealing. In other countries there are various exceptions to copyright that will probably cover this. Even answers that do not directly quote the rule books often use information from those rulebooks to write an answer. Facts and ideas are never protected by copyright, so this is not going to be an issue. See 17 USC 102(b), which provides: (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. As a comment by user Trish reminds, game rules are facts and are not protected, although their exact wording may be.
Given the facts as stated in the question, it appears that Spirit owes a refund. If the portal or site through which the service was sold also handles other flights that do provide wi-fi, there may not have been an intention to sell an unavailable service, and so this may not have been fraud. It is not proper to knowingly sell a service that is not available, but if it is an error, it is not strictly illegal, but the contract has not been fulfilled. One could, in such a case, attempt to place a charge-back with the credit card through which payment was made, if a card was used. Failing that, one could take the matter to small claims court. Before opening a court case, I would send a physical letter by certified mail to the airline's customer service address, with a copy to its HQ address, explaining what happened and requesting a refund by a specified date. If there is a customer service email, a copy to that as well.
Do fans legally have any ownership rights? Generally, no. It can be done if an agreement of the team is put into place when the team is founded or if the current owner agrees to it (which can then be binding on whomever the team is sold/transferred to). There are some leagues, such as the Bundesliga (Thank you Nij, for the correction; Sports in general are not my thing) where the clubs must be owned by fans, at least 51%. So it can be done, but cannot be forced on an owner against their will, unless such a covenant is agreed to before they take possession of the club. It can be required for a given club to join/participate in a given league. Legally, supporting a club via buying club merch and match tickets give an ownership interest in the items bought, not in the club/team itself.