Curse

Sankt Hallvard · Jan 02, 2011, 05:48 PM // 17:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prince Rogrs Nelson

Anet is an American company.

Why would you assume they meet any European standards?

Furthermore, why SHOULD they meet some insane European standard of a right to privacy that is codified only in the 2nd largest corpus of unenforced law in the world? You know EU directives are only binding to states, not private actors, right? And by "binding" I mean "rather weakly suggested." Citing the ECHR for something you think Anet should do is like me claiming the first bank of New Zealand needs to honor the bylaws of the lower Manhattan chapter of the Knights of Columbus.

Ultimately, as I've said now, MULTIPLE times, by participating in the world of the game, you've agreed to abide by the rules of that world. If anything but information related to game achievement were being shared, then the laughable notion of a right to privacy (again, the ECHR? Good lord, did your classroom education prevent you from reading the news in the past decade?) MIGHT factor in.

I have real work to do. But if you want me to try to explain that whole "authority" bit to you again, let me know, and I'll try again tonight, with shorter words.

I've referred to the safe harbor principles twice now but you have obviously no clue what I'm talking about. You can find them here.

EU directives are binding to private actors when they are implemented so you claiming otherwise shows either lack of knowledge or a desire to get lost in semantics. I cited the ECHR as an example of right to privacy being considered part of natural law. I simply know this corpus better than its american counterpart, but for your leisure you can consult the american declaration of the rights and duties of man art V or the american convention on human rights art 11. Also relevant for the US are the OECD guidelines governing the protection of privacy and transborder flow of personal data, especially the use limitation principle.

The criteria for european law to apply is that the processor is 'established' here or 'makes use of equipment' located here. As far as I know Anet does not have a separate branch in europe, but I would argue they make use of equipment located here - that is, their servers. This still applies even if they have contracted the servers to a 3rd party.

I'm glad you at least admit that if other types of data were being published it might be a matter of privacy invasion. I've been trying to explain over some posts now that there is no clear cut line that divides non-vital information from sensitive information. The line is viewed differently from person to person. My whole point of voicing myself in this thread was to alert people that this publication is bordering to what might be said to be an invasion. The fact that several people have voiced concern attests to that. The fact that many people, including yourself, have had strong objections might indicate otherwise. Personally I view the latter with skepticism, many people have problems seeing how something may turn into a problem in the future. It is indeed hard to argue why the right to privacy is so important when you can't point to certain facts in the future, consult my earlier posts for more on this.

I also find it disturbing how you reason and argue. You use very loaded words to describe your counterparts and employ shady techniques in your arguing in a way which I frankly find unfit for a lawyer, leading me to question if you are what you claim.

Here are some of your other statements:

Quote:

It's pitiful to start citing freaking Euro human rights "law" (it's not even legitimate law in EUROPE FFS) to pressure Anet to make the HoM private. Especially considering you people are always talking trash about people in the US suing each other.

What makes you believe 'freaking Euro human rights "law"' is not legitimate in Europe? Not only is it legitimate, it has been elevated to constitutional status or near constitutional status in many countries.

The problem with people in the US suing each other is related to the 'penal element' added to damage claims. I don't see how pointing out that europeans criticise this is relevant to our discussion, though. If you are interested in the problem of excessive legal action in the US, you can check out this clip.

Quote:

Delete all of your characters and stop playing the game. Your character names will no longer be associated with an account, and your account will no longer have any character names associated with it. If you came back to the account, sure, the hall would probably still be there, with everything in it that you put there. But if you leave the account inactive, and toon-less, other people will have nothing to search for on the calculator.

This is an ad-hoc fix that simply won't do. The damage is done as the information is released. Imagine if the data concerned were credit card info, your personal name or similar. My principal claim was simply that making the HoM public was unnecessary and therefore should not have been done. It would likely be possible to add the calculator as an option in game or on the login-screen, or even with a personal 'cookie' referring to a webpage. I'm not a computer wizz but I believe it likely could have been implemented in a different way.

Quote:

Dude...he started talking about the right to privacy defined in the ECHR. That's neither reasonable, nor up to the standards he set in his original comments.

I mentioned the ECHR as an example of codified law based on natural law by your petition. I only got into the legal basis after someone else asked me for the legal basis for my reasoning, something I agreed to. I usually do not jump on my guns and call for legal action or claiming to be judicially trained for authority. I put forward my arguments to show that there IS a right to privacy(both in codified law, in human rights law and part of natural law) and that Anet might be wise to give it more emphasis. I personally don't mind my information being public on the HoM, but if they were to publish total time I've spent in game or other personal data I would strongly object. From a business perspective Anet would do wise to make a clear line here and reassure us that this type of publication won't happen again without our explicit consent. Buying products from a company you don't trust is a bad basis for making money.

Quote:

I have a HUGE problem with idiots who come along talking about Anet violating some mythical legal right to privacy by doing this. Freaking Europeans all mock the US for being so litigious, and yet you cry legal over petty stuff like this? Gimme a freaking break, ya babies.

I am an 'idiot' and the right to privacy is 'mythical'. Europeans are 'freaking' and apparently we 'mock the US'. Voicing concern on this issue is 'petty' and anyone disagreeing with you(The Lawyer) are 'babies'. Out of curiosity, is this how you argue in the court room or do you mentally reduce your age when posting on the internet?

Sankt Hallvard · Jan 02, 2011, 05:58 PM // 17:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snograt

In a nutshell: All data contained within Guild Wars is the property of ANet/NCSoft who are free to do whatever they wish with it.

You bought a license to play Guild Wars - you did not purchase any data.

Snograt, I've always held you in the highest esteem.

Personal data belongs to the individual. You do not think other companies can make public your shopping list on the internet? Say you just went to the supermarket and bought a bread, a milk, some apples, tampons for your sister, condoms for your brother and some drugs to treat an STD on a non-specified family member. Having your purchased goods go up on a webpage for all to see would constitute an invasion of privacy wouldn't you agree?

People will object I'm sure, but human rights are actually relevant for americans too.

Bellatrixa · Jan 02, 2011, 08:32 PM // 20:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sankt Hallvard

Snograt, I've always held you in the highest esteem.

Personal data belongs to the individual. You do not think other companies can make public your shopping list on the internet? Say you just went to the supermarket and bought a bread, a milk, some apples, tampons for your sister, condoms for your brother and some drugs to treat an STD on a non-specified family member. Having your purchased goods go up on a webpage for all to see would constitute an invasion of privacy wouldn't you agree?

People will object I'm sure, but human rights are actually relevant for americans too.

Ok, it works like this:

PERSONAL information does not include information about your in game character or in game achievements/details. It only refers to your REAL LIFE PERSONAL INFORMATION. A-Net would have the right to showcase a character/guild in a press release without your say so but they would not have the right to disclose your IRL information such as address, date of birth, email address etc. That is how data laws work. If tried to sue them about HoM being visible, you would be laughed out of court. They own all the rights to your account in terms of characters, titles, items, gold and can revoke that at any time. That is the user agreement that you sign. The only thing belonging to you is the information that you give to them when you sign up and the amendments you make to that information. They own the copyrights to all in game things, therefore they have the right to do what they will with it. In this case, they choose to use it to display your achievements in the HoM. If you don't like it, uninstall.

I honestly hope you are trolling because if you're serious about this, then you really need to re-read the user agreement again.

Wyndy · Jan 02, 2011, 10:11 PM // 22:11

Here's what I see as different from what GW has been in the past. To see someone's accomplishments, another player would need to see them in GW, depending on what you are displaying. When the HoM came out, one would need to be in your party to come visit your hall and your accomplishments. With the implementation of the calculator, anyone, not just another GW player, can view your accomplishments on the internet, whether you want to display them or not. I am not implying the legality of the change, only that it is a large difference from how GW has operated in the past. To this, I only ask that we have a say in the change. Let's put a box there that says I want to share or not.

Shadowhaze · Jan 02, 2011, 11:33 PM // 23:33

I agree you should be given the option to let it be visible to everyone or not.

Sankt Hallvard · Jan 03, 2011, 12:58 AM // 00:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bellatrixa

Ok, it works like this:

PERSONAL information does not include information about your in game character or in game achievements/details. It only refers to your REAL LIFE PERSONAL INFORMATION. A-Net would have the right to showcase a character/guild in a press release without your say so but they would not have the right to disclose your IRL information such as address, date of birth, email address etc. That is how data laws work. If tried to sue them about HoM being visible, you would be laughed out of court. They own all the rights to your account in terms of characters, titles, items, gold and can revoke that at any time. That is the user agreement that you sign. The only thing belonging to you is the information that you give to them when you sign up and the amendments you make to that information. They own the copyrights to all in game things, therefore they have the right to do what they will with it. In this case, they choose to use it to display your achievements in the HoM. If you don't like it, uninstall.

I honestly hope you are trolling because if you're serious about this, then you really need to re-read the user agreement again.

I'm not trolling btw, are you seriously under that impression? If people get so worked up over this I'll happily abstain from the debate, however.

Data that say something about you as a person and can be directly or indirectly linked to you are considered personal data. A detailed profile of how people have spent their time in game is considered "profiling" and is considered personal data.

I'm not sure what part of the user agreement you think I have missed? Things that I notice are

all from the privacy section of the user agreement)

Quote:

Personal Information does not include aggregated information that, by itself, does not permit the identification of individual persons (like statistics about how many persons visited our web site last month, or how many visitors are male and how many are female).

Antithetically information that permits identification is personal information, even as considered by Anet.

Quote:

Although your privacy is very important to us, due to legal rules beyond our control, we cannot fully ensure that your private communications and other Personal Information will not be disclosed to third parties.

Quote:

ArenaNet takes precautions to protect our users' information. When users submit sensitive information via our website, that information is protected both online and off-line.

Quote:

We have established and maintain reasonable security procedures to protect the confidentiality, security and integrity of your personal information.

This sounds like they take privacy seriously to me and I can't find anything stating a willingness to make more information than necessary public. All I'm saying is that on this background they should have considered implementing the calculator in another way more consistent with their willingness to be discrete and honest stated in the user agreement.

To use a metaphor: It is a scratch in the paint.

Bellatrixa · Jan 03, 2011, 01:08 AM // 01:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sankt Hallvard

Data that say something about you as a person and can be directly or indirectly linked to you are considered personal data. A detailed profile of how people have spent their time in game is considered "profiling" and is considered personal data.

If you honestly believe that then all rankings should be scrapped in Guild Wars and every game out there.

-rolls eyes-

They own your account, not you. They own your characters and achievements, not you. It is their intellectual property and they have the right to do with it what they wish. Personal information is what I stated before: information regarding you offline.

For someone who is allegedly so well read up on law, there's a massive hole in your argument right there. HoM is just another "rank" system.

-sighs-

Sankt Hallvard · Jan 03, 2011, 01:23 AM // 01:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bellatrixa

If you honestly believe that then all rankings should be scrapped in Guild Wars and every game out there.

-rolls eyes-

They own your account, not you. They own your characters and achievements, not you. It is their intellectual property and they have the right to do with it what they wish. Personal information is what I stated before: information regarding you offline.

For someone who is allegedly so well read up on law, there's a massive hole in your argument right there. HoM is just another "rank" system.

-sighs-

Namecalling or emoting rolleyes or sighs still do not count as arguments. Personal data is exactly not anyone else's intellectual property as you claim. It is inherent to the person they relate to and the holder has a right or an interest to their use. How I have spent my time online does in fact say something about how I have spent my time offline.

The difference with the rankings and similar is that these are obvious upon participation. The sole difference is that the publication of your various in-game achievements would NOT be made public on a website some 5 years into the game without explicit consent. It can be considered a breach of confidentiality.

Bellatrixa · Jan 03, 2011, 03:37 AM // 03:37

I'm sorry, I don't see where I called you anything there. I also apologise that you don't like the way I word things. Game data =/= personal data. Can you not comprehend that? Game data = your toons, their items, their titles... -headdesk- Therefore they have the right to do what they like as it is their intellectual property.

Look, I've played enough MMOs to know what the legal blurb says. It generally boils down to "Your ass is ours unless we give out real life details which people can track you down by. We reserve the right to delete your account and everything on it should we want to and if we want to use your account for our own ends, we can and will". There is also always a clause saying that features may be added or change and you will still have no rights to complain, therefore it is not a "breach of confidentiality". Still doesn't answer my question about existing rankings or those that are introduced in other games after someone has signed up (HoM calculator has been around for how long by now? It's also linked on the game site so there's no way of saying "Oh well I didn't know" because they'll say you didn't look through the site properly).

You claim to be a lawyer/law student/whatever and yet you know so little about the legalities of gaming? I'm sorry but you're taking this so far it's actually hilarious, especially with how uninformed you are. I'm no lawyer but I HAVE been witness to a lot of legal disputes with gaming publishers over private servers and therefore do kinda know what is THEIR property and what is YOURS. Your game data is on THEIR database. Therefore they can do what they like with it.

How can you not grasp that?

P.S. This is a VIDEO GAME you are arguing about.

P.P.S.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The User Agreement

(c) Rights to Use Accounts. By agreeing to the User Agreement you agree that you do not own either the Master Account or Game Account (collectively, the "Account") you use to access the service, the characters created on the Account and that NC Interactive stores on NC Interactive servers, the items stored on these servers, or any other data from which the servers and accounts are comprised. The Account you create is needed to login to the service as per section 4(b) and the fee that you pay is to access new Campaigns or acquire Additional Features.

Now you know who owns your game data. Clearly you didn't read the User Agreement or you just plain didn't understand it.

NerfHerder · Jan 03, 2011, 07:45 AM // 07:45

I dont mind that HoM is open to the public. It would be courteous to have them password protected. But, I dont want to make up a new password just for HoM(I have too many as it is). And most people will just use the same password they already use for GW and that would enable more opportunity to hack accounts.

thedukesd · Jan 03, 2011, 10:31 AM // 10:31

I don't think your in-game name is enough to hack your account (unless you use the same name as the one of your e-mail and your password is weak).
People don't have problems showing their obby armour and expensive minis and weapons and titles (to be read gwamm) so it's almost same situation as being able to see someone else hom on the net.

I disagree with the idea that someone account that is 50/50 and maybe has gwamm will be a target of hackers. You can get to 50/50 with relative cheap minis, your storage can be low on plats and without ectos or obby shards, no extreme expensive weapons in it (most of the weapons u need for hom can be oppressor that are extremely easy to get and will not cost u a single coin, in fact you will earn money by doing the quests).

The fact that someone account is 3/50 or 50/50 don't really tell how that person is actually playing. You will see noobs with 50/50 and pros with 3/50. I actually refuse to use cons, mainly cause my guild can't really make a guild party (u can hardly find 5 people online in the same time) and cause using cons with pugs usually = wasting useless money for a fail in 5-10 mins (cons will never compensate the fact that you are a noob, that you have no idea what to do in that area, that the tank is not tank and it's some sort of useless melee damage dealer (gloom hm as an example here), that you don't want to listen to the 2-3 players that know that area... ).

I personally helped a couple of players with ideas on how to get more points for hom without spending plats.

I didn't really read all the comments here but from what I read I didn't saw a solution on how to hide what u have in hom (as I said I didn't read all the comments so maybe i missed some where there were solutions). If they will want to allow hom to be private the best option will be to add an option in your own hom to make it private or not (probably at kimmes the historian) or a more drastic approach to change that calculator to be available only for you (being able to see it only by talking with kimmes the historian; let's just say that someone with the same accomplishments will see the exact same page as you see).

I'm kinda indifferent to this suggestion but an option to turn hom off from showing to all of players can't be too bad. Anyway first I want to see that we are allowed to add keiran in hom (it's a hero and as all the other heroes we should be allowed to add him), to see ethernal skillz being considered an pvp title (you pvp to get this title, you can't always pvp to get points but you have to pvp so it should be a pvp title).

helloeveryone · Jan 03, 2011, 12:08 PM // 12:08

i am 50/50 and used all my money on mini pets, weapons, party points, alcohol points, sweet points and a set of obsidian armour.
after that, all i m left with is 8k 255g till today. whoever checks that i m 50/50 and decides to hack into my account is in for a good surprise

Vallen · Jan 03, 2011, 12:50 PM // 12:50

Man why would anyone be so defensive about something like a HOM, or is it embarrassment? I reckon people are upset because after playing for so long and doing so much, they realise just how little they have achieved in the game aside from having fun

Freedom of information and all that so.... /notsigned

PS. Feel free to check me out, Vallen Nightstalker. No reason to be embarrassed

CrustyEarl · Jan 03, 2011, 08:18 PM // 20:18

Spending time to change silly things like this takes away from time getting out Derv Updates and Hero Updates, and Real Fixes that are needed. I can't believe there are 6 pages of back on forth on this topic....

Rivix · Jan 08, 2011, 10:40 PM // 22:40

No. Seeing as they are achievements and meant to be show off.

Kunder · Jan 10, 2011, 10:39 PM // 22:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by TalanRoarer

Just think about the people who dedicated their Kanaxais, Onis, IGs....

gfg lololololol

I do wish the HoM would list the actual minipet names. 'Unique Miniatures (x)' is not nearly as impressive as 'Vizu, Panda, Shiro'ken Assassin, etc' that should be showing under mine

. Not that I regret the minipet purchases, I don't care for extravagantly stupid looking weapons and crap; It's better than letting money go to waste sitting in storage while the economy is constantly inflating during a break from the game.