Cheating

[Deepti M.]

There is a forum site that is really making me mad. (Not this one of course. ;)) It has similar smileys, but they always cheat. They use programs, and give answers and things like that. Once I've already submitted my answer, I go on there to check if my answer is right. If it's not, of course I'm bummed out, but I'd never cheat to get the trophy or avatar. I earned it all myself. How come TNT doesn't delete the site? I know it's not theirs, but couldn't they sue them or something? I have completely stopped using the site all together, even though I didn't really "cheat"

[Strategos]

How come TNT doesn't delete the site? I know it's not theirs, but couldn't they sue them or something

Could they sue them? Probably not. You see, unless the owners of the forum are providing the answers, the forum is protected by various laws, as they're not themselves responsible for the content. They could ask the forum owners to delete all answers, but they're not required to oblige. The law here isn't really on TNT's side.

[Lia Seeya]

If they do post those answers and things, I think the only thing TNT can do is actually freeze the accounts on the Neopets site of the people who post those answers and use programs. Unless they find something more concrete to use (like copyright infringement, etc), the site might just stay up there. :(

 

It makes one wonder about those Neopets sites that are more questionable in terms of cheating in the game. *cough* Such as those that exchange real money for NeoPoints. Is that legal?

[Denisa]

Is that legal?

Of course not..it like a jungle out there..i think i once saw someone asking like 200,000 REAL usd for their account..were they insane ??And does anyone actually accept to buy such a thing..One thing I can say,there are some weird people out there.

[Strategos]

If they do post those answers and things, I think the only thing TNT can do is actually freeze the accounts on the Neopets site of the people who post those answers and use programs.

The problem is, it's hard for TNT to link the usernames. Nevertheless, I wish TNT the best of luck in doing this.

 

It makes one wonder about those Neopets sites that are more questionable in terms of cheating in the game. *cough* Such as those that exchange real money for NeoPoints. Is that legal?

It's not criminal, but it is against the Terms of Service, and TNT freezes those accounts, if they can catch them.

[onime_no_kai]

There is a forum site that is really making me mad. (Not this one of course. ;)) It has similar smileys, but they always cheat. They use programs, and give answers and things like that. Once I've already submitted my answer, I go on there to check if my answer is right. If it's not, of course I'm bummed out, but I'd never cheat to get the trophy or avatar. I earned it all myself. How come TNT doesn't delete the site? I know it's not theirs, but couldn't they sue them or something? I have completely stopped using the site all together, even though I didn't really "cheat"

 

While I find that site (or rather what they're doing, since I'm not sure which one you're referring to :P) utterly awful, I'm not sure I would necessarily want TNT to have control over what's posted there. Reason? If they can control that help site, what's to stop them from controlling *any* help site? The people on that site *are* intentionally cheating of course, and deserve to be frozen for it -- IF TNT can find the least shred of evidence onsite that they cheated. But if TNT can go there and freeze them for what they do there (assuming they can link the UN), what's to stop them from freezing someone *here* for saying something they don't like? I'm specifically thinking of the RoS plot where people used that solver that wasn't allowed before anyone *knew* it wasn't allowed, and admitted using it in the course of asking for help here -- would it be fair if TNT could freeze people for that? (Or if they could freeze us for other things that would be disciplined if it were done on the Neoboards; like the RL chat here. Or, say: talking freely about CGers, and how they work so people can understand what's really happening and what's really going to help protect them vs. what isn't, and complaining about how dissatisfied we are about the way TNT is handling the situation.) I certainly don't think so. Just as in real life, sometimes protecting some really awful stuff is the only way you can make sure that good stuff is protected too.

 

It's not criminal, but it is against the Terms of Service, and TNT freezes those accounts, if they can catch them.

 

Hm...I've been wrong before, but actually I'm pretty darn sure that would qualify as copyright infringement at the very least, as those people are making real money from things that are not their legal intellectual property; which would allow TNT legal recourse if they chose to take it (and I believe they would, at least in the really big operations. As long as it doesn't cost them more money to prosecute the people doing it than than they can get in compensation, I can't imagine they wouldn't go after people who are illegally making money off them -- or, depending on the site it's been done through, they might sue that site for allowing copyright laws to be violated, since those sites do have an obligation to not allow that sort of thing and are substantially more likely than an individual to be able to actually pay whatever Viacom is awarded in damages. IIRC EBay has been sued a couple times already for that reason by other companies.)

[Strategos]

Or if they could freeze us for other things that would be disciplined if it were done on the Neoboards; like the RL chat here. Or, say: talking freely about CGers, and how they work so people can understand what's really happening and what's really going to help protect them vs. what isn't, and complaining about how dissatisfied we are about the way TNT is handling the situation.

Well, let's handle these hypotheticals one at a time. The RL chat is prohibited on Neopets because they want it to be it's own world. That doesn't mean they don't want it, they just don't want it on Neopets. As for CGers, they do allow information about them to be given out on Neopets (at least on petpages), so their's no reason to prevent them on here. And finally, TNT takes criticism all the time on the Neoboards. There's no reason they'd freeze us before them. So while your worries are reasonable, it's extremely, extremely unlikely that just be freezing members of one site for cheating, they'd freeze members of other sites for other activity.

 

Hm...I've been wrong before, but actually I'm pretty darn sure that would qualify as copyright infringement at the very least, as those people are making real money from things that are not their legal intellectual property

I don't think so. It's possible, but since everything is staying on the Neopets site, the criminal case falls apart rather easily. As for a civil case, that would be possible, except that in their T&C, Neopets says the punishment is freezing only. They do have monetary fines for other violations, so once again, it would be very tricky.

[onime_no_kai]

Lol, yeah, I went a little overboard on the hypotheticals. :P I guess my basic point was just that, if Neo were to be able to control the content of an offsite help site (or punish people based solely on that content), how far could that end up going? Which is why they can't really do much about people who cheat offsite until there's some kind of proof onsite that they cheated, and in many ways that's really a good thing.

 

 

I don't think so. It's possible, but since everything is staying on the Neopets site, the criminal case falls apart rather easily. As for a civil case, that would be possible, except that in their T&C, Neopets says the punishment is freezing only. They do have monetary fines for other violations, so once again, it would be very tricky.

 

Indeed. Most of what I know about such things is fairly general, so I have no idea whether they could get anything to stick based on the way the laws and their ToS is written in this specific case. I'd still be inclined to think if they were really motivated to, they could find *some* clause they could argue with, but maybe not. And even if they could, I have no idea if the effort and cost of going after people would be worth it to Viacom (I suspect not, which is probably why they don't at least try harder.) *shrugs* It'd just be nice to see some of those people get what's coming to them, but I have no doubt that it'll probably never happen; if for no other reason than that if it were really likely that they'd get punished, they probably wouldn't be doing it in the first place, they'd just go somewhere else that looked like an easier target.

[Deepti M.]

I suppose they can't sue, except those people who trade NP for actual money. But it'd be really nice to see them frozen. Why can't neopets just freeze their IP address and be done with it?

[hrtbrk]

Because it would take them thirty seconds to get a new IP address and go back to what they were doing? haha

 

I honestly don't see giving out answers being that huge of a deal. I'd rather TNT work on CGers, restocking bots, and other codes that make users acheieve game scores of 341,824 when the rest of the pack has a high score of 2,335 lol.

 

And for the record, TDN posts some answers to some things here too - should all of us be frozen because we cannot figure out the crossword, daily puzzle and Popsicle trivia? haha (Yes, I know they're not the same as a Lenny Conundrum - but the point still stands).

[Masaryk]

I honestly don't see giving out answers being that huge of a deal. I'd rather TNT work on CGers, restocking bots, and other codes that make users acheieve game scores of 341,824 when the rest of the pack has a high score of 2,335 lol.

I agree. I would really rather that TNT focus a little (read - lot) harder on eradicating the cheating that makes Neopets less fun for everyone. If people want to be foolish and win LESS neopoints by sharing their answers, so be it. Yes, it sucks for people like me, who like to solve their own puzzles, but it's not horrible. I still agree that it would be really nice, though, if no one was purposely cheating at any of the games.

 

Besides, most cheaters eventually get caught. It's just too bad when people get frozen for cheating when they didn't, while other blatant cheaters get away with it.

 

And for the record, TDN posts some answers to some things here too - should all of us be frozen because we cannot figure out the crossword, daily puzzle and Popsicle trivia? haha (Yes, I know they're not the same as a Lenny Conundrum - but the point still stands).

However, there is no rules preventing the sharing of crossword answers, but there is a rule against sharing LC hints or solutions.

[onime_no_kai]

To add to what others have said, I *think* the main reason that sharing Faerie Crossword and Daily Trivia answers is ok while sharing LC answers isn't is probably that everyone gets the same (small) prize for the FC and the trivia regardless of how many people play, whereas the prize won from LC is directly related to how many people answer correctly.

 

It's just too bad when people get frozen for cheating when they didn't, while other blatant cheaters get away with it.

 

That's always puzzled me. o_O It's not super common, but I know of several people who have been frozen for "cheating at flash games" when they did absolutely nothing of the sort (including poor Xepha, IIRC :(); yet I often see scores on the High Scores tables that are either clearly impossible or very suspect that stay there for *weeks* without being touched. It makes me wonder how they check scores (how much of it is automated and how much is actual people) and who ultimately decides if a score was attained by cheating or not -- their system clearly needs tweaking, but I'm mildly curious as to whether the flaw is in the programs or in human error. Probably a bit of each, I suppose.

[melissachaplain]

i am particularly annoyed at the people who use Autobuyer hacks when restocking. (this mainly happens on half price day) I was getting so frustrated with trying to restock yesterday on half price day. Im no novice at it either. as soon as items appeared they were gone within a single click. I hate people who try to ruin it for everyone else doing the right thing.