Edward Castronova is one heck of an interesting economist. On his site he runs weekly averages of the prices of MMORPG virtual identities and virtual currency for sale on eBay.

He recently blogged the following:

July 30, 2003, 11:55 pm, Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas. In a mock trial convened before U.S. Circuit Court Judge Philip M. Pro, the Hacker Court’s jury accepted the proposition that the virtual items destroyed during the hack of an online video game constituted real loss. The jury hung on the question of whether a certain ‘Weasel’ actually conspired with a certain ‘Terron’ to hack into a game server and destroy items, so no verdict was reached. However, the value of the potential loss of the hack was not in dispute…

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