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South Korea criminalizes 'boosting' with new law
Boosting — basically one person playing on another's account to rank them up — is going to be a criminal offense in South Korea with some stiff punishments awaiting the booster.
The new measure comes courtesy of an amendment to the country's Game Industry Promotion Act, reports The Daily Dot. That law was passed in June 2017. This new measure was developed in collaboration with the video games industry in the country and will punish boosters with a fine of up to 20 million won, which is roughly $18,000. They also get a two-year suspended prison sentence.
[...] The act goes into effect in six months, and defines a "proxy game" as "an act that interferes with the normal operation of the game by arranging or providing the service to acquire the score or performance of the game in a way that is not approved by the game-related business operated."
If you pay me in Bitcoin, I will post comments for you using your SN login.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday December 10 2018, @08:40PM (9 children)
First off, South Korea is fucking ridiculous about policing games like this. I see it as a violation of civil rights. Why can't I let anyone that I want use a product or service I ostensibly own? Can you get arrested for sharing a rice cooker FFS? Games, and their licensing are no different, unless South Korea has zero concept about some like the First Sale Doctrine. Real live matches don't allow this behavior since you see the person playing, and cheating in that case shouldn't be criminal, but civil. So this is related to subs for MMOs that are owned, but you can get a suspended prison sentence (which means being labeled a criminal forever in South Korea) because you allowed somebody else to play? That's intellectually and ethically offensive, and indicative of South Korean society taking gaming way, way, too damn seriously. It's weird that they have such a problem with it that their nation needs to monitor the youth's playing habits.
Secondly, Online gaming and Twitch is fucking ridiculous :) They're treating this like it's akin to doping in sports or something. The reality is that a Twitch "celebrity" can be as fake as anyone in Hollywood. Who thinks all the big name comics write all of their own material? That TV stars come up with their own lines? I'm laughing my ass off that they're are people disillusioned now about their video game heroes.
I remember a day when you actually played the video games yourself. Quaint huh?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday December 10 2018, @09:38PM (7 children)
How do you know that gamers have made it big? "Doping" scandals have come to the world of eSports:
https://www.businessinsider.com/esports-doping-scandal-investigated-by-espns-otl-2016-1 [businessinsider.com]
https://www.ibtimes.com/esports-drug-testing-update-esl-announces-list-banned-substances-including-adderall-2050245 [ibtimes.com]
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/07/25/0148248 [soylentnews.org]
It would be cool if new nootropics development was spurred on by video games, e.g. a drug that "speeds up" your brain so that it seems like time has slowed down.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Monday December 10 2018, @10:03PM (1 child)
Wow. Just Wow. That's really funny. My first thought was all the energy drinks. That stuff happened decades ago in the video arcades. Except it was called Jolt Cola. Nobody considered weed a competitive advantage, at least not when you had to stand at an arcade machine and be fairly physical. Weed was pretty much the background atmosphere and nobody considered it that much.
By all means, if this stupidity results in a brain boost pill I could take to do my job, all the better. My dream is to be like one of those suits in Ghost in the Machine that split their hands apart and interact with keyboards and surfaces with what seemed like dozens of fingers. If this gets us a few steps of the way there, then I'm happy.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 10 2018, @10:46PM
They pretty much threw weed onto the banned list because muh Prohibition 2.0. Not sure cannabis is giving anyone a gaming performance advantage. It's the Adderall, friend of many college students taking exams, that seems at least plausible, if unproven.
Apparently, Modafinil [wikipedia.org] has seen some use.
There are a number of substances [mindlabpro.com] (warning: supplement advertisement) that are regularly thrown in to energy drinks or supplements due to one claim or another about it making you alert and attentive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetam [wikipedia.org]
All in all, most of the nootropics that transhumanists like to talk about don't seem to work very well or have a great temporary or semi-permanent affect on congnition. Caffeine is an obvious drug of choice for pro gamers, along with at least half the planet. Some of the scheduled stuff like cocaine or meth might have an impact but are too harmful or could derail your life.
A better option might be transcranial direct-current stimulation, which has been shown to boost [soylentnews.org] learning [soylentnews.org]. I'm not sure if this would help with the competition phase or only during training, but maybe someone could hide a tDCS setup under their gamer beanie or fedora while competing in a tournament.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:37AM (4 children)
>e.g. a drug that "speeds up" your brain so that it seems like time has slowed down.
You don't even need the drug - there are a few techniques that can help you consciously alter your perception of the flow of time. Doesn't help with your reflexes, it still takes half a second minimum for a signal to get from your eyes to your fingers, but it can give you more opportunity to notice, consider, and react to things.
I would presume the total amount of intellectual effort you can apply per second doesn't change dramatically - i.e. your neurons are still firing at about the same speed, but it seems like you can use it a lot more effectively.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:24AM (3 children)
It's not a half second. Most martial artists I know are in the quarter second range.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:40AM (2 children)
Note that I'm talking specifically about *fingers* - it takes less time to get a signal to your bicep for example, less still to get to the shoulder. So reaction times will vary based on exactly how you measure them.
Pretty sure they'd still fail the "half dollar test" - brace their hand motionless on a table with the midpoint of a dollar bill suspended halfway between their thumb and fore-finger, then drop the bill while they try to close their fingers fast enough to grab it. Can't be done - the nerve-signal propagation delay is greater than the time it takes for the bill to fall half it's length.
There's lots of things you can do to improve your effective reaction time - mostly revolving around getting better at anticipating things. But I've never heard any suggestion that you can actually improve your nerve signal propagation speed.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:27AM (1 child)
Check this out:
https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/statistics [humanbenchmark.com]
Looks like most people are at around a quarter second.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:53PM
I stand corrected. Just looked up the dollar bill "test" again, and apparently I misremembered 0.2 seconds as 1/2 second.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @10:45PM
You down own a service. You own a right to use for the contracted time period subject to the TOS you agreed to. Now, should it be a *crime* no, of course not and this is stupid. Should it get your service terminated for violation of said rules, sure.