Quote:You agree that if you host or operate a private server of a Nexon game or host or operate a hack site that sells hacks to a Nexon game or if you distribute, disseminate, design, code, moderate and/or provide free or paid access to private forums that sell or distribute hacks, or assist in the design of any private servers or third party programs (such as hacks) that alter the game play of any Nexon game, you will have the unconditional obligation to pay Nexon America Inc. the sum of One Hundred Thousand ($100,000) Dollars for each such program (including patches) and versions thereof as liquidated damages. You also agree that if you use such a program to play any of the Nexon games, or engage in the use of a private server, you will have the unconditional obligation to pay Nexon America Inc. the sum of One Thousand ($1,000) Dollars as liquidated damages for each time you use such a program, which shall be due and payable immediately upon notification to you of said infraction.

Cyanne Wrote:The $100000 one doesn't really matter because there's no real proof that a host of a private server or hacking website actually agreed to the terms of service in the first place. The $1000 one for hacking though... it would be funny if they tracked people down and demanded a thousand dollars.

Sn1perJohnE Wrote:Nexon - "money plox!"

Hacker - "do i look like i have $1000 dollars? Im hacking a fracking free game!"

Nexon - "you pay me now?"

Hacker - "......"

loddlaen Wrote:That made me LOL when I read it. There is no way in hell that would stand up in a Court of Law. It would be like me writing:
"By reading this post, you agree to let me punch you in the face"
>_>

haha01haha01 Wrote:You are not allowed to enforce everything you put in a contract. the only thing they can use this part to is to sue private servers and hackers for damages caused by them. the problem is that the financial damage caused by hackers divided by the number of hackers causing it is extremely low.

DrRusty Wrote:You know what Nexon is gonna say to that? Look at every single fansite, forum, and their own forum. Look at how many people complain about/have quit because of hackers.

haha01haha01 Wrote:ofcourse, but how big is this financial damage, in one year? lets exaggerate and say $500,000 (its much, much less). how many hackers, glitchers, and meso sellers (im ignoring private servers here, since we know that they CAN and DID sue some for the damage caused) are responsible to this damage each year? at least 300,000. so lets say, yesterday nexon caught all 2008's hackers and sued them for all 2008's damages. every one will pay about $1. now do you see why its BS?

DrRusty Wrote:Say that you're right, and they were caused $500,000 in total damages. That $100,000 is well within the $500,000 range. They can tie one distributor and say "you gave out hacks to thousands of people, and thus caused us a huge financial loss". That's all it's going to take.

DamyouAL Wrote:anyways how can they sue a 13 yrs old? or lets put a 9 yrs who plays the game

eos367 Wrote:Penal damages are not legally enforceable, it's only there to scare people and any attempt at using it in a court would simply result in it being declared invalid and unenforceable.

A contract may specify liquidated damages for breaching that contract, but those damages must be within the realm of reasonability for actual damage the breach has caused. You can't insert a clause like that to "punish" someone for breaking the contract, only to recoup damages directly caused by thier breach.

Nexon actually royally screws themselves on their free to play motto here - because if it's free to play MapleStory, how can you can be causing them a loss when there is no monitary expectation expressed in your usage of the service? Unless you were doing something that demonstrably impugned upon thier image, violated their intelectual property, or interrupted their service and therefore it's potential to make money they can't sue you for breaching their ToS because you're not taking any actions that cost them money for them to seek to recover.

The only items I can think of off hand that qualify in the latter criteria there are Denial Of Service attacks, NX Fraud, and possibly widescale disconnect hacks. Running a private server would be illegal because it violates their intelectual property, reverse engineering their proprietary formats wouldn't be illegal in and of itself, nor would packet sniffing them to find out what they're communicating to your machine, or in memory disassembly/debugging to see what their application is doing.
All those are legal and can not directly hurt their profitibility unless you then use the information gained from any of those actions to directly compete with, or hinder, thier operations. Packet Editing would be tampering with transmissions and is subject to local legal rulings.

Also, I should clarify that accessing a private server could not result in suit for damages, only actually running one. This is comparable to a person patronizing a bar that hasn't paid for a performance license for the music it's playing. The bar is culpable for damages because they're not legally entitled to play the music without having licensed it from the recording industry, but the patrons can not also be fined for having heard the music. This is also similar to the legality of downloading pirated music vs distributing pirated music. It's unethical to do so, since it's contributing to an abuse of intellectual property, but the actual crime is making it available, not using it.

 Sources & More Information

1. Cheeseman, H (2006). Contemporary Business and Online Law. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
   
2. Liquidated Damages. (2009). In American Law Encyclopedia Vol 6 [Web]. from http://law.jrank.org/pages/8310/Liquidated-Damages.html
   

DamyouAL Wrote:this is a way of nexon to try and scare hackers
not like it matters people most of the time use fake info,
anyways how can they sue a 13 yrs old? or lets put a 9 yrs who plays the game


this is stupid