User:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Victim's Renewal Fund

This is a placeholder for the germ of an idea that will go into the feedback space. Currently, it is half-baked (or less) and not ready for serious discussion. If you found your way here and feel an urgent need to stop me before I do something foolish, I'm happy to read constructive comments on the talk page (and incorporate them into the idea). (I'm not altogether sure that the idea is worth the time I'm investing, but there seems to be a lot of interest in helping out those who have suffered from account thievery.)  &mdash; Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 03:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Background
Recently, there's been much talk regarding how to help victims of hacking restore their stolen loot. There are extreme logistic problems for ANet to track any individual item or gold piece (game companies simply cannot afford to invest in the level of detective work required).

Historical Example
Several communities (notably, the City of New York) have, from time to time, offered Victim's Funds that would go to help getting those suffering from certain serious crimes get back on their feet. Rather than attempting to "make victims whole" in any sort of legal sense, these funds were used on a discretionary basis to help the victims pay for things that (a) they might not be able to afford after their loss and/or (b) they might not have had to fund if not for the crime. The hope was that this would reduce the number of people who were twice victimized (once by the crime and once by its aftermath). For example, family members of a murder victim might receive monies to pay for funeral costs (or cleaning services); robbery victims might receive funds to pay for medical costs; car theft victims might receive funds to pay for transportation.

Assumptions
This suggestion makes the following assumptions:
 * Using currently available resources, ANet is able to distinguish players who are legitimate victims of hacking.
 * ANet's lawyers can craft language that allows ANet to distribute funds as it sees fit, acknowledging that not everyone will receive help.
 * ANet is able to publicize the criteria and amounts to restore to victims (see below for examples)
 * Enough longtime players would be willing to donate to this restoration fund.
 * Players would have to acknowledge that items would never be truly restored and lost characters would have to be recreated.

Creating the Fund

 * ANet would create special accounts to which other players could donate to. Perhaps this could be done through NPCs in port cities or perhaps they could be hosted by community volunteers.
 * Players would visit these NPCs (or special accounts) and offer items or gold that they wish to donate.
 * ANet would limit the types of items to prevent issues around storage limitations.
 * If desired, ANet could limit contributions to gold alone (as this would make bookkeeping and storage considerably easier).

Distribution of Funds

 * Players and ANet would have to recognize that distribution of the fund is solely at ANet's discretion.
 * ANet should recognize that publicizing the criteria for use of the fund would help all players see it as a reasonable alternative to leaving players to their own devices after a theft.
 * Before victims could benefit from the fund, they would need to show ANet that they have taken substantive measures to prevent a recurrence (this might involve creation of new email accounts, proof of changing of passwords, results of anti-virus scans...or whatever would be easy for ANet to use).
 * The ANet team(s) responsible for identifying thefts could, at their discretion, identify victims who would benefit from the fund.
 * ANet would authorize distribution of funds based on criteria to be determined (see below for examples).

Examples of allocation rubric
This is an example of how ANet could use roughly objective criteria to determine how much to provide to the victims.


 * 1) ANet defines a unit of restoration. For example, one unit might equal: 5 runes/insignias, 5 stacks of common mats, 1 stack of rare mats, 1 weapon, 10 platinum.
 * 2) ANet determines how many units would be restored per character for victims of theft. For example, 1 unit per toon.
 * 3) ANet determines how many units would be restored if characters were also deleted. For example 1 additional unit per toon.

Limited funds
Since the funds would be generated solely by donations, it's possible that they would run out before some victims receive anything. ANet would have to decide whether these people would be place on waiting list (and receive help once the fund is solvent again) or if the fund only distributes benefits when there's enough stored (so that some victims would suffer from poor timing).