Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Issue: 73   Editor: NyxxieALWAYSRETURNS


Dirty Properties ryneb
The question at hand is what exactly constitutes a "dirty" property. From bullet factories to casinos, all properties have been called dirty at one point or another. But what does a property being called dirty actually mean?

The most obvious classification of dirty is properties that were gained by illegal means; IE exploiting a bug or using identity theft to gain control of a property. Any properties claimed using either of these methods are clearly dirty and no one can argue against that. In situations such as these the staff should step in to correct a wrong. But beyond truly cheating to gain a property the method for determining whether a property is dirty or not becomes a matter of opinion.

One of these gray methods for obtaining property is scamming. The most prominent way of scamming is to offer points, but instead of using points in the escrow the scammer attempts to trick the property owner by submitting cash instead of points in the hope that the owner doesn't realize they'll be receiving a few hundred dollars for their casino. Does this really make a property dirty though? Common sense says no. The owner has to agree to the escrow, and if they are not thorough enough to simply check what the other person is sending and realize they are going to be scammed then it is their own fault. Scamming is not against the TOS, and if a property owner falls for one then they need to simply chalk it as a loss or take action to get their property back. To call it dirty though is simply ridiculous.

Another gray area is properties that were shot for. Shooting is completely legitimate and any property shot for simply is not dirty. Sure there are claims of dupe shooters, but if someone is able to successfully evade the family account rules that are pretty well enforced, be able to get to a high enough rank, and have enough bullets to make shooting a property owner worthwhile then props to them because that would take a lot of time and effort. If the account that shot for the property broke no family account rules then technically it can't be proven to be a dupe. We all have access to numerous IP's at friends houses, school, internet café's, or the library and if we chose we could have accounts on each of these IP's and while the accounts would all technically be dupes, if no family account rules were broken then they are all legitimate accounts. Is using a dupe that can't be proven to be a dupe ethical? Not really, but we're playing a mafia game, who really cares about ethics?

But when it all boils down the only thing that really matters is the previous owners opinion of whether their property was obtained fairly or not. No one can stop someone from calling a property dirty, even if its not, and if they have the means to get it back then is it really worth it to buy a property and know you might get killed? That's up to each person to decide for themselves.