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Isn't selling gold.... illegal ?
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Post by
Squishalot
Lol wow dude I dont know how much reasoning you need but here it is:
Here is your citation, enjoy!
Ok champ, let's see:
In 2006 a spokesperson for the Australian Government stated normal earned income rules also apply to income from the sale of virtual goods.
Meaning: Any real-life cash obtained from the sale of virtual goods (including gold) is treated as taxable income. This means that 'selling' virtual goods is permitted.
The Chinese State banned using virtual currency to buy real-world items in 2009 but not the reverse.
Meaning: You can't use WoW gold to purchase a car, but you can use real cash to purchase virtual items (including gold). This means that 'buying' virtual goods is permitted.
A Korean high court's 2010 ruling means that exchanging virtual currency for real money is legal in the country, although subject to taxation.
Meaning: You can purchase virtual currency (i.e. WoW gold) for real money, but such trades are taxable. This means that buying and selling gold is permitted.
All the others relate to 'concerns' and no tangible laws.
This only demonstrates that trading of virtual currency is perfectly legal.
Also check this out dude!
What exactly was that link supposed to demonstrate? Based on the amount of 'reasoning' in the first link you've provided, it looks like you just shoved 'gold farming' into Google and picked out the first link and didn't actually read it.
Oh wait, you did.
In addition I'll give you some logic as well:
$10 is in your pocket> $10 is in gold farmers pocket> 100g is in WoW characters pocket.
Gold cannot be reconfigured back into money so the cycle ends and therefore not continuous.
The money cycle stops at the gold farmer's pocket.
Scenario A)
You have $10. You pay a gold farmer $10 and he gives you a pair of jeans. He now has $10 and you have a pair of jeans.
Scenario B)
You have $10. You pay a gold farmer $10 and he crafts you a Vial of the Sands. He now has $10 and you now have a Vial of the Sands.
Scenario C)
You have $10. You pay a gold farmer $10 and he gives you 10,000g in WoW. He now has $10 and you have 10k gold.
Scenario D)
You have $10. You pay Blizzard $10 and they give you 10,000g in WoW. They now have $10 and you have 10k gold.
All four of these cases are identical as far as the money cycle goes. You have $10, and you give it to the gold farmer / Blizzard in exchange for something. That something can be real or virtual.
I already said that and more in my post above too, read it again.
It was wrong then, and it's still wrong now too.
Also dude chillax its just a game, I doubt we actually need some guy working on Wall street to tell us how the economy works;
Apparently
you
do if you think money mysteriously vanishes when gold is purchased. You'd think that the world economy would've collapsed by now with all the gold buying going on in WoW and Second Life and Everquest and all the other MMOs. Oh noes, the money cycle ended! The world is going to end! Maybe the Government needs to print more money to keep the money cycle going again!
I mean, if you don't understand what I'm trying to tell you based off the basic understandings of the way economy works then I don't what to tell ya.
Or you're just plain wrong.
In other words, you dont have to be a "professional" to explain your general opinion, heck I even gave you a bit extra.
Of course not, your
opinion
claim can be (and is!) factually wrong. And the bit extra can be (and is!) wrong too.
Chew on it and if you don't like it then find a professional to explain it to you, otherwise thats all you gonna get on the Wowhead forums, if you want any better go look in a newspaper. No offense Squishalot but its just a game bro. :D
Real money isn't a game. Neither is stupidity and the spread of misinformation. But, you know, don't worry about the fact you're trying to argue something illogical and incorrect, that commerce
student
could tell you is wrong. After all, to you, it's just a game. "
Chillax
" and get out of this thread.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
@Squish
Not sure I really want to get involved in this thread, but I think the matter isn't that it's illegal to sell virtual goods, but it's illegal to sell virtual goods that don't belong to you.
If you give a gold seller $10 and he gives you a pair of Jeans, that's legal. If he gives you a pair of jeans with a copywritten logo, which he has failed to legally obtain permission to use, failed to pay royalties on, and fraudulently used to represent the jeans as being made by the company that has the logo, then it is illegal.
Or, for a more accurate comparison, lets say Joe writes a program that lets you keep better track of your finances. He takes all the steps to make sure he has all legal rights to this program, but then gives copies to all of his friends to use, after making them sign agreements that say that in using that program, they acknowledge that they cannot use it to make money and they acknowlede that, while they are allowed to use the program as much as they want, they have no legal ownership of the program. Then Frank, who has legal access to the program through signing that agreement, decides that he is going to incorporate it into a website, and charge people to use the program on that site. Frank is both violating a binding contract that he signed in order to use the program, and he is infringing on the intellectual property rights of the Joe, who actually owns the rights to the program. Hence, illegal.
The reason many of these companies never get shut down, is that it's hard to enforce copywrites overseas, escpecially in countries where the local government doesn't feel that enforcing them is a priority. Disney has a lot of issues with this overseas, and I know from personal experience that you can buy bootleg copies of American movies, before they're even out of theatres, in the mall in some countries.
Yes, there are laws in place to allow for the trading of virtual goods for real money. That doesn't negate the fact that someone has to actually have a claim of ownership to what they're selling, be it real or virtual.
Post by
Squishalot
@Squish
Not sure I really want to get involved in this thread, but I think the matter isn't that it's illegal to sell virtual goods, but it's illegal to sell virtual goods that don't belong to you.
It's not a bad place to be, in this thread, as long as you don't mind admitting that you're wrong when it's shown to you.
I'd agree with you, except that the gold isn't being 'sold'. No ownership is being claimed. All gold sellers and buyers acknowledge that Blizzard owns the gold. What the gold sellers and buyers are doing is trading the user rights to that gold owned by Blizzard.
To demonstrate: I have a copy of WoW. I can sell access to my account to another person once I choose to stop playing. The characters are the property of Blizzard, but they are linked to my account. The account itself is the property of Blizzard, but the monthly fee that we pay allows us to 'rent' usage of the account. By the buyer agreeing to maintain the monthly fee and by paying me the cost I'm demanding, he/she can take up the 'rent' usage of the account. Characters and items are still owned by the game owner (i.e. Blizzard).
All of the laws implicitly acknowledge by not really caring about the technical ownership of the data, but looking at who has rights / access to the item / currency. So a court in China doesn't really care about the fact that Blizzard owns the gold, it cares about the fact that person A has the right to use the gold, and that they're selling the right to use it.
Buying and selling virtual goods is not in and of itself illegal (with respect to most trade / commerce laws), even if they are owned by a game creator. However, Blizzard can take up a civil torts case against gold buyers / sellers for violation of their terms of use (EULA). This is the equivalent of your intellectual property argument. But, going back to the key point of contention with darkpaw, it doesn't stop Blizzard from selling its own gold, providing that it allows for it in the EULA.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
I agree that Blizzard could absolutely sell it's own gold, if it chose to. However, I have a question about your argument about selling the right to use Blizzard's intellectual property- in terms of account ussage, gold etc.
They have you agree to the terms of service, and those terms of service put conditions on the use of their property. If you violate those terms of service by, say, selling or giving away the rights to them, don't you nullify the agreement and lose the right to use the intellectual property yourself?
Aka- if your position is based on the idea that someone who has the right to use intellectual property of a third party automatically has the right to transfer those rights of use to another party, doesn't a contract that recinds that right of use as soon as you try to trade it for money or transfer account ownership to a third party, mean that the original person loses their right to use the intellectual property as soon as they attempt to make the transaction? Wouldn't they then no longer have any claim to the access rights they were selling, having immediatly lost the right to use the gold and account they're trying to transfer, by violating their "rental" agreement?
Since you use rent as an example, i'll use it too. If I sign a lease on an appartment, that lets me have the right to use that space as long as I pay rent, the landlord can still put conditions on the lease. Many leases say that the original tenant does not have the right to sublet the space to someone else. If they do, their lease becomes null and void, and they can be thrown out of the appartment. Blizzard says no subletting, or they take back the account and all the gold in it.
Post by
TheReal
Pardon the interruption, but I wanted to correct one thing that is probably my biggest pet peeve.
Fact: Always true
Opinion: Cannot be true and cannot be false
False Claim: Always false
Please don't tell people their opinions are wrong.
Post by
wintermark
Tell your "friend" that it's a stupid tax.
^ This
*highfives Porcell*
Post by
Squishalot
@ Elhonna - it's still a torts issue. The key point is that if Blizzard wanted, they could legalise gold selling, because there are no legal or economic problems with it.
Consider darkpaw's original statement:
Personally, I wish Blizz would just fight the bill and finally just sell gold themselves (if they are not illegal doing it already) they'd make SO much money it'd be insane. Something simple like "realm transfer a character and get 100g free" or " $10=100g per" would make an excellent bargain imo.
Reason why Blizz will not allow this is because
it goes against some kind of goverment law
... Thing is
money cannot be reconfigured into something non physical without it being reconfigured into something physcial again
.
Both of these two statements are wrong. My aim was to address those statements, not to look at the question of gold selling generally.
Edit: One interesting thing about IP law is that IP holders are the ones to bring forward cases relating to it. You can't have something that is illegal in and of itself without the action of an IP holder. It's very much like contracts law in that sense.
Pardon the interruption, but I wanted to correct one thing that is probably my biggest pet peeve.
Fact: Always true
Opinion: Cannot be true and cannot be false
False Claim: Always false
Please don't tell people their opinions are wrong.
Apologies, I'll be more specific.
His opinion is not actually an opinion, and instead a false claim. So, I can reword to:
Of course not, your
opinion
claim can be (and is!) factually wrong. And the bit extra can be (and is!) wrong too. And edited accordingly.
The key problem is that people put forth opinions that are actually disguised factual claims. They call them opinions in order to avoid being told that they're factually incorrect. Thus, I am happy to call it an opinion so as to acknowledge that I'm talking about the same thing that they're talking about. But if you want to be correct about it, that's fine too. I'm not knocking his opinion (that he thinks it's illegal) much, I'm knocking what his opinion is about (the question of whether it is illegal or not).
Post by
ElhonnaDS
Ok then- I will agree that there is nothing that should keep Blizzard from selling gold, other than their fears about the reaction of the player base. If there was some kind of law against selling in-game items, it would have come out with the pets and the sparkle pony.
Post by
Squishalot
Ok then- I will agree that there is nothing that should keep Blizzard from selling gold, other than their fears about the reaction of the player base. If there was some kind of law against selling in-game items, it would have come out with the
pets and the sparkle pony
.
So true that. Pets and sparkle ponies (and RAF mounts, trading card pets, etc) aren't any different to WoW gold as far as they affect the real economy.
Post by
Monday
Meh. Blizzard selling gold would suck. It would turn into Conquer Online, where the only good people were the ones that could buy CP's and buff their gear up.
Post by
Pwntiff
Yeah...paying for something that actually affects game play is something that belongs in a free to play MMO. WoW isn't one.
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