I read this article on the net and i was thinking of sharing this.
Not sure where to place the post, anyways if i put this in the wrong place mods could you just kindly move it to the correct forum.
Thanks!
eBay bans the auction of in-game items
1/30/2007 10:25:31 AM, by Nate Anderson
eBay has been quietly pursuing a policy of removing auctions for in-game goods from its site. World of Warcraft players seeking to avoid the sun a bit longer will now have to turn elsewhere when they need to purchase the +10 Mace of Divine Smiting.
An eBay spokesperson tells Ars that "virtual game items" are now banned on eBay's US and UK sites. This includes everything from accounts to characters to currency to items. The new policy was instituted "due to the legal complexity associated with these types of items."
If you don't play such massively multiplayer online games, this might sound like a small change that will only affect a limited number of people, but serious money is at stake, and eBay is walking away from it faster than a Puritan from Second Life. The Korean market for in-game goods and gold is estimated to be worth $1 billion a year and has gained enough prominence to be the target of potential legislation there. Korean gold farmers, who profit from their activities in these virtual worlds, even formed a trade group to defend their business model.
eBay appears to be banning the auctions because they are generally illegal under the games' terms of service. There are exceptions, but World of Warcraft dominates the market, and Blizzard has repeatedly made clear that it does not allow the sale of in-game material. The company routinely cracks down on those trying to cash in on the virtual economy, going so far as to periodically ban thousands of users for gold farming and item selling.
eBay doesn't want the potential liability that it incurs from hosting such transactions, but it does make an exception for items from Second Life, which the company does not consider a game. eBay tells us that "there is still some question internally as to whether virtual worlds such as Second Life should be regarded as 'games,' and so, at this time, we are not applying this policy to the trade of items that exist within Second Life, while we continue to investigate this issue." Linden Lab, Second Life's creator, imposes no restrictions on what users buy and sell, instead letting the market work for the virtual world much as it does for the real one (in both cases, pornographic fantasies are big business).
Will eBay's decision to stop posting game property auctions help World of Warcraft players—40 percent of whom are addicted to the game, according to one doctor—make it easier for folks to break the habit? Probably not. There's already a thriving marketplace beyond eBay for buying gold and weapons, and people in search of a few quick ingots will turn to such sites instead.
Massively multiplayer titles, which started out simply as ways to have a good time, have found an increasingly large number of real-world issues invading their pristine virtual territories: plagues, globalization, gay rights, and even (inevitably) taxation.
Build it, and they will come... bringing their greed, resourcefulness, lust, creativity, loneliness, and generosity with them. These may be virtual worlds, but they're filled with very human characters.
here is the link
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070130-8731.html
