Big Blow to Fighting Gold Farmers
By
all_hell,
Posted on: 2010-01-19 14:49 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Not sure why this matters. Was the lawsuit trying to say the money amounted to some kind of online gambling profits? What's interesting about this quote from the article though is the word "earned". I had thought the premise behind the illegality of RMT was that the players don't own the stuff they are trading. They don't actually "earn" it because no matter what, the virtual money on your characters (indeed your characters themselves and everything they have on them) belong to the company running the game... not to you.| The court conditioned its ruling on the fact that the cyber money was earned through skill, not luck. |
Is this not the case in South Korea as well or do gamers actually have some legal rights to their in game characters and items?
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I think we'd need the full court record to know for sure, because that article was pretty light on the details of the case. But what I suspect was that the defendants got off on the claim that they paid for services (someone else playing the game), rather than paying for the actual in-game currency. It's a fairly common RMT defense.
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All I know is Paragon Studios squashed it totally in game by adding the simple feature of only accepting email from friends.
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I'm surprised any court would rule in favour of selling property you don't actually own, but then I'm not too up to day on my legal mumbo jumbo.
Either way, I don't see what this has to do with fighting gold farmers in the game, as the in-game world is policed by PlayNC's house rules, not Korea's stance on gold farmers, and as long as PlayNC choose to fight gold farmers, they are within their right to do so. Unless we're talking about the number of goldfarmers somehow booming after this (which I doubt, since I'd be surprised if anyone ever got convicted in the first place, call me cynical), then it doesn't seem relevant to the in-house fight against their influence, pun not intended.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Ownership is a fluid concept. You might not "own" the digital money, but you might have a right to use it which has a real life value notwithstanding any various agreements you might have made.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I'm surprised any court would rule in favour of selling property you don't actually own, but then I'm not too up to day on my legal mumbo jumbo.
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It's not an easy issue. These digital worlds have Terms of Service written to try and deal with this issue, but the more that companies engender a sense of ownership in these items, the more that they will have to deal with issues like this.
For example, SOE allows direct selling of characters and such on their (pretty fun) F2P game Free Realms. The claim that they own everything on the servers would seem to ring hollow to me. I would love to see how an appellate court would deal with the issue.
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Violating a contract is not the same thing as committing a crime. Paragon/NCsoft can close your account for ToS violations, but you can't be arrested for them without more.
It is also an absolute bedrock, foundational principle of any civilized legal system that criminal laws are strictly construed against the government: the thing you're accused of doing has to be unmistakably covered by the law that makes it illegal.
It doesn't explain what the law they were accused of breaking actually was meant to forbid. Sounds to me like they got a good deal buying some ingame currency or goods which they turned around and sold as a profit.
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it really doesn't, though, because US companies don't really give a hoot about how a civil case is handled in another country.
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Originally Posted by EmpireForgotten
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/artic...sp?aid=2915126
In South Korea, Their Supreme court ruled in Favor of some gold farmers. I doubt this will change much of anything in terms of policy against gold farmers, but it almost legitimizes the business. |
No
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One big difference is that that particular MMO already sold it's in game currency for real world currency.
It doesn't really matter. China's legal position is officially quite 'anti farmer' but it is not enforced so it has no impact. And NCSoft can just ban any farmers they find - they don't have to go through any legal proceeding in any country.
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No, all that did was make it invisible to *you*. Only a fool would believe that such a trivial change ended RMT in CoX.
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Originally Posted by GreenPiranha
All I know is Paragon Studios squashed it totally in game by adding the simple feature of only accepting email from friends.
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http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
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To expand on this a bit, I deduce from the fairly sketchy facts we're given in the article that the gold farmers were charged with a criminal violation of a Korean statute meant to regulate online gambling. This would explain why "skill" or "luck" were relevant. Note, too, the professor's comments stating that this wouldn't affect online poker. I read the article as stating that the court held that buying virtual goods and reselling them for a profit doesn't violate . . . whatever this statute says.|
Originally Posted by Heraclea
Violating a contract is not the same thing as committing a crime. Paragon/NCsoft can close your account for ToS violations, but you can't be arrested for them without more.
It is also an absolute bedrock, foundational principle of any civilized legal system that criminal laws are strictly construed against the government: the thing you're accused of doing has to be unmistakably covered by the law that makes it illegal. It doesn't explain what the law they were accused of breaking actually was meant to forbid. Sounds to me like they got a good deal buying some ingame currency or goods which they turned around and sold as a profit. |
As Heraclea and EvilGeko note, this is a completely separate legal issue from the contractual ones governing a game's EULA and anything it might have to say about RMT. The Korean case involves what crime, if any, the state can charge an RMT'er with, while the EULA terms banning the use of RMT services (and thus any suit based on them) govern the relationship between a user and a provider. Different parties are involved in each case.
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Like I said, I'm not up to par. It just seems, to me at least, that as long as you are not expressly permitted to sell what is still a company's own online property, then making money off of it ought to be illegal. Granted, I don't know what the legal implications of "ownership" of virtual goods really are, but as they are not physical, it seems to me that "ownership" ought to pass only by permission, which I don't recall many MMO designers giving.
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Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Ownership is a fluid concept. You might not "own" the digital money, but you might have a right to use it which has a real life value notwithstanding any various agreements you might have made.
It's not an easy issue. These digital worlds have Terms of Service written to try and deal with this issue, but the more that companies engender a sense of ownership in these items, the more that they will have to deal with issues like this. For example, SOE allows direct selling of characters and such on their (pretty fun) F2P game Free Realms. The claim that they own everything on the servers would seem to ring hollow to me. I would love to see how an appellate court would deal with the issue. |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I'm surprised that people haven't noticed the additional parts connected with that ruling -- it's legal to exchange game currency for real currency, unless the currency is from an onling gambling company... unless you use "bots or macros" to 'earn' the currency (and good luck at policing that one). But the point that was most telling is that the Korean government has enacted a 10% VAT on all such transactions -- I suspect that the motive behind the decision may be motivated more by Korea wanting to get a cut of what is believed to be close to a trillion dollars of transactions each year than it was by the merits of the defendants' arguments. (see the article on playnoevil.)
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Originally Posted by Olantern
To expand on this a bit, I deduce from the fairly sketchy facts we're given in the article that the gold farmers were charged with a criminal violation of a Korean statute meant to regulate online gambling. This would explain why "skill" or "luck" were relevant. Note, too, the professor's comments stating that this wouldn't affect online poker. I read the article as stating that the court held that buying virtual goods and reselling them for a profit doesn't violate . . . whatever this statute says.
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I don't think so, Lineage is NCSoft, just like CoH, I believe that is no RMT there too.
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Originally Posted by all_hell
One big difference is that that particular MMO already sold it's in game currency for real world currency.
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The tax implication is a very valid reason why players should never support legitimizing RMT ins MMORPG. You would be liable for taxes on an item when you get it. So if you found that Uber Leet Sword of Unimaginable Power that could sell for $1000, you would be liable to pay takes on it then, not when you sold it. Also unless you are listed as a Professional Gamer, you would not be able to deduct any cost involved with buying other equipment. So playing games could cost a fortune in taxes, and it would be a logistical nightmare for most game companies and they would just close shop.|
Originally Posted by srmalloy
I'm surprised that people haven't noticed the additional parts connected with that ruling -- it's legal to exchange game currency for real currency, unless the currency is from an onling gambling company... unless you use "bots or macros" to 'earn' the currency (and good luck at policing that one). But the point that was most telling is that the Korean government has enacted a 10% VAT on all such transactions -- I suspect that the motive behind the decision may be motivated more by Korea wanting to get a cut of what is believed to be close to a trillion dollars of transactions each year than it was by the merits of the defendants' arguments. (see the article on playnoevil.)
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The you have real world theft laws come into place. RMT has no place in for virtual world games. If you buy or sell in-game objects I hope the company bans you from all their products for a long time.
The legality of gold farming has never been a concern to the people doing it. They don't need legal permission. They'd be doing it either way.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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http://joongangdaily.joins.com/artic...sp?aid=2915126
In South Korea, Their Supreme court ruled in Favor of some gold farmers.
I doubt this will change much of anything in terms of policy against gold farmers, but it almost legitimizes the business.