[MUD-Dev] Ebay bans character selling

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

the_logos at www.achaea.com wrote:

> Ebay and Yahoo have banned the sale of virtual characters based on
> the fact that doing so violates the intellectual property rights of,
> say, Verant.

> While I certainly applaud this enforcement of Verant's rights, I
> wonder how long it will be until someone sets up an auction service
> specifically to cater to the buying and selling of virtual items and
> hosts it somewhere handily out of the reach of the US government.

It is however in the EULA you click on every time you start the
game. My understanding is that its not ebay et al breaking the rules,
its the people selling. If you look at the latest news on
www.eqvault.com you will see that a lot of the new player auction
sites that sprang up have been shut down too. I don't really see it as
Verant's rights, they did this due to the number of disputes arising
from character transfers and item selling, hence isn't it more about
protecting the player base?

I too applaud Verant, there were a subset of people who really did
spend all day camping a spawn to be able to sell items. That impinges
on others enjoyment and shouldn't really be tolerated. The fact that
VI have controlled item availability to an extent where people are
willing to spend one thousand dollars on one is amazing. I think they
have done a wonderful job on this - contrast it to Asheron's call
where items really have no worth.

Dan
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