[MUD-Dev] Ebay bans character selling

[Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt]

On Sun, 28 Jan 2001, Frank Crowell wrote: 
> 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.
 
Most of the 'Con' aguments at the gravityspot site think that the EULA
is a contract, but in reality it is not, since its not signed and is
one-way. Others simply quote that Ebayers ruin the game, which i could
imagine is true, but not really relevant for the legality of the
matter.

One problem is that people think they are buying a 'character' or
'item' at the auction, but that is not the case, since Sony/Verant in
actuality owns these virtual objects. Things get confused because EQ
is a virtual world, and thus if you transfer control of a virtual
object in that world, it looks like you are transfering ownership,
which is not the case.

If transfering true ownership of the virtual objects within the game
world for money is prohibited because Sony/Verant hold the rights to
them, is forbidden, then you may not even give away items at EQ! This
is plain, since you do not own the items, and thus do not have the
legal rights to do so. You may however transfer control of the virtual
objects within the game world.

Selling ownership of items within EQ is an imposibility in itself,
since you do not own them, and since there is no way for them to leave
the servers owned by Sony/Verant. So in that respect, they cannot
physically or virtually leave the ownership of Sony/Verant. They have
always full control of them and can modify, remove or change control
of them at their whim.

The thing that they should do was not to take it to court, but instead
police it locally. If they find that people are breaking their EULA,
they should ban and/or delete their characters. I bet that the players
have also agreed to Sony/Verant can do whatever to their stuff they
want.

Hans Henrik Stærfeldt   |    bombman at diku.dk    | work:  hhs at cbs.dtu.dk      |
Address:                |___  +45 40383492    __|__       +45 45252425     __|
DTU, Kemitorvet,        | Scientific programmer at Center for Biological     |
bygn 208, CBS.          |  Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark|

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