[MUD-Dev] Virtual property lawsuit in China

[ren at aldermangroup.com]

<EdNote: Amanda's quote fixed.  Also please do NOT reply to multiple
different messages at once.  It makes thread tracking excessively
difficult due to the thread crosses (think about the people who
reply to your post or attempt to track a thread backward through
(which half of?) your post>

On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 10:41:22 Brian Gernhardt wrote

> Now, I'm not a lawyer but I believe that you could say that these
> sales aren't fraud by claiming what you purchased was actually a
> service

Yes, think that might be a way round it. If the item represents a
token of a service performed and the agreement between individuals
is clear on the fact that it's a service transaction. However the
service would be performed in the past and not for a particular
individual so I'm not sure.  Also ads that I have seen tend to be
written as if property was being transferred (which it is not) so
one would need to look on a case-by-case basis. I think there are
some other side steps too. As I say, I'm looking into it.

On  Sat, 30 Aug 2003 16:16:08 Nicolai Hansen wrote:

> I think most countries got taxation rules for gambling of all
> sorts, I would think online values could be taxated according to
> these laws. Or wha?

A while back on 29 Jun 2003 Amanda Walker wrote a reply on this
point, as follows:

  Income is not taxed when value is received, it is taxes when it is
  realized. You can hold a stock as long as you want, and its value
  can get as high as you want, with no taxes due. The moment you
  *trade* it, you realize income.  The same is true for barter.  I
  can keep that bottle of Dom Perignon in my basement as long as I
  want, or do whatever I want with it (including drinking it,
  breaking it against the bow of my new yacht, whatever) without any
  tax consequences.  When I trade it to someone else, it becomes
  taxable.

  ...deletia...

  A better analogy might be gambling chips. Since I don't gamble,
  please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that gambling income
  is realized when you cash out.  You can buy a set of chips, win a
  lot, lose a lot, etc., but it only counts as income when you
  convert them back into money.

It is easy to see the parallels though, after all what is money,
nothing more than common social consent that is represented, amongst
other ways, by entries in a database. The only difference between my
real bank account and a virtual account I have is really one of
social recognition and legal codification of that that recognition
(including the fact that I may use these virtual things but I don't
legally own them) -- but that is all the difference in the world.

Ren
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev