IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

[Liquidedust]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

Like meeyutu said, even though prostitution is illegal, thats like saying you could be taxed for how much money you could make if you whored yourself out.

This has actually been enforced in Sweden, and thru a precedent case prostitution is considered a taxable income here (went all the way to the equalent of Supreme court here in Sweden).

However prostituion is not illegal here per se, e.g. it is legal to sell your body. The law works the other way around instead, they don't criminalize the prosititute they have criminalized the buyer of such services instead. So it is legal to sell your body for certain services but illegal to actually buy them.

The law were the other way around before but the goverment felt they couldn't protect prostitutes that had been stuck in prostitution and changed the law the other way around and made the buyer the criminal party instead.

And unlike US, you cannot bargain with the prosecutor/District Attorney for a lower sentence here in Sweden so how the law worked before very few people actually went into jail for prostitution (e.g. the sex buyers almost never said what they did with the (wo)men in question).

[Darkhound]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

Wow.... this is a very interesting topic. and it just amazes me how some far some goverments are willing to go. RMT is illegal, thus I find it very very difficult for a tax to be appllied, plus how many minors that do not have an income play the game. This is jsut out of proportion imo

[Rodin]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

internal revenue service. in the US, its the part of government that bends you over and rams your ass until money starts spilling out, every April 15th.

Fixed

[Liquidedust]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

Wow.... this is a very interesting topic. and it just amazes me how some far some goverments are willing to go. RMT is illegal, thus I find it very very difficult for a tax to be appllied, plus how many minors that do not have an income play the game. This is jsut out of proportion imo

Technically selling gil/items are just against the ToS and a MMORPG's ToS has so far never been tried in court which makes current laws applied to the cases until tried and tested.

However MMORPG companies which have that RMT is against their ToS in-game will never take a case like this to court (they'll just enforce the ToS and ban the people for doing it if caught or just ignoring the problem).

This is since, IF they get a ruling against them they have to allow RMT in-game and if virtual items get a RL currency value the service providers must ensure that items aren't lost in a greater manner then before.

e.g. moneraty loss if an item is accidently lost due to their own systems makes them to have to make up for the monetary loss of a specific inducvidual).

So no RMT is not illegal, just against a ToS clause which has never been tested in court and has no legal bearing as of yet.

(I am presonally against RMT but that is the basic gist of it)

[Rodin]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

Technically selling gil/items are just against the ToS and a MMORPG's ToS has so far never been tried in court which makes current laws applied to the cases until tried and tested.

However MMORPG companies which have that RMT is against their ToS in-game will never take a case like this to court (they'll just enforce the ToS and ban the people for doing it if caught or just ignoring the problem).

This is since, IF they get a ruling against them they have to allow RMT in-game and if virtual items get a RL currency value the service providers must ensure that items aren't lost in a greater manner then before.

e.g. moneraty loss if an item is accidently lost due to their own systems makes them to have to make up for the monetary loss of a specific inducvidual).

So no RMT is not illegal, just against a ToS clause which has never been tested in court and has no legal bearing as of yet.

(I am presonally against RMT but that is the basic gist of it)

It IS illegal. The RMT business is selling a copy-righted form of currency. SE could just as easily take this to court over copyright infringement. Of course, unless SE is being payed liberties for using the name from IGE.

The reason why SE can't take it to court: Hong Kong isn't part of the WTO. Meaning they don't have to abide by copyright laws.

[Liquidedust]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

It IS illegal. The RMT business is selling a copy-righted form of currency. SE could just as easily take this to court over copyright infringement. Of course, unless SE is being payed liberties for using the name from IGE.

The reason why SE can't take it to court: Hong Kong isn't part of the WTO. Meaning they don't have to abide by copyright laws.

There is one problem with that reasoning, as long as you don't proclaim selling their copyright it is never be illegal to barter with it. And one a side-note if you think of Gil, gil is not trade-marked nor copyrighted in either US or Japan last I checked. It is only considered IP which has some legal protection but far from as strong protection as a trademark or a copyright has.

Basically you cannot copyright or trade-mark a currency that only exists in an electronic game, since it doesn't apply to the ruleset required to gain copyright or trademark status in either US, Sweden nor Japan last time I read it through.

You can trademark and copyright images and physical item that are "Gil" but in-game currency cannot be copyrighted nor trademarked since it doesn't apply to the ruleset required for it to obtain copyright or trademark status.

[Rodin]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

Hmmm...Weird, I was under the impression that you could copyright names as long if you provide evidence that you out-dated somebody on the idea. But, I'm not sure so much. I'm just sure that SE would've tried to get their trademark item copyrighted.

[Liquidedust]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

Hmmm...Weird, I was under the impression that you could copyright names as long if you provide evidence that you out-dated somebody on the idea. But, I'm not sure so much. I'm just sure that SE would've tried to get their trademark item copyrighted.

The problem in this case it not as much as copyright a name. Names can be copyrighted if attached to an idea or object, but you cannot copyright a name that isn't the idea or object itself but only part of the idea.

And on electronic games the laws are falling behind so much it isn't even funny, in regular rpg's we have managed to get a lot of precendents thanks to when TSR inc. still owned D&D (they basically sued everyone for using anything they had introduced in their game). And almost all cases were ruled against TSR inc. so don't get your hopes up if S-E takes something like this court.

You can copyright an image of how gil looks, now the name gil and that certain image can only be used by S-E. You can create dummy RL gil and get copyright status of those items. However due to copyright laws work you cannot copyright the word gil as currency name attached to S-E since it only exists in an electronic media (there are basically no laws or rule-sets covering this at this moment).

Still S-E and FFXI is a kind of special case, since the word "Gil" is very attached to the company other games that just use generic currency names have a lost case from teh beginning.

So if S-E took this to court to get their PI (Product Identity) Gil to copyright/trademark status they would have a pretty good case to be rules in favour of (but if they lost it would mean a severe blow the company instead).

Even so companies that sell gil just have to get around this by not selling gil itself, they can just sell their time to play the game on their own clients and then give you whatever currency they obtain in a set amount of time.

• Selling your own personal time to play the game on your own client is not illegal.
• Giving the client what they obtain in a set period of time is not against laws, and not even against the ToS since that would make inter-player trades impossible.
• Not mentioning the word gil in this case also makes them curcumvent any legal case S-E wants to open aginst them.

So what are S-E going to do? Claim that it is illegal to take RL currency for playing on your own computer/console. (This would also make professional gaming illegal which would be pain stupid) The exchange in-game has no legal bearing whatsoever as of now, since virtual goods has no RL value.

And if they would gain RL value S-E wouldn't be able to stop them either, it would actually be illegal from them to stop you from selling your own belongings if this were the case.

So in conclusion as much as we want RMT to be illegal, it is as of now just against a ToS which has never as of yet been tried in court and therefore has no legal bearing. S-E will most likely not risk a court-case like this since if they lost it would make a precedent which means electronic items have a RL value.

So what if S-E lost a case you say, they can still ban people for not following their ToS.

No, once something gets a RL currency value you're not allowed to take this away from them without econmically reinburse the client for the lost value. So basically if this happens S-E in this case would have to pay people money in order to be able to ban them, and would loose all their rights to items in the game.

Ahh well enough of my ramblings for now. . . . .

[fastcart]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

Doesn't Sony allow RMT though? They seemed to have took the "Cant beat 'em, do it cheaper" route.

I didn't listen to the article. I'd rather read because I have a hearing impaiirment.

[Draco Dagon]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

No, once something gets a RL currency value you're not allowed to take this away from them without econmically reinburse the client for the lost value. So basically if this happens S-E in this case would have to pay people money in order to be able to ban them, and would loose all their rights to items in the game.

Care to explain yourself? I don't recall a law anywhere where a company would have to reimburse a person or persons from their use of services even if they already did pay for such services. Otherwise, most companies would be out of business by now.

[sevenpointflaw]

Re: IRS may want to tax you for those Leaping Boots

Its very simple. SE owns all the material stored on the server. That includes "your" leaping boots. This is part of the PlayOnline/FFXI agreements that you "sign" every time you play. There are many, many, many, directions SE could take legally from any number of angles. Either way, since you do not "own" your leaping boots to begin with, SE can do whatever they want to your contract - especially considering you agree not to participate in RMT. To top it off, the IRS can't tax you for it. They CAN put a service tax on you for "selling your time" if you chose to go that route.

I'll leave why that is also illegal for someone else to explain.