Brands signature revisited :-)
Several weeks ago my wife was carping about something I didn't quite grok, and really didn't care about - her virtual game world had put up a notice (daily and repititiously apparently) that anyone found trading "IRL" would be instantly wiped clean with no refund and no exceptions. Apparently she thought this was a rather large overreaction to what she thinks of as a really small problem. The only problem is that the USG disagrees with her assessment! On the way home today I heard NPR running a story about the new "desk" at Reuters: they have assigned a full time reporter to cover "business" in a virtual world (2nd life). This reporter described his appointment as a normal reaction by Reuters to real "news" being made. After all, this virtual world has a thriving economy that has an actual physical exchange setup to trade "Lindars" into USD (floating this A.M. at 207 Lindars to one USD). It appears the USG is so worried about all the real cash being generated that they are *seriously* looking at setting physical taxes against these virtual currencies (wherever there is a point of exchange). Lets take this to its obvious limit - why hire a spammer to send penisgrams when you can use that botnet to make Lindars? Or, to quote a friend of mine, "Great! Kim Jung Il needs only to hire a few kids to beat the embargoes! Funny!!!". Maybe funny, maybe not. If these currencies are crossing the virtual / physical interfaces then they have become real and real is (and always will be) taxable. That means that forgery is a real issue - enter Mr. B. I find this fascinating! We just went at this the wrong way! Fuck e-gold! Gimme Lindars!!! -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "Surely the larger lesson learned from that day is that other men, all over the world, took inspiration not from the heroism of the rescuers in New York or the passengers flying over Pennsylvania, but from the 19 hijackers - the twisted brilliance of their scheme and their willingness to sacrifice their lives to make a political and, as they saw it, religious statement." Richard Corliss/Time Magazine 11 Aug 2006
That's an interesting set of points...perhaps impossible for mere mortals to fully understand the impact of. Of course, the whole Lindar can be made to implode if the 2nd Life Managers decide to virtually print up a lot of virtual money. Could that impact the actual economy? 'Impossible'....maybe not... I'm still wondering too if the new anti-net-gambling laws are really an attempt to crack down on terrorism. Imagine a gambling site set up so that someone wishing to move funds can be identified and made to 'loose' 100s of thousands, but in small transactions. Hell, the site could be otherwise legitimate. I'd bet the Russians already do this. -TD
From: "J.A. Terranson" <measl@mfn.org> To: "cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks@jfet.org> Subject: Brands signature revisited :-) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:42:00 -0500 (CDT)
Several weeks ago my wife was carping about something I didn't quite grok, and really didn't care about - her virtual game world had put up a notice (daily and repititiously apparently) that anyone found trading "IRL" would be instantly wiped clean with no refund and no exceptions. Apparently she thought this was a rather large overreaction to what she thinks of as a really small problem.
The only problem is that the USG disagrees with her assessment!
On the way home today I heard NPR running a story about the new "desk" at Reuters: they have assigned a full time reporter to cover "business" in a virtual world (2nd life). This reporter described his appointment as a normal reaction by Reuters to real "news" being made. After all, this virtual world has a thriving economy that has an actual physical exchange setup to trade "Lindars" into USD (floating this A.M. at 207 Lindars to one USD). It appears the USG is so worried about all the real cash being generated that they are *seriously* looking at setting physical taxes against these virtual currencies (wherever there is a point of exchange).
Lets take this to its obvious limit - why hire a spammer to send penisgrams when you can use that botnet to make Lindars? Or, to quote a friend of mine, "Great! Kim Jung Il needs only to hire a few kids to beat the embargoes! Funny!!!".
Maybe funny, maybe not.
If these currencies are crossing the virtual / physical interfaces then they have become real and real is (and always will be) taxable. That means that forgery is a real issue - enter Mr. B.
I find this fascinating! We just went at this the wrong way! Fuck e-gold! Gimme Lindars!!!
-- Yours,
J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF
"Surely the larger lesson learned from that day is that other men, all over the world, took inspiration not from the heroism of the rescuers in New York or the passengers flying over Pennsylvania, but from the 19 hijackers - the twisted brilliance of their scheme and their willingness to sacrifice their lives to make a political and, as they saw it, religious statement."
Richard Corliss/Time Magazine 11 Aug 2006
On the way home today I heard NPR running a story about the new "desk" at Reuters: they have assigned a full time reporter to cover "business" in a virtual world (2nd life). This reporter described his appointment as a normal reaction by Reuters to real "news" being made. After all, this virtual world has a thriving economy that has an actual physical exchange setup to trade "Lindars" into USD (floating this A.M. at 207 Lindars to one USD). It appears the USG is so worried about all the real cash being generated that they are *seriously* looking at setting physical taxes against these virtual currencies (wherever there is a point of exchange).
What a moronic comment. First of all, the SL currency is not Lindars, it's Lindens. Second, Lindens have not traded as high as 207 to the dollar in a long time if ever. The current rate is 274 to the dollar which is down from over 300 to the dollar a few months ago.
Lets take this to its obvious limit - why hire a spammer to send penisgrams when you can use that botnet to make Lindars? Or, to quote a friend of mine, "Great! Kim Jung Il needs only to hire a few kids to beat the embargoes! Funny!!!".
How exactly is the botnet going to make money playing SL? In general there is no reliable and automatic way to make money in the game, nothing that could be automated to the degree that it could be run by a botnet. You can make a few Lindens an hour by sitting your avatar in "camping chairs" which some in-game businesses run to attract traffic, but first of all that is an infinitisimal rate of pay in dollars, and secondly it requires considerable sophistication to maneuver an avatar to an appropriate location, identify occupied and unoccupied camping chairs, and sit in one. It is at or beyond the state of the art in AI research and would require extensive hacking even to get the game into a situation where it could be controlled by software rather than a user.
If these currencies are crossing the virtual / physical interfaces then they have become real and real is (and always will be) taxable. That means that forgery is a real issue - enter Mr. B.
Forgery is not an issue. Lindens are not bearer certificates, they are merely accounting entries. The real financial threats are the same one as for other online services, namely breakins that steal real-world names and credit card numbers. The SL servers suffered such an attack a few weeks ago.
I find this fascinating! We just went at this the wrong way! Fuck e-gold! Gimme Lindars!!!
Again you and other commentators have missed the real issue. Taxing money moving out of the game, if that ever happens, is going to drive commerce to stay within the game. There is no reason you can't buy and consume information goods like books, magazines, music and video in-game, supporting your habit by selling in-game goods and services of your own. Where this must lead is taxation of in-game transactions. The government is ultimately going to have to force SL to tax internal exchanges and send those receipts to the IRS. Or perhaps they will record the country of origin of each player and send taxes to the approrpriate national government. Imagine having to implement software to model every taxation system in the world. Not a pretty task. CP
Huh? You're good at coding-type comments, but from my limited brain you seem to have missed his main point. Can virtual-world economics impact/sink real-world economies? That's not entirely obvious to me. Or at least, it's by no means intuitive. Remember too that this is just ONE game here. Soon, there will be thousands, many of which may not even exist long enough for taxation to be enforced. And indeed, that might drive some worlds to become very temporary. And what if the exchange rate is no longer to USD but for, say, CPU time or disk space or gold or silver? Tim May's ghost will be leaping for joy. (Oh wait: Tim May IS Tim May's ghost.) In fact, the only way for such an environment to be reliably taxed is for the feds to tax every computer interface that links to the net, and it's just too late for that. Or perhaps, the Feds will just grab a slice of every transaction that exits a bank account, irregarless of where it's ostensibly going. As far as I'm concerned, these are just tip-of-the-iceburg issues here. When we start considering trans-world untaxed (ie, not by real-world governments) digital coinage then things become unclear very quickly (and despite the existence of trans-world exchanges, these are still closely bound to the USD). Oh, and it seems obvious that if these online economies keep growing, some of the game operators will want a tiny tiny slice of each transaction, which may drive them to make games free just to get the discount revenue. But his essential points stand, even if the specific implementations suggested aren't yet feasible. -TD
From: cyphrpunk <cyphrpunk@gmail.com> To: cypherpunks@jfet.org Subject: Re: Brands signature revisited :-) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:06:13 -0700
On the way home today I heard NPR running a story about the new "desk" at Reuters: they have assigned a full time reporter to cover "business" in a virtual world (2nd life). This reporter described his appointment as a normal reaction by Reuters to real "news" being made. After all, this virtual world has a thriving economy that has an actual physical exchange setup to trade "Lindars" into USD (floating this A.M. at 207 Lindars to one USD). It appears the USG is so worried about all the real cash being generated that they are *seriously* looking at setting physical taxes against these virtual currencies (wherever there is a point of exchange).
What a moronic comment.
First of all, the SL currency is not Lindars, it's Lindens.
Second, Lindens have not traded as high as 207 to the dollar in a long time if ever. The current rate is 274 to the dollar which is down from over 300 to the dollar a few months ago.
Lets take this to its obvious limit - why hire a spammer to send penisgrams when you can use that botnet to make Lindars? Or, to quote a friend of mine, "Great! Kim Jung Il needs only to hire a few kids to beat the embargoes! Funny!!!".
How exactly is the botnet going to make money playing SL? In general there is no reliable and automatic way to make money in the game, nothing that could be automated to the degree that it could be run by a botnet. You can make a few Lindens an hour by sitting your avatar in "camping chairs" which some in-game businesses run to attract traffic, but first of all that is an infinitisimal rate of pay in dollars, and secondly it requires considerable sophistication to maneuver an avatar to an appropriate location, identify occupied and unoccupied camping chairs, and sit in one. It is at or beyond the state of the art in AI research and would require extensive hacking even to get the game into a situation where it could be controlled by software rather than a user.
If these currencies are crossing the virtual / physical interfaces then they have become real and real is (and always will be) taxable. That means that forgery is a real issue - enter Mr. B.
Forgery is not an issue. Lindens are not bearer certificates, they are merely accounting entries. The real financial threats are the same one as for other online services, namely breakins that steal real-world names and credit card numbers. The SL servers suffered such an attack a few weeks ago.
I find this fascinating! We just went at this the wrong way! Fuck e-gold! Gimme Lindars!!!
Again you and other commentators have missed the real issue. Taxing money moving out of the game, if that ever happens, is going to drive commerce to stay within the game. There is no reason you can't buy and consume information goods like books, magazines, music and video in-game, supporting your habit by selling in-game goods and services of your own.
Where this must lead is taxation of in-game transactions. The government is ultimately going to have to force SL to tax internal exchanges and send those receipts to the IRS. Or perhaps they will record the country of origin of each player and send taxes to the approrpriate national government. Imagine having to implement software to model every taxation system in the world. Not a pretty task.
CP
_________________________________________________________________ Use your PC to make calls at very low rates https://voiceoam.pcs.v2s.live.com/partnerredirect.aspx
On 10/18/06, Tyler Durden <camera_lumina@hotmail.com> wrote:
Huh? You're good at coding-type comments, but from my limited brain you seem to have missed his main point. Can virtual-world economics impact/sink real-world economies? That's not entirely obvious to me. Or at least, it's by no means intuitive. Remember too that this is just ONE game here. Soon, there will be thousands, many of which may not even exist long enough for taxation to be enforced. And indeed, that might drive some worlds to become very temporary. And what if the exchange rate is no longer to USD but for, say, CPU time or disk space or gold or silver? Tim May's ghost will be leaping for joy. (Oh wait: Tim May IS Tim May's ghost.)
In fact, the only way for such an environment to be reliably taxed is for the feds to tax every computer interface that links to the net, and it's just too late for that. Or perhaps, the Feds will just grab a slice of every transaction that exits a bank account, irregarless of where it's ostensibly going.
As far as I'm concerned, these are just tip-of-the-iceburg issues here. When we start considering trans-world untaxed (ie, not by real-world governments) digital coinage then things become unclear very quickly (and despite the existence of trans-world exchanges, these are still closely bound to the USD). Oh, and it seems obvious that if these online economies keep growing, some of the game operators will want a tiny tiny slice of each transaction, which may drive them to make games free just to get the discount revenue.
But his essential points stand, even if the specific implementations suggested aren't yet feasible.
It is really intesting that there is a real exchange for this game, but trading game-gold and so on for real world money is surely nothing new. Ebay does it all the time. Surely it'll regulate itself. As in, if it becomes easy to print money inside the game, the money will just be less valuable. People will pay less real money for it. I probably need to sit down and come up with a real reply to this ... but I'm just wondering how this is so different from any external trading that almost all online games have [obviously the exchange is one factor...]. -- mic
participants (4)
-
cyphrpunk -
J.A. Terranson -
mikeiscool -
Tyler Durden