Brands signature revisited :-)

[J.A. Terranson]

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 at 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