Brands signature revisited :-)

[cyphrpunk]

> >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