Is the virtual goods market illegal?

I was chatting with a user who ordered some powerleveling/gold farming from me for free. The user and all his details will remain anonymous. Anyway, I asked him a question about the service I was currently doing because his MSN was online. A minute or two after I had left the message, I got a reply. It was from his mom pretending to be him :embar: (FML) and she didn't seem too happy, but you can't tell someones tone from an IM. Could she have me traced and reported to the authorities? Sometimes parents can overreact over things and I don't want to go to jail for powerleveling someone on a virtual game. Please let me know ASAP what I should do or if I am overreacting.

 

No. Dont worry about it.

 

Haha, there's companies out there that operate solely on powerlevelling and gold sales that have been going for years with no punishment. You're not gonna get sent to jail or get in any kind of trouble for small time business! Even if someone did trace and report you, it's not something the authorities would waste their time dealing with.

 

What Giverny said, you have nothing to worry about.

Also, I highly doubt a mother in today's society has the technological capacity to trace IP's via MSN.

 

As Prod and Giv said, don't worry about it. There are far bigger companies than you, and they would most definitely be targeted first.

 

Authorities are going to waste their time with someone leveling other people on a game, they have better things to do. Carry on with your leveling and don't let anything put you off. I wish you the best of luck with your small business!

 

What did she say anyways?

Even if she had you address she can't do anything.

 

Eh. She said nothing so far (about reporting me or what I was talking about). Thanks for the support and answers

 

IPs can be easily grabbed via MSN, skype, etc. However as posted above you have absolutely nothing to worry about. For one, an IP can only be used to get a person/exact location with the ISP. The ISP will only give up this information if they are forced to with a court order.. And like posted, you have done nothing wrong so you are 100% OK.

 

no no no. you're safe, babe

 

Eh..possibly.

 

You are fine no worries.

 

Hahaha so true. Don't worry. All mom's overreact about their kids even playing games let alone using a virtual marketplace

You aren't in any trouble at all. Keep it up!

 

No man, It's fine. There is a reason RWT is only a bannable offence and not crime. If it was crime, every major member of sythe would have been sued by now.

 

It's simply frowned upon by game developers. it breaches the EULA but nothing more, ony people who are effected are bot developers and that's only the retarded ones who dpnt do their legal research

 

Lol only fagex could do something, since its their game, noone would care irl lmfao...

 

Cops would laugh their asses off if they were sent to a house to seize a computer for an internet game (runescape). That would be fricken hilarious. Besides, all the accounts/gold are property of jagex. We are breaching their ToS. Therefore, they would have to do something about it.

 

I made this thread a long time ago, it deals with the legality of the gold farming business.
http://www.sythe.org/showthread.php?t=1112701

But, when it comes to powerleveling, you are selling a service and not an object. You are selling your time that you're using to train them, which is not something that belongs to Jagex.

Even if you were selling something that was theirs, Intellectual Property is a pretty much untouched area of law. Meaning that, as of now, the only way you could be in danger is if Jagex were to sue you. That is because violation of Jagex's TOS is only a civil offense, not a criminal one.

Furthermore, Jagex would only be legally interested in sueing someone if they had a huge business, like Gold4RS. It simply would not be economical to sue every Joe that wants to sell Runescape stuff.

 

This made my day. As many others have stated, you have nothing to worry about ;D I do find it funny though, that a mom was pretending to be her child just so she could bitch as some kid over the internet for doing something that she thinks is illegal XD. Ahh, the overreaction of parents these days.

 

its illegal bro