Legality of Virtual Sales

I am soo very close to opening up my massive service, but I just have one more question for you all.
My dad is a higher-up in an Internet financial company is worried that what I am doing (botting on Runescape and selling the goods on Paypal/WU) is not legal and would be either A)comitting fraud, or B) violating intellectual property rights.
So I would like so informed information about whether selling virtual goods like this is legal and where to find information about this.

EDIT:: I live in the US

 

It is legal as far as I'm concerned.

 

Thanks for your opinion, but as it is an opinion and not facts it is not helpful at all.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy

The government taxes it; it's legal.

 

It's not illegal one bit.

 

Depending on where you live the laws change. But generally it is LEGAL.
An example is China, where it is LEGAL to buy virtual cash with real cash. BUT it is ILLEGAL to use your virtual cash to buy say a car. haha
But yeah it is OK. I live in Australia and its fine, i assume it would be the same in the USA

 

Thanks, that's helpful

 

I'm really looking for proof, things that I can show my dad to convince him it's not.

 

What country do you live in?

 

^ What he said, in order for anyone to give you any legal advice regarding your position, you must first inform us of which country you reside in as the law on the issue generally changes.

 

Against the rules of Runescape. Legal though.

 

Sorry, I live in the US

 

Technically Jagex could file suit against you, it's highly unlikely, but otherwise you won't get arrested.

 

I was wondering whether (because it's against the RS TOS) that it would be illegal. Because the paypal TOS says in section 9.1c that you must not "Infringe copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, or other intellectual property rights."

 

If that's the case, then why hasn't Jagex filed suit against Sythe? Since it's probably one of the largest places to trade RS online goods?

You might wana read this.
http://www.bileta.ac.uk/Document Li...tellectual property law to Virtual worlds.pdf
Just a brief browse over it, and Nick is correct.
However the chances of them filing suit/arresting is so minimal you don't have to worry. If Sythe, or the other major gold/service selling sites haven't been penalized significantly, then you should have no worry.

 

Most gold selling sites have TOS that prohibit Jagex moderators from even visiting their websites. I think violating the terms of service would make any legal claims of Jagex completely lose any validity.

 

Do you actually think anyone would do anything? It's an online video game, nobody is going to arrest you or file suit against you because you sell video game gold for a little extra money.

I know I didn't answer your question as to whether it's legal or not.. but either way nothing is going to happen to you.

 

Technically it is very possible. If jagex feels like they have suffered a loss of property or revenue they can sue.

Anyway, I'm not worried about a lawsuit. As I said in the thread, my dad is involved in Internet financial sales and he would not approve of me doing anything illegal.

 

It's against Jagex's ToS. It's not against the law.

 

Sure, they CAN sue, but they won't. I guarantee that. The most they will ever do about RWT is ban accounts.

It's not illegal, so your dad should not have a problem.