Taxing and Regulating Virtual Worlds
Here is a pretty common prank that is currently resolved in-game by filling out a complaint ticket:
A player (griefer) climbs his character onto a rooftop using a game exploit where no one else can get to him. He begins his hunt for lower-level players and spots … you. Then he proceeds to “melt your face” from afar. While you’re looking around trying to find him, your character dies. You run your ghost back to your dead body, which will be lying under the aforementioned killer, who is now dancing on your corpse. You resurrect and he kills you again. You run back and resurrect, and he does it again. This continues for about 20 minutes or so or until you give up and log off. It’s also known as corpse camping.
If government was involved, then that annoying corpse camper could be facing real charges of harassment and possibly mental anguish. (I’ve read some pretty heinous meltdowns from people being “griefed.”) No matter what the victim thinks is suitable punishment, jail time or massive fines wouldn’t fit the crime.
A good example of keeping jurisdictions in perspective comes from the article “Global Gaming Crackdown” in Wired:
The government lets referees police behavior in a hockey rink that would normally be the purview of local prosecutors. (Try high-sticking your mail carrier to experience the difference.)
Considering that regulation and bureaucracy never get smaller, let’s follow that idea of ever-expanding government even further into the virtual world:
If the virtual world is taxed like the real world, then it will eventually be treated more and more like the real world. Maybe a player’s warrior doesn’t need three swords. Let’s cap him at two and tax the third. Why stop there? If he can afford so much gear, why not redistribute his in-game wealth to other players who don’t have time to earn enough in-game money to buy good gear? I’m sure there’s a voting block online who would appreciate government kickbacks for being “victims” of having very little time to play.
I’d venture to say out of the eleven million Americans playing just the game World of Warcraft, most of them are adults and can vote. According to a Pew study, over half of American adults play video games.
Being an adult, you should know better than to make jokes about someone’s race, especially jokes about the gnome race. No one will tolerate that hate speech. You should be banned from your account for a month — or, better yet, fined.
Played too much this week? The government should cut you off. China already does this for minors: after a certain point they get in-game warnings and then the game switches off. Parents obviously aren’t qualified to monitor their kids online.
Speaking of your kids online, those little crumb crunchers are usually the richest people in virtual worlds because they’ve got time to play the most. You better check their inventory of “phat loot,” because you may be taxed on it someday. After all, it is your credit card they’re using for their game subscription, right?
Does all of this supposed regulation sound ridiculous? Just take a look around in the “real world.” It’s already happened. Why not make the leap into the virtual world and harass people there too?
NERD ALERT!
You’ve got to be kidding me. All the stuff my lvl 60 dwarf guardian has built up in Lord of the Rings Online could be taxed? And when I save Middle-Earth are you statists gonna give me a tax credit or something?
It ain’t only gamers that have too much time on their hands. It’s all the sick nerds in the government.
Hey Sarah, want to win youth votes? Post a Facebook against in-game wealth taxation.
Dude, that sucks. Lame in all kinds of ways– where do you even begin?
Nothing bugs our lords and masters ( er, I mean dedicated public servants) more than seeing something they don’t control. This drives them nuts.
They immediately set out to find Something Wrong With It. It’s violent. It’s fattening. It uses too much energy. It threatens the environment of the speckled marmadilch. Disrespects the ethnic sensibilities of Homo erectus. But they will not stop until it’s caught in a web of ( mostly unintelligible) rules, laws, and lawsuits. And taxes, taxes and more taxes.
And then they absolutely wonder why our factories and IT industry shipped out to Asia.
That 11mil figure was worldwide subs. The US number was much smaller, 2mil or so.
There is no end to which the statists will go.
Hey, why not the dollar regulated by the US Federal Reserve Bank (which, by the way, isn’t Federal, there is no reserve and it is wild fantasy to call it a bank) is virtual money anyway.
No group is more greedy than government. Many people cry about the oil companies but its government that makes more off a gallon of gas. In America the government already makes more than it needs. They use it to pay for teaching drunk hookers in Asia and socialist programmes. More than 1/2 of my paycheck to pay taxes. I don’t play mmo games so this tax wouldn’t affect me. But what other tax will they dream up to control some other aspect of life next? It is out of hand and needs to be reigned in.
No wonder people have a problem dealing with reality. Even governments seem to not know the difference between real and pretend.
(dictionary.com)
re⋅al⋅i⋅ty [ree-al-i-tee] Show IPA
–noun, plural -ties for 3, 5–7.
1. the state or quality of being real.
2. resemblance to what is real.
3. a real thing or fact.
4. real things, facts, or events taken as a whole; state of affairs: the reality of the business world; vacationing to escape reality.
5. Philosophy.
a. something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.
b. something that exists independently of all other things and from which all other things derive.
6. something that is real.
7. something that constitutes a real or actual thing, as distinguished from something that is merely apparent.
—Idiom
8. in reality, in fact or truth; actually: brave in appearance, but in reality a coward.
pre⋅tend [pri-tend]
–verb (used with object)
1. to cause or attempt to cause (what is not so) to seem so: to pretend illness; to pretend that nothing is wrong.
2. to appear falsely, as to deceive; feign: to pretend to go to sleep.
3. to make believe: The children pretended to be cowboys.
4. to presume; venture: I can’t pretend to say what went wrong.
5. to allege or profess, esp. insincerely or falsely: He pretended to have no knowledge of her whereabouts.
–verb (used without object)
6. to make believe.
7. to lay claim to (usually fol. by to): She pretended to the throne.
8. to make pretensions (usually fol. by to): He pretends to great knowledge.
9. Obsolete. to aspire, as a suitor or candidate (fol. by to).
–adjective
10. Informal. make-believe; simulated; counterfeit: pretend diamonds.
How can you lay claim to something that does not exist? I guess the same way you can spend money you don’t have and will never have ie trillons of dollars, and the same way you can claim something has happened when it didn’t ie jobs saved by the stimulus.
Well they can tax my online wealth and I will pay them with my online gold. Nothing from nothing still equals nothing, but hey I’m a mage so I’ll throw in some arcane explosions along with my payments. That ought to spice things up a bit.
Sorry, would have responded earlier, but I had a meeting with my I.R.S. Representative in Second City.
Yet another reason for the Fair Tax. Still, I was under the impression that items produced for personal consumption are exempt from taxation; for instance, you don’t tax a farmer for the market value of the crops that he and his family eat, only what he sells is taxed. What this illustrates is that the Internet is the Wild West; we pretty much make up the rules as we go along, because attempting to apply laws not designed for the Internet to the Internet often results in nonsense.
Dammit you beat me to it! Their authority is about as real too.
7. TomF:
Hey, why not the dollar regulated by the US Federal Reserve Bank (which, by the way, isn’t Federal, there is no reserve and it is wild fantasy to call it a bank) is virtual money anyway.
Heck you didn’t even get into the really NASTY in game things that EVE ONLINE allows, and even celebrates!
How about a “Hostile Takeover” that involves infiltrating people into several layers of a corporation and even paying off the VP of said corp. Then on a given signal clean out the corporations bank accounts, it’s physical assests, and then assinate the President of the corporation? If I recall correctly that was over 3.2 TRILLION ISK worth of loss in that heist. Real world money value at the time? $32,000. Not bad for a year’s work eh?
What did CCP, the Icelandic creators of the game do? They published the entire affair and showed how it proved how player driven their game was.
If the government has their way CCP and EVE Online are toast easy. It allows players too much freedom. Heck look at their entire banking, stock, and economy!
#12
Great analogy! There is little difference between the real world fantasy, which makes up our present economy and the virtual worlds economy… both at creating make believe worthless money.
These games must be taxed and attacked by our over reaching arms. This cannot do, the government has spent lots of hard earned money around teaching the youth of america. They cannot have these games running around teaching them free market capitalism. The people need to understand that wealth is created by government, not hard work.
Soon, coming to WOW:
Teammate 1 – “Nice! That sword is the best drop for your class in the game! Very rare…”
Teammate 2 – “Dammit… pass!”
Teammate 1 – “WHAT?!”
Teammate 2 – “Man, with that drop my account value skyrockets… I can’t afford the taxes on it…”
Later –
Knifedancer – “Nice! I needed that drop for my tier 7 set!”
Obamaniac – “Sorry, as a distressed minority I must claim that drop in the name of equality! *yoink!*”
Boiledtoady – “CRAP!! Who keeps clicking the ‘affirmative action’ button instead of ‘/roll’?!!”
Knifedancer – “Obamaniac did… he says he is a distressed minority.”
Boiledtoady – “To heck with that, I’ve been waiting a year for that drop! I ear-”
Announcement – Boiledtoady has been booted from the server – reason: Racist.
LOL@#16
Next: DKP flat tax & entitlement programs…
;P
Hmmm… how would the government treat “duping” (using an in-game exploit to duplicate items or in-game currency)?
And is the government going to subsidize my farming?
16. Mayor:…
Your post should be part of the blog above
If this tax goes through, it could be a huge boon for the conservative movement. It would teach our nation’s youngest voters the truth about the free market versus a state-run economy.
This could be the ticket to energize our nation’s youth to vote!