3pointD.com

Raph Koster flags a report from Korea’s ETNews (subscription only) that describes a new trade association that’s been formed by Korean gold farmers and real-money trade sites to lobby the Korean government, which has been considering regulation of the sector. This is just the kind of issue we’re often concerned with over at the Second Life Herald, and which Herald founder Urizenus Sklar (aka Peter Ludlow) and I address quite a bit in the book we recently wrote (which should perhaps appear between covers by the end of this year). While it may be quite apparent to most readers of this blog, a lot of the general public has little notion that there’s so much more going on in virtual worlds than simply games. Real-world issues like this and related issues of taxation, law and contractual obligations are only just now beginning to be examined and worked out by the courts in various countries. Call it a first step in the rationalization of the metaverse. In the best case scenario, it should lead to the online portion of our lives becoming more secure and more grounded, and less of the wild-west scenario it’s still often portrayed as.