MMOs: It's the Economy, Stupid
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With the coming of WoW, I looked again at my options. WoW is a fun game, and I certainly didn't mind the thought of selling off my gold. In the betas, Blizzard had stated that while they didn't especially like EBaying, they weren't going to do anything about it. So retail started and I went about busy-beaver like knowing that the currency market would start high and plummet like a rock until it (theoretically) stabilized. The first week I had two successful auctions, for 1 gold each, for those counting.
Then something funny happened. My auctions started to be delisted. EBay has a program called VeRO which is their division to handle a company's complaint of IP/copyright infringement. EBay, and I can't really fault them for this, defaults to companies to police their IP. So if something is infringing, they tell ebay about it and the listing is removed. I had been told that the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) was the entity responsible for the complaints on my auctions (two at the time). A quick web surf shows that Vivendi (who bought out Sierra and Blizzard a few years back) is in fact a member. For those of you not aware, the ESA sponsors E3, and is mostly just the legal/lobbying body for some game companies. They are very pro-DMCA.
