Selling Virtual Gold for Fun and Profit

Grimrod writes "Dave Long of GamerDad has some musings in his column this week on the virtual world of massively multiplayer online games and the legality of selling virtual goods." Mr. Long is commenting on a story posted last week at Plaguelands detailing a supposed duping bug in EQ2 that allowed a small group of players to make thousands of dollars in U.S. currency. From the GamerDad article: "For me personally, it's impossible to grasp the idea of buying virtual goods to make my in-game character better. A lot of people seem to have a lot more money than sense though and for them that's perfectly reasonable. To further cloud the issue of who really owns virtual goods, in EverQuest II a crafted weapon keeps my name on it as the creator. If I want to sell that to someone for real money, there's no better defense than to say, "I made that!" and look right there online to see my name on the item."