A Rainbow follows Clouds - Korean Supreme Court's Rule on some RMT

* This post is a correspondence to Ted's recent post 'SCOSK Legalized RMT'

 Supreme Court of South Korea just interpreted game industry promotion act that I introduced in my old posting on Terra Nova: "Selective bombing of RMT in Korea" legaly literally.

 By the law and its implementing decree, in-game money banned for trading should be gained either by luck or thru illegal/abnormal play. In this case, what the accused resellers bought and sold were Aden, a virtual currency created and circulated in Lineage(a famous Korean MMORPG since 1998, its EULA rules out RMT of Aden). And throughout the trial, there were no evidence shown to prove those resellers bought the money from Bot-using sweatshops or hackers.

  Therefore, the critical point of the case was whether Aden is money of luck game to be banned or not. Public prosecutor asserted that attribute of Lineage is also a game of luck like a poker game, even though the former is less clear than the latter. 1st tier court judge found it guilty, but did not mention clearly about reasoning in the ruling.

  The appellate court overruled the decision and explained that Lineage is game of sweat, not a game of luck, considering that it takes lots of time and effort to get Aden by hunting & Aden can be earned not only thru hunting but also thru PVP combat and P2P market in lineage world. So appellate court acquitted the resellers from the conviction for violation of game law. Finally, on Christmas eve last year, SCOSK confirmed appellate court's ruling.

  I agree with Greg in that SCOSK's ruling itself does not mean total legalization of RMT. Definitely, The game industry promotion act in S. Korea selectively command to bomb the RMT of cyber cash of luck game and illegally/abnormally taken virtual money. Cause, the aim of game law is to protect 'Game' from 'Gambling'. Of course, it's not easy to detect and make a proof for selection. After the SCOSK's decision, korean authority announced its endeavor to ban abnormal RMT must go on.

 Yes, right now, there's no change in this long gray colored clouds even in S. Korea and the EULA of NCsoft will (if the company want to) survive though somewhat depowered. But I think, some day, this decision opens the way of rainbow and new world to evolve into. In S. Korea, where the Second Life was serviced as RMT castrated and now withdrawn from, If SCOSK decided to the contrary, and extended the word of game law to Lineage-like virtual world, then, Grabbing with the dead bodies of RMT intermediaries, looking over dying Bots, Koreans will never imagine and meet in EVE online -like, Second Life -like, and There-like futuredoms.

 Just same as lovable game, 'Gaia' of terranova to be kept.

Comments

[greglas]

1.

Thanks, Unggi. So, in a way, there's even less to this than the English language story seems to suggest. All the Supreme Court seems to have done here is interpret that statute exactly as it is written, not imposing criminal liability in a case that did not involve botting, hacking, etc. And I agree, keeping the bombing of RMT selective means that new spaces built around non-game paradigms are not excluded from future possibility. This is a good thing.

[Unggi Yoon]

2.

It's my pleasure, Greg.

There can be different two way of thinking regarding to this like colliding between Game and MMO. One is antigen-antibody reaction-like view, the other is cell division-like view.

Before the ruling, the former have been dominant in S. Korea in that even the EULA of MMORPG being operated & serviced by famous RMT intermediary company banned RMT of its virtual money and items just same as NCsoft, also in that there's no experiment like Station exchange of SOE. Real intentions of parties have been under the gray clouds.

I'm not sure but now the latter beam could start to come down to earth through the clouds. As I noted in one of my papers, I regard MMOG not as a sort of extension of game, but as a kind of newly born virtual association(centered on game). So, I put the possibility of virtual association for other field in regard to this SCOSK's ruling.

[Hahn]

3.

thank you for good post.

Anyway, I can't add your RSS feed on my RSS reader. It says something is wrong with your rss feed. any problem?