The Glade 4.0

I have pointed to solid evidence, namely Blizzard's extensive progrm to deal with the problem.

You keep trying to pretend this isn't solid because it's not in the form of a statistic.

As for criminal prosecution being appropriate, why exactly does something have to be a prosecutable offense for people to disapprove of it, or for it to be a problem? Prosecutability is not the be-all and end-all of determining if there's a problem.

For people that actually do steal the credit card numbers, prosecution is warranted if it's practical in any case.

You seem not to be able to understand that there are 4 different groups here: gold buyers, gold sellers, hackers, and hackers that steal credit cards, and that what's appropriate for one isn't necessarily for the others. You keep trying to amalgamate them into one group. As you go from left to right in that group, the amount of douchebaggery increases rapidly, as does the criminal activity. I have no problem with prosecuting people for credit card fraud, and "ZOMG its a video game" is not an excuse. People who are buying or selling gold that's involved with hacking and hacking that involves credit card theft are supporting douchebaggery, and in some cases, crime, even if they don't realize it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If Blizzard wanted to shut down the trade in virtual currency they could do it with a single patch. The "solid evidence" you refer to isn't solid at all.

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In time, this too shall pass.

It's pretty solid until you show some solid evidence of this grandiose claim you're making.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's technically possible to do anything from "do nothing" to "eliminate trade all together". All Blizzard is doing is allowing a RSA type authenticator (the cost of that is passed on to the consumer) and telling people to beware.

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In time, this too shall pass.

They do a lot more than that. They tend to have sweeps every so often banning tons of accounts that are part of the system. They usually don't make the information public when they do, although I remember once or twice where this was the case. I even had a guildie accidentally banned for suspicious activity cause he was making way more gold than most people -- a result of some heuristic put in place. :p Took him a few days to straighten that out...

...which, again, they're paying a lot for CS to handle all these "my account was hacked!" complaints. It's very, very common for WoW. I'm actually surprised I haven't had my account hijacked since I haven't bought an Authenticator (though I think I'm doing that any day now when I order Cata), though I suppose it's a reminder that good Internet security habits account for a great deal of "security".

What you're asking is for Blizzard to change their intended game mechanics to fight back against all the RMT and account stealing that goes with it. That can easily be a case of the cure being worse than the disease, depending on just what they do. I'd rather put up with farmers and have Blizzard pay whoever they're paying now for CS and whatever heuristics and associated banning they do to combat this trade than I would to have Blizzard just throw up their hands and say "alright then, screw you guys. If anyone wants to buy gold, just pay us instead." Maybe some people would consider that a good tradeoff so long as it only remained gold and didn't include (non-vanity) items. Maybe some would like that, and certainly like the much less common account hijackings that would result. But ultimately the point is that Blizzard would have to compromise their game itself in going down one of these paths.

And so far, though they're paying who knows what just to combat all these account hijackings (though I'm sure it doesn't hold much of a candle to their revenue, that's another story :p I'm reminded though of people who suggested Lars Ulrich shouldn't have made a big deal about people illegally downloading Metallica songs because hey, he has enough money). This extra money they're paying is done so that they don't have to change their game.

Which is a silly answer. Blizzard could eliminate the gold trade by shutting WoW down too. It's implicit in the question of "How would they go about doing that" that the anser should not be something that would be even worse for the game.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The kid already said how to fix accounts getting hacked. Have Blizzard force a monthly unique password change. That would almost completely eliminate "stolen" gold and then all they would have to do is work on bot detection.

Yet, they don't.

If people are willing to type in a new code every time they log in, I doubt they'd be bothered by typing a new password every 30 days.

If there was a real problem with credit card theft because of gold selling, Blizzard would be obligated to act and change whatever gameplay mechanics that would be required to be changed up to and including shutting down the game.

12 million customers would love to be part of a class action suit if their credit cards were compromised because of neglect.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I think one or both of you may have misunderstood what the guy in the video was referring to with respect to credit card theft/fraud. I haven't been following the argument closely, so I don't know which. In any case, he wasn't saying that CC info was being stolen from WoW players via WoW account theft. Rather, gold farmers and brokers are using stolen CC data and other forms of CC fraud to purchase their "burner" accounts used for farming, banking, distributing, and laundering gold, as well as spamming their advertisements.

Think about it -- what do you suppose the lifespan of a L1 spambot yelling in Ogrimmar is? You have to know that a given gold trader has got to burn through at least dozens of accounts per server per month (if not more) just on that. On top of which you have to contend with account bans for botting on your farm bots, gold selling on your distribution accounts, etc., etc. Paying for all of those accounts out of your own pocket would be prohibitively expensive -- especially at today's gold prices. The solution, of course, is CC theft, which is surprisingly economical. Stolen CC data is much cheaper than you might imagine.

You can believe me or not -- I don't really care either way -- but it's a matter of fact that there's an active tertiary market supplying stolen CC data to gold farmers. They aren't the only customers of course, but they're one of the big ones. Unsurprisingly, only amateurs use stolen CC info to buy physical goods and personal services. That's a damn good way to get caught. The bulk of the people buying stolen CC data are using it in much safer transactions like electronic goods and services that don't leave a physical paper trail, and whose electronic paper trail can be easily mitigated to a negligible risk.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

I can buy that. It's still ultimately credit card theft being encouraged by gold selling.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Such a suit would be very hard to make fly. You'd be suing Blizzard for criminal activities by a third party which Blizzard explicitly disapproves of.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Another aspect of this, again, outside the moral one, is that gold selling ultimately increases blizz's profit. Even though they ban gold selling accounts, new "dummy accounts" are opened every day with stolen credit card information, that the credit card companies have to eat the charge of.

So Blizzard is still getting paid.

Except that most of those ultimately get charged back, resulting in more lost revenue.

Which they're able to write off on their annual taxes. Moreover, during the time they have the money, they are able to use it to make more money. (Money makes itself if you already have it).

Even with the credit card companies recouping the money from Blizzard, I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard still increased their profit margin.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Not at all - there are laws that mandate that any activity that compromises your credit card or other personal information on a (in this case) Blizzard server requires the company to report it to you immediately and then they have to determine if the information will be misused. They can disapprove of the activity all they want, but they're obligated to maintain "reasonable" integrity of your information on their systems.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I'm thinkin there is some confusion on your part here. The credit card theft is not done thru the game, it is being done via 3rd party add-ons and WoW sites outside the realm of Blizzard.

No confusion on my part at all. In my opinion, credit card theft and illegal account access and gold selling are three separate issues, but others are suggesting otherwise. In a way, the fact that someone owns something is responsible for there being thieves 'cause without property their couldn't be theft, but that's a tenuous relationship at best. To me, gold selling and unauthorized account access seem to have a similar relationship.

There will be accusations that gold sellers are the cause of global warming next, just watch.

It's not like I believe I'll change someone's mind (it's hard to argue with someone who has opinions in lieu of facts), but I do hope that they'll change it themselves when they're continually forced to support an argument that they have no facts about. It does make me feel like I'm arguing with someone who believes violent video games turns kids into killers...

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In time, this too shall pass.