In January of last year, Sony Online Entertainment, which runs
EverQuest, prevailed on eBay and Yahoo to cancel all auctions
of EverQuest items, asserting that the transactions were a
violation of the game's end-user licensing agreement, which
states that Verant Interactive, a Sony subsidiary, "shall retain
ownership of all intellectual property rights."
"From the player's standpoint, I can understand that there's
an eminent domain issue, which is basically, `I produced the
goods, so I can do what I want,' " said Edward Castronova,
an associate professor of economics at California State University
at Fullerton who has written a paper on EverQuest called
"Virtual Worlds: A Firsthand Account of Market and Society
on the Cyberian Frontier." "But the game runners have a
public-goods argument. They need to create an atmosphere
of play for the collective good, and if they allow the buying
and selling of items, that collective good could be ruined."