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So, last semester I was taking a basic antitrust class. One day after the class I go home and start playing WoW. At this point I'm trying to raise money for my arcanite bars for Thunderfury, so one thing I'm doing is smelting dark iron and selling the bars on the AH, or making simple things like Dark Iron Shoulders.
Shortly after putting a bunch of dark iron bars on the auction house, I receive a tell from another player whom I recognize as another dark iron seller. He says, "Let's agree to not charge less than 9g per dark iron bar." And I tell him, "Absolutely, good plan." The next thing I think is, "Minimum price fixing is a per se violation of the Sherman Act lol." But of course I don't seriously think that anything that happens in the game could really be an antitrust significant act.
But then again, could it be? Of course the EULA and TOS are replete with statements like "Blizzard recognizes no property interests outside of World of Warcraft" etc., but then again an antitrust action wouldn't necessarily require a property interest, just a conspiracy to restrain competition. And certainly Blizzard recognizes "property interests" internal to World of Warcraft, because GMs will act on accusations of "scamming."
This presumes that the EULA and TOS are valid to begin with, which hasn't been settled in the Ninth Circuit, as far as I know.
Just some ramblings off the top of my head on a fairly silly topic. :) But certainly in Second Life or Project Entropia, it seems like you could potentially file antitrust complaints against other players based on their game actions.
Sort of off-topic given the forum, but then again it's Saturday afternoon and I have nothing better to do.
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