When is virtual money no longer virtual? When the Government wants to tax it. Reuters carried a brief article with this great line: “Right now we’re at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind of public policy questions virtual economies raise — taxes, barter exchanges, property and wealth,” said Dan Miller, senior economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.. That’s policy wonk for “we don’t know what it is or how big it will get, but if it continues to grow then bet your ass we will figure out how to take a piece of it.”
Interesting questions, though: if virtual money is real money, are virtual crimes real crimes? This has long been debated in the virtual world space (Linda Stone and many others have been talking about this for at least a decade). But if real world tax laws are deemed to have analogs in virtual economies, what about the virtual economy of open source? Can I get a tax credit for donating my time to Perl? Or (knowing Washington) will there be a coder penalty, taxed for the time I give to open source at the rate I’d sell it to a customer? It’s no crazier than a modem tax :-) Then, further out on the “the future is weird, it’s just not evenly disconcerting yet” riff there’s the what if everything was free world of 3d printers.
As I’m sure Larry Lessig would attest, there’s just as much pain as there is mirth to be found in imagining a future where current laws are applied to new technology. Until virtual worlds are taxed and regulated, there’ll be a ton of money to be made by the people who first figure out how to exploit them to bypass first life laws. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to ask Tim to pay me in small unmarked Lindens …