Topic: Please remove the Digital Goods section (Read 2454 times)

Ok, I get it: most people want to keep Digital Goods and the moderators don't want to take actions against bad actors.

Keep in mind that using escrow won't protect you from getting licenses revoked or gift cards reversed - I hate to say that, but I suggest using reversible payment options for purchases in this section (the trust system would be a nice thing if it was reliable)

I'm locking this topic now - stay safe if you're planning to trade Digital Goods.

The politic of this staff  (as I have read in the past): is to not moderate the scam or scam attempt because everyone of us should trade with his own diligence (and obviously use always an escrow). Remove that section (as I said previously) will not resolve the problem, and an extra mod will not also resolve the problem.

The section needs to be cleaned up thats for sure. If an extra mod is needed just for that section let it happen. What is legal and illegal is debatable. For example using someone's netflix account to watch shows is debatable but using up some one's dunkin donuts virtual balance is illegal since its stealing their money and hurts them compared to piggybacking someones netflix where they can still use the service.

Yes I think so.
I think digital shouldn't removen but we must make the rules to control illegal contents.

I don't think the digital goods section should be removed, nor do I think it is filled with illegal offers.

First of all the laws that are allegedly broken when selling pirated software are IP laws which are generally not viewed as "just" and will not try to proactively enforce them.

Looking at the first 4 pages (158 threads) in the digital goods section, I found the following:
-9 threads that are selling accounts (e.g. netflix, HBOGo, etc.) that are priced at levels that they are likely stolen
-9 threads that are selling gift cards at a large enough of a discount that I can use common sense to say they were probably originally obtained illegitimately
-14 threads that are either selling MSDN related keys or apparently similarly obtained keys (note this is disputed by many, including me, that this is actually against the law)
-2 threads denoting that threads were moved to another section to account for why I only counted 158 threads above

This works out to roughly 20% of the threads on the first four pages that are selling potentially illegally obtained items, however that percentage drops to roughly 11% if you don't believe selling MSDN (and similar) keys is illegal.

Please note that the threads I counted are only apparently "illegal" and I have not actually found actual evidence that laws have been broken, I need to make certain assumptions to come to the conclusion that laws were broken. I also think it is fair to say that some small percentage of items being sold that are "tagged" as potentially illegally obtained are likely legitimately obtained but their seller is simply trying to get rid of them quickly.

Please keep this section - whenever I have the urge to watch professional porn instead of paying $19.95 for a month subscription, I pay someone $2 for an account from here! Once I finish my business and everything, either way I feel quite mad about how I wasted that money. I'd rather it be $2 then $20 so please keep digital good section.

Thank you. THXS. Merci. Danke. Grazie. 謝謝. блaгoдapя.

The forum forbids a deal if it's illegal in either the buyer's or the seller's country. So I understand you can't publish something that is illegal in your country and you can't make an offer for something that is illegal in your country. However that's hard to enforce because people are not required to disclose their country (and we know little about other countries law). Probably the community should decide some more specific rules (which could be handled by a poll) for common cases that varies per country such as copyrighted goods, porn and so on.

Which law will refer to this board?
This is international forum porn is fine in some countries.

Removing the section completely makes no sense whatsoever.

Use your head when buying things. If you can't handle that section don't go there.

It is illegal in several jurisdictions. Even having sex with children recording it and selling the video would be legal in some countries....

+ If you can prove they sell illegal goods in all jurisdictions, then moderators will remove it. Just because you don't like a digital good or it's illegal in your jurisdiction doesn't mean it's illegal in everywhere. Rules are clear.

Fun fact*: People sell stolen cars in Syria, they steal it from Turkey and sell them back to real owners. That's tolerated by our government. Laws are f*cked up.

*1 http://www.ahaber.com.tr/webtv/turkiye/suriyede-calinti-oto-pazari
*2 http://www.aljazeera.com.tr/al-jazeera-ozel/kiralik-araclar-suriyeye-kaciriliyor
*3 http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/ekonomi/25425166.asp

I'm saying it's the same logic. There are accidents, ban cars. There are illegal goods, remove whole marketplace.
It's like censoring internet in Turkey only for Turkish users when a social media site don't remove a content that government don't want us to see. But everybody use VPN and see it anyway. It's absurd, outdated, anti-libertarian. This offer is against BitcoinTalk's policy.

This is best place to find some digital goods including illegal but I'm always find Stream game keys scripts and premium account.

Are you really comparing people knowingly selling illegal goods to accidents in traffic? If 1 million people sold stolen cars in Turkey should that be tolerated?

I've sold some goods there and if it was removed people like me would not have a place for those kind of transactions. Enforcing rules wont do anything since we dont have that many moderators to have them checkout every thread, my recommendation would be to actually divide the sections on legitimate goods and the other one, people would buy how they want and if someone is found to be posting in the wrong section then consequences should follow.

Every year* only in Turkey there are more than 1 million accidents in traffic. Let's ban (remove) all cars from traffic then. Your offer is absurd.

Digital Goods section is very useful if you know how to use that board. There are a lot of legit sellers and that board bring more activity for Bitcoin related market transactions. I would say it is the biggest and best board for Bitcoin ecosystem and should be expanded (more sub forums), not removed.

Copying something is not always a blatant theft. You can't react that way every time. It is thin line between stealing intellectual property and copying something patented by someone else etc.
I want to say that removing Digital Good is not going to resolve anything and it is just sweeping problem under the rug.

Your experience with Bitcoin is going to be more disappointing if you're sending money that can't be claimed back to people you don't know. Privacy for buyers works in most cases unless you're trading BTC.

Privacy is key for bitcoin so disclosing stuff should not be mandatory ESPECIALLY address and phone number since that can lead to a lot more serious bad things. This is a forum not a bank with bank security so leaving very private information like that on a forum that can be hacked is a definite no. Cleaning up the digital goods forum is a good idea however defining what is "bad" is very subjective. Also what proof can you provide on what is legit vs not. For example someone selling an amazon gift card for 10-15% off. Seems reasonable and it could be legit or a carded gift card or hacked/cracked. I would say start by removing things that you can tell are 100% wrong such as people selling combos, users dunkin n donuts accounts with balances on them (clearly cracked), PSN accounts with wallet balances on them, etc. Essentially anything that involves an account with a virtual balance that is being advertised. Gray area items such as gift cards should be left since they can be legit and leave it up to the professional judgment of the buyers to decide.

That would definitely make this much more than a forum. It'd be like a complete marketplace, which would be nice but I don't think all the required systems to verify and control could be implemented and managed (besides the privacy issues as pointed out by abyrnes). I also like crazyearner's idea but I don't think mods could do all that work either.
Being practical I really think a better organization of that board (creating sub-forums) and a more strict set of rules would help. Then we all could report those not following the rules.

Then Where is the privacy? We are in a bitcoin forum, the anonimity is the first thing to protect here. If I want to sell a digital item, I will not give my name to the forum (this is my personal choice).

How about only allowing software sales for people who are wiling to disclose their full name, address and phone number - so if it's not legit you can report them to the police.

It will be hard for staffs to do all these works. We will have to get dedicated staffs for this and will have to pay them and I don't think forum is earning enough to cover them. And also, how do we know things they provide are legit? How can we know that staffs aren't whitelisting their acquaintances? How can we know the staff itself is selling such keys? etc...

IMHO it is futile.

What I think should happen with Digital goods section is for only selected people to sell stuff and to be verified before coming to sell that proof of submitting legitimate keys or software and priced at good rates along with reseller rights and proof of this to prove that it is legitimate cops been sold as such.

Too many people sell serials for Windows and their none legit or trial licence ones that expire. Torrent site invites need to be sorted too as many buy them and soon later get accounts suspended because invites come from stolen account to get found out and account gets banned because the inventor got banned for selling invites.

People who sell stuff like Amazon vouchers or alike are good but still can easily get ripped off and seen so many disputes in digital goods where people bought worked and I have had it where I bought one  a while back had the code disputed made claims that code was stolen in dispute with Amazon provided all proof.

Maybe to re work it and have verified and trusted sellers that have proven with past products have sold or can provide something to say everything is 100% legit and not illegal or scam. Even other sections are out of control and no proper rules are in place. I think would also be advisable to look into all sections of trading and selling goods hardware and digital.

Yes, unless the moderators are willing to enforce very strict rules for sales

but do you want to penalize all the other "legit" sellers? I don't think it is a good choice, why remove an entire section because "few" dishonest person are selling "illegal items" etc... ?

You can crack down on them and ban them.

Do you guys want to be surrounded by people who might crack your accounts and sell them?

I agree with you, but if it's cracked accounts then it's just like a scam things happen there, but even they do, it doesn't mean that the digital goods section needs to be closed, and anyway some of them still selling a legit keys / accounts...
The key is just careful at trading with someone...
And use escrow

Digital Good section is a important way to prove existence meaning of Bitcoin: to be a currency.

There are plenty of people offering legitmate goods such as legitimate software keys with proof of authenticity, bitcointalk accounts and game accounts. If you were to remove the section, it would be unfair for people who sell legitimate things. You could give a negative trust to warn people but you can't ask a mod to remove it unless you have proofs.

Seems a bit drastic removing the digital section completely, if you suspect there are threads selling dodgy software keys just report them to the mods so that they can be removed. The hard part is proving that they are not legit...

Because of those scammers, why should I suffer? I also list my gift cards in that section and sell legitimate goods so I would be suffering because of those members which is not right. Those scammers should be stopped but well that section isn't moderated in respect of who sells scammed products and who doesn't. the buyers happily buy hacked/fraudulent goods and they are to be blamed as well.

My problem is that I'm having to report wayyy too many posts every day for digital goods put in goods.

i dont agree in removing the Digital Goods section, it will only cause a topic posted in the wrong place coz you cant avoid people selling their goods. maybe a solution of moderating the thread or banning people selling stolen keys/accounts will be better if it is possible

should try moderate the section rather than closing it completely

My perseption of the section is different. Many sell their domains, webpages, scripts for X there. Some sell their bitcointalk accounts and of those some might have been stolen, but those cases typcially end up in meta anyway. Whether or not the software in question was obtained illegally would be hard to proof. A 80% discount should certainly make you suspicious.

If I can say my opinion, I don't think it's necessary to remove digital goods section. In that child board there are a lot of trusted sellers, if you find something of illegal then report it to a triated member in the default trust list (like tomatocage, vod, quickseller...) and they can warn the other users with a simple negative trust (left) to that user.

IMO, a good portion of the Digital Goods forum supports theft as long as it benefits bitcoin.  I got ripped a new one when I pointed out obvious theft.   

I'm pretty sure OP suggests to forbid publishing digital goods, not just removing the board and moving all the threads somewhere else. And I'm also pretty sure that won't happen.

Probably very few people would acknowledge their goods are not "legitimate". However adding sub-categories in that board would be a good idea. Further analysis would be required but probably some of these ones make sense: Domains, Accounts, Gift and virtual cards, Software, others.

if the digital goods forum is closed, then the digital goods things will be posted in the goods sections

and it won't be spam

Why not just divide the Digital Goods section --> Cracked Goods|Legitmate Goods
Maybe it will helpful

Unless they are getting banned - that should be easier than cleaning up the posts.

If we combine both your statements, then all that would happen is the "spam" is going to move to other subforums, where its equally not going to be dealt with. That doesn't help us.

Maybe, but there's so much to be removed - I just don't think they're going to do that.


It should be considered spam in other subforums.

Isn't the immediate solution to clean up the section and then reevaluate? Especially if closing the section will simply move the toxicity to another subforum.

Most offers in Digital Goods are related to cracked user accounts and illegally obtained software keys.

Maybe 10% of all posts in Digital Goods are related to legitimate offers so it's not worth keeping this section.