the mass production of silk and its importance as goods exportable and strategic caused its monopoly by the shah-abbas i (996-1038 a.h.) and then the recruitment of the armenians merchants in his monopoly. therefore, the question is what function had the three related factors (silk, monopoly politics and armenians) in safavids economy and politics. for a careful investigation, after a review of...

The global market for virtual items, characters and currencies was estimated to exceed 2.1 Billion USD in 2007. Selling virtual goods for real money is an increasingly common revenue model not only for online games and virtual worlds, but for social networking sites and other mainstream online services as well. What drives consumer spending on virtual items is an increasingly relevant question,...

Virtual Worlds have become serious business models and thus gained the attention of law professionals. The legal problems arising out of Virtual Worlds have started a discussion which will be summarized in this article. Moreover arguments will be delivered which can be used to protect users of those Virtual Realities.

Industry revenue for online games is surging. A unique phenomenon in this market is the significant volume of trade among game users, who exchange real money for virtual goods that do not exist in the real world. The market of virtual goods has two distinctive characteristics: 1) the resold virtual items normally involve no quality loss since the attributes are digitally defined, and 2) the gam...