Work with your in-house counsel to takedown RMT websites and services

[TheLoveJenovan]

Dear Square-Enix Legal,

I am a player of Final Fantasy XIV and other products. My experience, and the experience of many others, is that gil or gold sellers (Real Money Trading, RMT) significantly disrupt the experience of your legitimate customers, like myself. Square-Enix's technical approach to this problem through the Special Task Force (STF) is very limited in its ability to identify and curtail RMT on its platforms.

I am emailing with a few suggestions that Square-Enix’s litigation department might make to more effectively address this problem. I believe that Square-Enix has a basis for legal action for at least 3 reasons:

1. Trademark Infringement. The trademark of ‘Final Fantasy XIV’, ‘Final Fantasy 14’, ‘FFXIV’ and ‘FF14’ are used in violation of your Materials Usage License by “us[ing] the Materials for any sales or commercial use, meaning you cannot receive license fees or advertising revenue.”

2. Copyright Infringement

3. Violation of Terms of Service (TOS). The activities of RMT are arguably causing material damages to Square-Enix through the loss of subscribers, like myself, and it could be the basis for civil litigation.

Considering the above violations, I suggest the following:

A. Sending Cease & Desist letters to the contacts of gil selling websites. The effectiveness of this approach is likely going to be limited since many of these companies are based in countries outside the United States, like China, India and Singapore.

B. Contacting US-based third party service vendors about the Trademark Infringement or other activities. Many third parties have policies against trademark violations and other illegal activities. Examples include:

1. godaddy.com (US based registrar): https://www.godaddy.com/legal/agreem...t-infringement

2. namecheap.com (US based registrar): https://www.namecheap.com/legal/gene...mark-policies/

3. verisign.com (US based registrar): Email 'info@verisign-grs.com’ or https://www.verisign.com/en_US/compa...se/index.xhtml

4. cloudflare.com (CDN service): https://developers.cloudflare.com/fu.../report-abuse/

5. MasterCard (payment): https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/visi...cy-policy.html

6. Visa (payment): https://usa.visa.com/legal/report-brand-abuse.html

7. American Express (payment): https://www.americanexpress.com/cont...ct%202011w.pdf

8. Discover (payment): https://www.discover.com/company/our...ode-of-ethics/

9. PayPal (payment): https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/infringementrpt-full

10. Google Pay (payment): https://support.google.com/adspolicy.../2562124?hl=en

[TheLoveJenovan]

11. Intermediary secure payment services may be compelled to disallow RMT if their payment sources (see above) may be removed. These include ‘McAfee Secure’, ‘Privacy Safe’ and ‘Business Verified’


C. Contacting the ICANN for cases in which Square-Enix properties are used in the URLs. https://www.icann.org/resources/page...-2017-06-20-en

[TheLoveJenovan]

Additionally, I would ask Square-Enix to more vigilantly litigate RMT companies since the “employees” that are used to accrue virtual assets are either poorly compensated or not compensated at all. It has been known for a long time that RMT promotes human rights abuses and potentially other criminal activity.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...et-gaming-scam