The idea that farmers somehow pay the companies money is silly. When a subscription costs $10 to $15, the other options are much more preferable. Take stolen credit cards - stolen Visa cards could be as low as $6 or $7 per number, including the personal info attached to the card. Abusing referral or free trial programs are even cheaper, since they cost nothing except time. It's like any other business, where you try to minimize costs to raise the return on your investment. Defrauding the MMO company is much cheaper than creating real, paid accounts.

Also, many buyers probably don't realize that this is wrong. Especially if you're new to the game and just want to have fun, you could easily be taken in by the slick webpages that assure you that "we have never heard of anyone being banned for buying gold." Why would these webpages be up when it's not allowed? Most likely because the parent company is in another country, which makes enforcing your copyrights extremely difficult and costly.

I've got to commend Scott for bringing this to light. He makes excellent points about fraud and the costs to MMO companies. I hope other players of MMOs realize this is a complex problem and the best way to stop it is to not support them in the first place.