"Mojang hints at crackdown on 'pay for perk' Minecraft servers"
It's interesting because this sort of thing (i.e. getting stuff in game for IRL money) was happening on some of the public servers that I'd tried in the past. It's part of the reason (aside from my general misanthropy, of course) that I had little interest in playing on those public servers. Lots of people in the comments seem to be pretty upset about this move on Mojang's part, though.