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I know this has been discussed before, and I'm pretty sure I remember you disagreeing with it, but this is the reasoning that is generally applied to the situation:
Stickers, t-shirts, mugs, and other things completely outside of the game do not infringe the Diku copyright, and thus they fall outside the scope of the licence (unless they've got Diku code printed on them or something equally silly). Obviously you could still have problems if your theme infringes on another copyrighted work (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc).
By the same reasoning, I could sell you the data file for a virtual sword which I'd created, and you could then use that data on your own mud. I could even sell you the entire area file (assuming I'd written it all myself). Once again, if the area was based on another copyrighted work, there could be problems, although these wouldn't be Diku-related.
But selling a virtual item within the game itself assigns it a value separate from that of the raw data or creative effort involved. And that value is something specific to the mud in which the item exists. The reasoning, therefore, is that you're selling something of value within the game itself.
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