Five Years In Prison For SL Casino Opertors ?

After reading all of these posts I am pretty sure that not only will the casino owners but all of the gamblers be spending 5 years years in prison. I never expected my Second Life to end this way. I mean this is a real bummer and stuff.

By the way this is a question and answer forum and not a general all purpose trolling forum.

What about overseas casino owners? Will the state of California, or the FBI, extradite me from Australia if I operate a casino? What about countries with no extradition agreements with the USA?

Perhaps we will see a casino operated by Osama Bin Laden. Would be the ultimate gesture!

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You can operate your Casino but you won't have many, if any paying US Customers, cuz they will have no way of getting their funds to you.


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Wonders what would happen if Linden would move their servers outside US juristriction (SP). The Netherlands for example ^^.

Add to that, if I (as Dutch citizen) would break that law from here in my home in The Netherlands, there is not much that can be then banning me from SL.

Just some thoughts, nothing more.

And no, I don't gamble... not in SL and not in RL .

Morwen.

Or what if all the Linden Lab employees shipped just their brains to another planet and left their bodies in the US.

Hmmm, makes you wonder...

Not so... It is done many times on the Internet. Bring your server outside the juristrication of the country you are have problems with (or are targeting on) and you are rather safe.

Morwen

Just let say that we should be happy that Spamhouse (an anti-spam company) is in the UK and not under US juristriction....

It is in order many times on the net.... as making dumb remarks too. Or was it an attempt to be funny. Guess I don't even want to know.

Morwen.

No one will really know what this means for gambling in SL until someone is actually prosecuted. It will take a conviction and that conviction being appealled to, more than likely, the SCOUS. Only at that point, when the courts have actually defined the law, will we have any real idea of what is or is not illegal gambling. I wouldn't want to be the first one they go after but someone at some point will challenge this law and how it pertains to SL and other virtual worlds.

I think you're looking at things backwards. The whole "virtual world of SL" aspect is completely irrelevant. As written, the law requires:
(a) an internet-based service... *check*
(b) providing a venue for users to wager something of value or representative of value... *check*
(c) where the chance of winning is predominantly due to chance. *check*

Sounds like every casino in SL fits those criteria.

.. except that it applies only to companies where the purpose of the company is to provide online gambling services. Since the emergence of gambling on Second Life is clearly not part of Linden Lab's business plan other than the fact that they've provided the raw materials with which to implement it, the law doesn't apply to Second Life as it is currently written.

At the moment, the Federal Government at very least is in debate over the question. Under current law, transactions that take place in virtual environments are not taxable events, because they do not take place using real currency. While there is some discussion of the issue in Washington, there's nothing approaching the stage of being legislation, let alone any kind of workable law.

Since the mock "casinos" in SL do not constitute a threat to the Linden Labs business model, Linden Labs has permitted their existence since 2003. Since the credit card companies do not see the exchange of what are essentially "game points" as a form of online gambling, they cheerily continue to do business with Linden Labs, as they have done from the beginning.

Anyone suggesting otherwise is fear mongering - nobody has been warned, arrested, indicted or convicted for running a gambling operation in Second Life. And nobody will be. If this were a problem, it would have already made headlines and running a "casino" would be already against the Terms of Service.

Oh, and I see several sock puppets have been put to use to reinforce the original author's posts. Nice job. Pretty transparent, though. Almost had us fooled.

Kalel, just out of curiosity, do you run a casino?

Nope, I sure don't. Can't stand the places, for the most part. Bunch of zombies sitting in chairs, and the ones that are awake are foolishly dumping Lindens into machines in the hopes of getting lucky. They draw traffic to other businesses, and they provide camping chairs which, if you're using a freebie account, is often your only way of getting in-game money. So they serve their purpose. On the whole, though, they drag down sim resources and few of them contribute anything to their local economies because they don't draw enough traffic.

Oh, and by the way, the entire argument that Lindens = money is addressed in the Frequently Asked Questions page in the forums. Since Linden Labs makes no guarantee of redemption, and the Linden Dollar is essentially a game token, Linden Labs (and therefore the gambling establishments) are completely unaffected by the Internet Gambling Act.

And since it's not currency, it's not gambling either. Any attempt to argue to the contrary ignores this simple, plainly obvious and testable fact, and is just plain trolling.

This entire thread is really just a lot of silly hand-waving and formless verbalization. If people want to get that excited about Second Life, they should go log on and experience it in all its virtual candy goodness instead of just trolling in the forums.

It doesn't apply to *Linden Lab*. The situation for individual SL members, however, is entirely different. If you run a casino in SL, you are breaking U.S. law. Full Stop.

I've responded to this before. But I'll do it again.

In that FAQ response, Ginsu has succinctly outlined why he feels LL is not at risk from the new anti-gambling legislation. However, he hasn't said *anything* about the liability of the SL *residents* that run casinos. I don't think anyone has tried to claim that L$ are real money for several pages now. Of course L$ are not money. In the U.S., only US$ are money. L$ are, however, tokens representative of value. Since LL's opinion on the matter seems so important to you, I can tell you that LL has admitted as much (paragraph 3 in linked post). At any rate, regardless of what LL says, L$ are an intermediary token for "things of value" and can therefore be ascribed value themselves.

Having said that, and given that the new anti-gambling legislation specifies gambling must be done with "something of value or something representative of value", I really don't see how anyone can honestly argue that the individuals running casinos within SL are not breaking the law.

It doesn't?

If it applies to Paypal then why doesn't it apply to Linden Lab? Paypal isn't a gambling service and yet they're no longer allowed to process gambling related transactions.

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The new law applies to two different categories of persons or entities: persons engagd in a gambling business and transaction providers.


It applies to Paypal because they are what the new law defines as being a covered "transaction provider"

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The new law applies to two different categories of persons or entities: persons engagd in a gambling business and transaction providers.


It applies to Paypal because they are what the new law defines as being a covered "transaction provider"

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Your Actions May be Legal in Other jurisdictions but If you make it available within a Jurisdiction where there is a Prohibition, you HAVE broken the Law in that Jurisdiction even though you are not Based there.
In operating a gambling establishment On Line from another country, You would still be Making a gambling service available within the Boarders of the United States so the Law would apply. Extradition is Highly Unlikely (Owing mainly to Costs versus Impact), But they Could swear out a warrent for your Arrest should you enter the United states at any time subsequent to the Offence.

For Precident, See laws regarding the Transmission of prohibited pornagraphic Imagery into the United States from Jurisdictions where said Imagery is Not Illegal.
The same Principle applies. Strangely enough, this new set of Laws Is aimed not only at Internet Gambling, but the transmission of Obscene materials as well.

Angel.

That's how they get stupid and pointless laws through: put in a child porn clause, and say it's "protecting our children."

I haven't yet Commented on the relative Value of the Law, and as a Canadian, i feel it would be Infernal Cheek telling you how to run your own Shop. I merely attempt to Clarify the Letter of the Law.

Angel.

The thing people seem to be skipping over is why the new laws were passed and who was behind the lobbying to get them passed. Take a look at this link for reference, but quoting the relevent bits here.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061002/tc_nm/leisure_partygaming_dc_8


The law was designed not to protect US citizens from losing their life savings playing poker against each other from the security of home, but rather, the new law was put in place to prevent US casinos from losing out to foreign companies any longer.

If the goal was to appease the big money casinos here in the states and to keep US $ on US soil, why would those enforcing these laws care one iota about Second Life? The answer, in my view, is that they won't.

The purpose of these new online gaming laws is really, at the heart of it, intended to try to keep US$ from ending up overseas and to kill off the competition.

We are talking about small change compared to the enormous amounts of money the big name casinos have been losing to these foreign companies. Bottom line, they won't care. The law has been passed, the competition is on it's way out. No one is going to come banging down the virtual doors of SL casino owners.

(Disclaimer: All of this is of course merely opinion, and I'll eat my words the day the first SL resident is busted for clicking on a slot machine, but I just don't see that happening.)

If that was their goal wouldn't they just have repealed or amended the Wire Act that made the online casinos go abroad in the first place?

Another conspiracy theory here, I say if you fall for this sad tale then hang out for a bit and the MOTHER SHIP will be here to pick you up soon. Who do you think is going to police this? It is the internet. I can not believe the paranoia on some of these issues.

Apples and oranges.

Paypal had to accept a number of additional restrictions from the SEC in order to be allowed to handle financial transactions the way they do without having to fulfill all the requirements of being a bank. One of those is not performing business transactions on the behalf of pornographers or online casinos - and note here again, that this means businesses with online presences set up for the specific purpose of gambling or pornography, which Linden Labs has not done.

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