Very Interesting....

I was going over the now-closed LL/Resident discussion of VAT in the Town Hall Feedback forum, and found this remark by Zee Linden (post #196)

Zee Linden: "...On another question, its also unfortunate that in some countries in the EU that gambling is allowed, but because our servers are all in the US these residents cannot gamble. This is something we can fix and we're working on it. In the meantime, unfortunately no gambling."

Zee seems to say that gambling, at least for SL users in countries that allow it, may one day return to SL. Former casino owners might want to hang on to their inventoried gaming items...

I noticed this too, it would also seem to point to there being a point of Linden Lab having a presence in Europe, because they won't be running those servers in the USA.

The UK is online gambling friendly, but it wouldn't be friendly in the manner that gambling was being ran in Second Life in the past.

Seems interesting to me as well that they point out no servers are based in europe....I assume they mean none of the actual game servers since there must be some sort of server in the uk for their billing department to be based there...unless the billing department is someone sitting in their home with a single pc linked to the US....although that could explain the billing problems often read about

So if they set up servers in Europe or another country that allows online gambling then they will allow people to purchase sims on these particular servers and old-fashioned casinos will be acceptable on them? Do you think U.S. Residents would be banned from opening a casino on one of those sims or even playing at those casinos?

1. I don't think it will be old fashioned casinos.

2. US residents won't be allowed anywhere near them.

Will the Fed ignore LL hosting Gambling facilities on Servers that aren't in the US?


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The comment by Zee is interesting though. It does seem to show that LL really didn't want to ban gambling.

Considering that Philip made the first slot machine, why would they?

Will LL be hosting them even? Or will it be a third party company or even LL Europe?

I think this is a disaster waiting to happen. The companies that allow US players to gamble online, such as PokerStars, BoDog, etc.. have no US presence at all, and their executives don't come to the US for fear of being picked up by the feds. I don't think that LL can maintain a US presence at all if it allows gambling anywhere on the grid.

This is as a practical matter, by the way. I know all the arguments about what is legal and what isn't, and I know all the little loopholes. LL might be able to dodge the strict letter of the law by having EU servers and some sort of verification program, but it doesn't matter in a practical sense because as a US company, they are going to get nailed to the wall by the US govt. Right or wrong, they will catch heat if they allow gambling.

Not to get too political, but the US Prosecuting Atty's office sets it's policies based on presidential policy. Bush is anti-gaming, so was Hillary Clinton. McCain is probably not going to be too friendly and Obama is probably the best bet (heh - I made a pun) if you want the US Prosecuting Atty's office to actually go after serious crimes and leave internet poker players alone.

God forbid I should play .25/.50 poker in the comfort of my own home! Let's base our policy on shutting people like me down instead of international drug traffickers and Al Qaeda.

I presume this means that visitors to those sims will be allowed access as long as they're visiting from a European ISP? Because any other form of verification, as we saw with the age verification thing, is going to be pretty useless.

What about the open source sims on this one? (is that what they are called?)

I'd imagine (and I'm speculating) that Integrity Aristotle would be involved and nobody would be allowed on those sims unless they were ID verified.

I'd also imagine you'd have to sign into a different terms of service to say you accept that you are the said person blah blah blah.

I think the open source sims would be the responsibility of the people/companies running them, not LL.

*rubs her head* I love how LL tries to complicate things.

I am extremely skeptical of the idea that running some servers in Europe would provide a loophole by which Linden Lab could circumvent U.S. federal bans on activities related to gambling.

It's a basic tenant of US law, both federal and state, that by doing business in a jurisdiction, you become subject to the jurisdiction's laws, regardless of where your business is actually located.

As has already been pointed out in this thread, many online gambling sites evade prosecution in the US not because being offshore makes the sites exempt from US law, but as a practical matter, US law enforcement cannot just simply walk cross foreign borders and start making arrests on foreign soil. However, if an asset crosses into US jurisdiction (like a US bank), it can be seized; if an owner steps on US soil for a minute, they can be arrested.

As a political matter, one of the driving forces behind the federal anti-gambling legislation is that is that state which allow gambling want to capture big tax revenues from gambling. Not only are the casinos themselves taxable, but gambling winnings are taxable as income, and gambling revenues are susceptible to sin-taxes. Though the concept of whether gambling is an individual right might be a matter of political debate, the matter of whether gambling income should be allowed to flow offshore isn't open for political debate. It isn't happening.

I assume the Linden Lab legal team has studied this far more closely than I, so maybe they have found a way of using offshore server sites to allow gambling in Second Life. But I am highly skeptical.

Maybe they intend a "rest-of-the-world-only" grid where people can indulge in it there, similar to Aditi. I doubt that that would make them exempt but they might have a colorable argument that they do not permit US players to enter that grid.

I also noticed Zee's comment and was a little confused by it - LL has avoided adding more content-management work like the plague.

Bringing back unregulated gambling seems like a management nightmare.

This is a possible scenario, though Linden Lab would need a much more robust way of identifying the citizenship of residents.

[tongue in cheek mode: on]

So, once the Europeans are allowed to gamble, that will mean they are receiving a service that US players aren't, even though we pay the same amount as they do. Surely, at that point the cost to US players will be reduced to compensate for this difference.

[tongue in cheek mode: off]

Sometimes I think the European billing department consists of one person sitting in a garage with a cellphone and a looseleaf notebook.

They get compensation already. They don't pay an extra 17.5% VAT.

Visa and Mastercard happily provide services for legal online gambling sites.

People will set up Open Sim grids to cater for gamblers, who don't need beautiful builds, just somewhere to sit a a machine and a currency system that works. I found one small Open Sim based grid that looked like it was being developed specially for gamblers.

Maybe he meant they are working on the problem of EU countries still allowing gambling...




(j/k)


Frankly I could care less either way. If people want to gamble, have at it.

Well maybe the fix is to step over to the grid next door that does allow gambling because it is based in another country. Or is there a law against US residents gambling offshore?

It depends on their state of residence. I think around 11 states have specifically outlawed any form of internet gambling. At the federal level, there's argument both ways, with the pro gambling people (of which I am one) saying no, and the feds saying yes. The feds can't actually point out any authority for their position, but they sure would like to.

The problem won't be for the US residents who gamble. Even in states where online gambling is explicitly prohibited, I am not aware of a single prosecution. The problem will be for LL's facilitation of unlicensed wagering. Arguments aside about whether they are doing that or not, the feds WILL give them more grief than they want. Plus, imagine trying to monitor the location of every casino on the grid and making sure that Americans are not able to access them. Yikes! They can't do that. Even if they could, all hell would break loose. Can you imagine!!??