From: Qie Niangao
You keep posting this but it's just not correct. It's not even close to that simple. .
It is entirely that simple. You are mistaken.
From: Qie Niangao
Please read the many responses folks have posted to this claim, and try to understand them. I'll try one more time, as briefly as I can: As long as any company provides a service paid for by a US credit card or wire transfer, that service must not allow gambling for anything of value--whether that value is convertible to currency or not. And that service in the case of LL includes membership and tier; L$ purchase is beside the point..
Without Lindens$ being convertible to dollars, there is nothing (legally) "of value" involved, except for LL's business, or in some cases, if your game equipment, digital creations, or account was stolen (and LL should be the one's policing this) Everything else in-world, is legally all a fiction, just as much as monopoly money is a fiction or that you own Park Place or the Boardwalk.
From: Qie Niangao
(Offshoring is also irrelevant, as has been exhaustively addressed in about a hundred threads before this.).
They could avoid and forstall some issues by off-shoring, but I think persisting with this fictional currency being tradeable will eventually bring it down, because all countries have laws and regulations about creating currencies and internationally, would not be tolerated without regulations, licensings and complications, of the most stringent kinds. Entropia Universe in Sweden will have a better chance to avoid more major regulations for a while, but the style of that "game," is more blatantly based on making a real world income.
From: Qie Niangao
I'm sorry, but this constant, repetitive pining for the halcyon days of gambling is really getting tiresome.
The beating of the dead horse, with all of this, is the incredibly naive desire to keep promoting the need for the Linden$ to be exchangable and the only viable way for SL to continue.
The fact that some people do not get how absurd this is, given the nature of RL versus a fictional world, frankly, is mindboggling.
The day that the government bans Monopoly as "illegal gambling," would be the day the thought police get their way.
I should once again add, that personally I couldn't care less about "gambling," that I am not and never have been into gambling with real money or fake money.
With some of the silly ideas and interpretations I have seen posted, defining "illegal gambling," every kid's game involved with a roll of dice or a spin of an arrow, would be outlawed and that anything "of value" one wins in Monopoly is no longer a fiction.
To illustrate, say that there is a Milton Bradley sponsored, SL in-world Monopoly game that used Lindens$ as the Monopoly money---no one is going to care --unless that fictional money can then be officially (not disallowed by the TOS) traded for real dollars. So a ten year old kid can play Monopoly all day in real life, but do it in SL using Lindens$ and now it is gambling, because the Linden$ can be cashed in like a poker chip at a casino in RL
What part of "Get Unreal" is not being grasped here?
