More Freedom In Rl Than Sl

from what i was reading it's not federal law but state local law lindens are going by..if they would be alittle more specific and take the time to sit down and type up something where there is no question about it,that would sure be alot of help..i doubt they would add the part about not caring about the laws where the bettor may live since it is not a federal matter ..each state controls thier gambling laws not the feds..



yes but it's not a nevada or georgia is more what i was getting at where gambling has been around forever..

This doesn't relate to regular gambling. It relates to online gambling which is federally regulated.

I was refering to his post not the *cough* sanctity of this thread.

i see now..most of all the threads i have been reading on this it was made out to be they were going by local laws where the severs were located..well this makes more sense now hehehe..

Yeah, everyone's a lawyer in SL, didn' you know that??

Says who? Seriously, if Robin Linden can't tell me the reason I don't see how you can.

I should add that I have Robin Linden posters on the walls of my SL home so no badmouthing Robin!

It was either in this thread or the other big one, someone posted about a dozen laws covering it. It's really not a very fuzzy area, its just fuzzily enforced.

I couldn't agree more.


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The dozen laws though went back to the sixties so come on, see those straws that argument is clutching

Uh, laws from the 60s can still be valid.

Anything that regulates "interstate" issues is as valid on the internet as anywhere else. Some have, in fact, been specifically found in court to do just that.

Hardly a straw man.

Oh behave, if that was the case then gambling would never have been allowed here. There's another post with a picture of a gambling machine created by one of the Lindens.

Its just that the penalties got a lot stiffer with the recent rider to the Safe Ports act...

Gambling on the internet was just added last year. The law just took effect this month. It penalizes those who take payments for gambling using wire transfer if the gambling breaks any gambling laws.

That wasn't introduced on Wednesday though was it. I'm not looking for a big argument here, all I'm saying is that we're all speculating on the reasons for the ban. If Robin Linden can't clarify it (and yes I do have a Robin Linden fetish) then I don't see how us keyboard warriors on the forums can clarify the exact reason, we can speculate but we don't really know the reason LL have banned it.

I have no problem with the ban, I do have a problem with the implementation of the ban because I think it's yet another example of how LL don't have a clue about customer service.

Around the 10th of July, so why are we at the 25th before it's an issue and yet again, why couldn't they give notice it was going to be banned? No matter how you look at it, it's poor customer service.

And that is where you have more freedom in RL than in SL. In real life you have a little thing called due process to ensure fairness when you are dealing with others action's. In SL Linden Labs does whatever it wants with complete impunity, and with no notions of equity or a sense of fairness.

LL probably took the time to consider what thier legal stance needed to be before making the decsion. Law is nuanced, it takes even the very best lawyers to come to decisions.

I know you're angry with the decision. It's understandable to say the very least. Take some time to let it all settle then decide where you need to go with your decisions.

But blaming LL for not wanting to shoulder liability that could tank them just does not make any sense.

Many people try to be an individualist, but that only goes so far. I doubt that you don't mind at all how other people think about your appearance. You would likely feel odd if you had to go to work in a spiderman costume, or dressed in a jute bag. It feels inappropriate because it will likely not be accepted by your conspecifics.

We always wear something that is viewed as socially acceptable and hopefully attractive to a certain group of people. Even a punk tries to be accepted by other punks, and hopes to attract a female punk. I have yet to meet the person who could do completely without sex as well as without positive social feedback.

I use the word "sex" in a wider sense and make no difference between sexual acts, procreation and partnership. We have three needs, or strong urges: eating / drinking, sleeping, and ensuring the continuance of our species. The latter I call sex. No matter if you admire the look of a woman or feel lonely and wish you had a partner, it's all sex (procreation) related.

No offense but that's a crock. Linden Labs did in fact come out with a legal stance which it published to the player community after the UIGEA was passed. At that time they knew that the regulations requiring banking institutions to stop transfers to offending site operators would go into effect this July (by the way as of July 24th, 2 weeks past the deadline to do so, the UIGEA regulations were not published) as it was public knowledge, and they took a public stance that they did not believe that they were a site operator for illegal online gambling under the UIGEA. They kept that posting available for months. (It is conspicously absent now.) It stretches credibility to imagine that only now, with no changes in the UIGEA, Linden Labs made a complete reversal on its legal stance, instituting an immediate ban on gambling without any official forewarning. It is far more likely that this is something they had planned for some time, if not all along, and they simply felt like they had no responsibility to be truthful and timely about their intentions. Linden Labs should have given advance notice as soon as the UIGEA passed that there would be a moratorium on any ban on gambling until the regulations were passed which is a more accurate representation of what their legal stance seems to have actually been, instead of the bulls**t PR spin they published which encouraged players to invest their time and money in part or in whole on developing a business model incorporating gambling as one of its assets.

It is not a "crock", dear child. (By the way, "I disagree" is how you avoid giving offense.)

As LL has done this before: They seem to be in the habit of having some preliminary stance, then the lawyers mul it over, then they settle on something. Often something not quite like the preliminary stance. There is no credulity nessesary to imagine some new precident being discovered that was missed on the initial study. Or, for that matter, a simple change of mind.

I'm angry at the decision because I find it hard to believe they all of a sudden reached this decision. I have no problem with LL protecting their assets and their environment but I do wonder where this will lead to next because the example set here is that at the drop of a hat LL are prepared to close down businesses. Anyone investing big here is taking one hell of a gamble.

I'm not a casino owner and I must have spent all of L$100 in gaming machines since March so I'm not going to miss gambling as to me it was a gamble to gamble here anyway. I just don't like the way it was done.

You're contradicting yourself.

First you complain about there being no warning, that they came right out of the blue and did this some time after the law was put in place.

Now you're saying they close businesses at the drop of a hat.

Many of us have seen that the writing was on the wall for a while now - the increasing restrictions on gambling advertisements, etc. It sounds to me like LL was hardly "closing businesses at the drop of a hat", but rather they were trying to find some compromise that everyone could live with, and ultimately failed.

I know, I know. It's the "in" thing to blame corporations for all the ailments of the world, LL in particular. But you seem to be looking at this from a very one-sided perspective.

I don't see the contradiction. Do you mean that even if there had been a warning they would still be closing businesses at the drop of a hat? I think with a warning it's not a drop of the hat but I can see how maybe I appear to have clouded the issue.



Well of course I'm looking at this from a one-sided perspective However I support LL in taking a decision to protect the world as a whole. If gambling had to be banned for the greater good, then I support that stance. I don't support an overnight announcement that it needs to be banned when it has been apparent that there was an issue regarding this for quite some time. I think that that is poor customer service.

This is where we're going to have to agree to disagree, when they banned advertising they were following other online providers who had to ban gambling adverts. Google's adsense program placed restrictions on gambling advertising.

I also find statements like the one I'm about to quote a tad worrying with regards to what's next:

The spokesperson said that Linden Lab was looking "to broaden the acceptability of the platform globally."

http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201201441

There's more to come and it's not rocket science to see where "Broadening the acceptability of the platform globally" is heading and if it's handled in the same way as the gambling ban has been handled, I'll be consistent in my stance that a warning period should be given.

Yeah, I've seen that quote on "broadening the acceptance".

What they really mean is, "broadening the CORPORATE acceptance" of Second Life.

I mean, look at the exponential growth curve...nobody in her right mind could look at that and say that SL doesn't have broad appeal already.

Linden Lab wants to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, by REDUCING SL's broad appeal and turning it into a communication tool for the business world.

So, we'll get stability and bug-free operation...but no fun. Thanks, LL.