Casinos - dead and gone w/ new policy?

Well i basically just pulled from the Law

Since we can basically cash out using lindex as an official way of turning in game currency (aka "tokens" into cold, hard cash it's illegal.

One more thing - If any Casino owner didnt see this coming after the Advertizing ban ..

they were being recklessly optimistic.

From the FAQ posted with the policy:

##
5. Does this policy apply to “skill contests?”

This policy only applies to wagering games that meet the criteria listed above. If your game or contest does not meet the above criteria, it is not restricted under this policy
##

My ability to do something is skill, not chance. If I am skilled at finding hidden prims, then it is a test of my ability to find vs. your ability to hide. It is not random chance.

Ahhhh but since it involves a wager which you can GAIN or LOSE money in it's a gamble.

IE - Bet

Now if i said i'll give you 5L if you can find it then no, it's a skill game because you have nothing to lose.

Argh, just struck me, that means lucky chairs, too, doesn't it?

No because you have no loss. You're not betting ANYTHING by sitting in a chair if your letter pops up.

Actually this is the case here.. they change the TOS to compile with US law. And as I said before no one is prevent one from running a casino in SL. But the point is if someone report to FBI such activities, you will sure that LL will co-operate with FBI in and provide them the casino owner's inworld activities and transcations as evidence since such activities is already violate the law.

Well, if the land owner collect 6 months of rent and dump the property, LL only has the data on the L$ transaction, but the have no proof of what the L$ is for. You said it's for 6 months rent, the owner can say it is for 1 month rent.. how does LL figure out who tell the truth? The transaction is there but there are no legal binding record to prove what the transaction is for.

It is just like someone lock on you door and tell you he will cut your grass for 4 weeks and collect the money from you then he only show up 2 weeks and disappear, what can you do about that.. a lot of time it's common sense, just dont pre-paid for 6 months!

Neat. I am going to AR WSE and every single company listed on WSE too.

I read it to mean wagering on something where the outcome is purely random ... slot machines, roulette wheels, etc. ... and not when the outcome is determined by the abilities of the people involved. (Unless it's RL sports rather than the SL bettors whose skill as involved.)

The FAQ refers to "wagering games THAT MEET THE CRITERIA ABOVE" ... the criteria is are, the outcome is determined by chance, and there is a payout. In this example, the outcome is determined by skill, not chance. Therefore, not an issue. It is a wager, but does not meet the criteria for what is disallowed.

That's how I read it anyway.

Eh, everything about the transaction was stored. The listing, the note in the box you click. the script they used to collect the money... You're saying the only thing that is stored is the transaction, yet somehow when they investigate other actions they pull lots of information about things that happen, right?

I read that to be "any real world currency or any [real world] thing of value."

coco

WOW, there Mr. FBI! Mighty strong stance on people playing games there. Betcha $L5 you've lost a lot at a Casino!!!

So why can people still sell Warcraft accounts? I dont hear much being done about Gold Farming.

Hate to tell you, but I really dont care about gambling in SL. Biggest reason is, it can be rigged.

I'd rather see Camping Chairs go instead. Now we're gonna have people making up for Lost L$ by creating a couple dozen hotmail accounts just to use camping chairs.

Considering I DO have the originals of my skins copyrighted, its far from Selective. Servers crash N burn, fine. Someone steals it, not fine. Deleted? Within reason.

Okay 1) I dont work for the FBI and I've lost a few L however nothing damaging plus i used to run a Casino in SL so

2) People still sell WoW accounts however Blizzard HAS been cracking down on them and people selling gold. Even ebay has remarked on that.

And i agree, camping chairs need to go

If Lindens are "real money" in gambling, then they should be "real money" consistently.

Yet LL keeps saying it ISN'T real money.

coco

I'm sure there's some way we can twist the dollar value of sitting around waiting for name letters to change into gambling... hrm... lol...

lol I must say that the neverending psychological experiment that is SecondLife continues to fascinate and amuse me I do feel bad that our friends from other countries have to suffer the laws of the United States government, but that is what LL has to do. They haven't created this scenario to be imperialistic lol And just because our current administration sucks doesn't mean we all do or that we all support our government's legislations or that things won't change when we get someone else in office. Frankly there isn't a government in the world that can claim that. That's life, that's people, that's free will lol

Honestly the thing that cracks me up the most is the cry of bloody murder that is coming from this part of the community. What about creating something, or making textures, or sculpties or animations, etc etc? I remember when SL was about near-freeware and bartering for the amazing spinning globe that you just made lol Even though this gambling ban is something LL cannot legally avoid doing, it is also a brilliant encouragement for the capitalist environment that SL has already embraced.

I DO however agree that if SL is going to begin truly policing a federal law that is "out of hand" then they need to get on the policing of copiers and copyright infringement. You can bet that this type of problem is going to become more rampant as people struggle to make the dollars that they are losing.

If LL truly wants this to become a full-on Virtual World like the Metaverse that it dreams of being, then all of these things must be addressed in a very realistic way. Continue to Open-Source your code LL. Let someone who lives in The Bahamas create a server that allows gambling and is governed by their own laws. Let someone in Amsterdam create a server that fully supports online prostitution and their own laws can govern it. Etc etc. Corporations from around the world can make their own decisions truly based upon their local governments. Whether I as an individual or anyone else for that matter supports these ideals means absolutely nothing. You don't like it, don't go there. Just like the real world. This would be a true realization of a Second Life but with the ability to go wherever you wanted with the click of a button and do it in any guise that you wish Just like Neal Stephenson envisioned...

Didn't know it would be such a rant but thx for reading! Once again it's amazing how something so detached can be so invigorating! WOOT! lol

To be counted as gambling, the activity must involve the following three elements (I learned from Mulch, who knew it from determing whether radio contests were legal, and provided a link):

. prize - what you win
. chance - the element of chance, rather than pure skill
. consideration - pay to play (as in, ante, or put money in a slot machine)

All three elements must be present.

My theory is that any game which does NOT require pay to play in order to win is therefore not gambling, and not illegal.

Thus, we could still have Bingo, or Tringo, or any sort of contest in which there was some element of chance as long as "consideration" is not required. In other words, as long as you can play and win regardless of whether you pay to play or not.

Thus, such games which depend entirely on voluntary pots and/or contributions from the host, but do not require "consideration" would be legal and not covered under the new LL policy.

coco

As I understand it, there's a bit of a legal issue with LL enforcing copyright infringement. The problem is that LL makes a very big deal out of the fact that on SL, you continue to own the intellectual property rights to what you create. Great! But the problem is, that means LL can't take any legal action regarding them. As far as I know, LL can't sue someone else over *your* IP rights, just as a favour to you.

For the record: Homosexual partnerships are not illegal in the US. They may or may not have any of the benefits and obligations that marriage has, but that's not the same as saying they're illegal. I don't think they've ever been illegal, though they may have been used in the past to infer illegal sexual activity.

Sodomy is not illegal in the US, and hasn't been since 2003, whenthe Supreme Court struck down the Texas sodomy law in the case of Lawrence v. Texas.

And so is SL in general.

Think about it for a second... really THINK about it.

There are, or were, two real industries here, sex and gambling.

Now that gambling is going away, more people will be into the other industry more often, and soon it will make its presence known to LL.

Logically, since LL doesn't want anything negative coming out about the seedier side of our Second Lives to the corporate bodies (for whose masculine reproductive organs LL seems to enjoy having their oral cavity around), they'll make sure they make policies regarding that.

With both real industries now gone, this will shine new light on the problems affecting the platform, and people will be making their runs on the bank. Those that don't run because of the lag, crashing and other glitchiness will soon get bored as the game becomes merely Life and a Half, where you do the same mind-numbing thing to get a bit of spending money, only to have, you guessed it, SL's innate instability to wipe their latest trinket out of their inventories.

For those that continue to stick around, seeing that they can impose their will simply by having a few residents here, more and more countries will be forcing LL to adapt to their laws, and shortly after that happens, your experience will be standing around in void sims called SIM_2547 as non-descript blobs, using heavily auto-censored chat.

Now, I'd presume that SOMETIME before it gets to that final point, the Lindens would have sense enough to just quit hemmoraghing (sp?) money and finally put this now gravely-injured dog to sleep, but considering their previous track record of stellar business decisions....

Copyrights are a difficult issue, because generally copyright infringement isn't something you call the police about, rather you go to the courts. For that reason a lot of people feel it is a civil matter, but in reality copyright infringement is still a crime. Given what we've seen with file sharing it isn't enough for LL to simply say "None of our business, take it to the courts".

That's the problem I have with a lot of this discussion. Crime is crime is crime. We talk as if online gambling is one level of crime, while fraud and copyright infringement is another. In reality, the only difference is the difficulty and annoyance LL has to weather policing itself as compared to the threat if they don't.

They fear the feds. They aren't worried about us. For every one that leaves ten more sign up. Casino gambling was profitable for them, because gamblers tend to buy $L. They are sitting there with motive to allow something illegal, and they realize they'd better at least make a show of stopping it.

It won't be easy to enforce this. There will be gambling, in the same way there were speakeasies during prohibition. You won't be able to advertise, and perhaps it won't even really be profitable to do, but in the end it will happen. In the end you'll have people reporting it, and them investigating.

...which is exactly what you have with fraud and copyright infringement, but we aren't 800lb gorillas.

Or, *gasp*, people will actually find things that are constructive to do. SL is, at least to me, turned on its ear right now. The economy should be practically balanced against the interaction, communication, and activities within it. We buy things, customize our avis, etc., to enhance THOSE activities.

Somewhere, though, the whole thing became ABOUT the economy, and the rest became secondary. People show up to take advantage of the economy, and while they are here they might contribute to the overall enjoyment of the world. Not unlike modern real life economies in places where there's not much to do but shop.

What will build up SL is a world where the headlines are generated by something other than the next millionaire. When people are spending time here actually doing things outside the economy, the economy will blossom as they want to enhance their activities. In the end, at least in my opinion, appealing to people other than the profit-seekers and porn addicts is the only way SL will stay alive.

I have talked to at least three people who joined since me who aren't really interested in spending time here. They use the (pathetic) search, go to a few popular places, see nothing but gambling, shopping, and porn, and leave. Every person that leaves is someone who would have otherwise created content THEY'D be interested in.

So, it's a snowball effect. The more gambling and sex remains the most visible activities, the fewer people not interested in such stuff stay on, and the fewer people there will be making other things to do. Eventually you end up with, well, a lot of the mainland; a lot of escorts, clothing designers, and gambers trying to sell services to one another, and avoiding the world on their private estates.

So, this is a step in the right direction, legal necessity or not, in my opinion. The next step would be a reliable, user-friendly search that isn't skewed by camping and buy-in. Eventually, you'd have a healthy user base that actually WANTS to consume, instead of consuming while they are hanging around listlessly waiting for someone to consume what they produce...

Tringo should still be OK, because the outcome is not determined by random number generation; it's a skill contest against other avatars. (There is random number generation used to generate the patterns, but all the players get the same patterns.) The same applies for Texas Hold'Em when played against avatars, rather than a video poker game. Raffle balls should be OK so long as you don't have to pay in to participate; 'sploders aren't. Slot machines are right out, except for "freeplay" ones where the player doesn't need to put in money. Lucky chairs are not affected; no wager.

/me watches Sl slowly die from 1000 cuts
so dumb...but o well nothing will be done about it

nope because you will prolly shut it all down and cry outrage because casinos are a no no

I am refering to those who can and do live without casinos, I see those clubs getting more busy as well as new clubs actually getting ppl in them hoping to win some lindens at an event or whatnot