Casinos - dead and gone w/ new policy?

Isn't this GREAT? First the US Government tells us how to spend our US$, and now they're telling us how to spend our L$? Land of the free? My ass.

As they've been looking at this for months it was quite possible to delay enforcement.

Not really true - you cant have a Casino in Los Vegas or Atlantic city without a license.

And if Onlien Casino Gambling based in Los Vegas or Atlantic city was legal - dont you think the big casinos would already have online gambling sites based there?

Thats my point -

The advertizing ban was their (several) months warning.



If you think about it, an offical warning would have been useless anyhow -

"Dear Resident/ Gambling location owner .. we will be banning your business in one month please repond accordingly"

If this had happened, who would they have sold their Kacinos to? Some uninformed Rube?

What about the Rube's right to a warning?

The TOS would have been changed, it would all have been there, sure some people might have got ripped off but it wouldn't seem like they were operating like a dodgy private estate landlord who takes money from people and then tells them their business has to close the next day.

It's just common courtesy, decent customer service, sorry it's out of our hands. They should have done this at the same time as they announced the advertising ban. Sure we'd have seen many of the same complaints but it would have given people time to adjust rather than panic.

But the big casino operators have known for months that this was inevitable. LL's earlier half-measure was always doomed, and given the wording of the law, obviously so, as long as L$s are in any way convertible to anything of RL value--which LL legal counsel seemed to try to deny in that earlier policy, however incongruously. How after that date anyone got duped into buying gaming devices (or, god help them, *scripting* such devices) was always a mystery.

That said, yeah, unless the Feds were really breathing down LL's neck, a week or so to liquidate might have made a few L$s difference to a few folks... but it was gonna be a bloodbath anyway. And that was all so unnecessary, given the inevitability of this outcome.

What I mean is what is the difference between saying -

"Gambling will be banned in 1 month - your business will be worthless then"

and

"Gambling is now banned - your business is worthless"

Becuase the practical matter is - that in EITHER case, the Casino owner cant sell their business.

They can only sell the non gambling aspects - which they can still do without getting warning.

Im not saying them losing their business is a good thing, Im just saying that a warning wouldnt really have helped them.

Jumping in late, but I wanted to add my thoughts.

The thing that disturbs me the most about this, is the fact that LL posts something, and enforces it the same time. The casino owners don't even stand a chance. Anyone who still thinks SL is a democracy, think again.

Another aspect to this, is that LL has earned a LOT of money from the casino owners, most have islands, or (parts of) a region. They are, from one day to the next, without their source of income, and have shitloads of land they can't do anything with.

I used to own a club. Whenever we invited a dj over, we had a sploder running. We tossed a lot of our own lindens in, and yeah, people who visited did the same. It was fun to see everyone get so eager about the game.

To me this was innocent fun, you never could put in too much (the automatic inlay was 25 linden, could put in more if you wanted to), and you never had to play along. It was just a game.

Now thats no longer allowed.

I can honestly say this, I hate living under US law in SL!

I think that's a valid complaint. I really wonder what exactly happened to convince them that the advertising ban wasn't enough to shield them from legal liability and make them suddenly take a hardline stance. At the very least they should offer a period of amnesty so that casino operators have some time to liquidate their assets before LL starts deleting assets and banning accounts. In LL's defense they did tell us at the time of the advertising ban that it was up to us as residents to comply with our local laws. Obviously people haven't done that. Just keeping it hush hush wasn't complying with the law (as idiotic as that law may be).

Search on the map for "Playboy Island" ... a great way of how a big brand should not enter Second Life. I went there on its grand opening 3-day party... and found 2 people there.

Broccoli

For what it's worth, the gambling-law-us web site has a decent overview of current internet law issues at

http://www.gambling-law-us.com/Federal-Laws/internet-gambling-ban.htm

IANAL (I'm not a lawyer), so I can't comment on the accuracy or validity of this site, but it certainly seems reasonable.

Also, the key issue these days is a law that took effect last October. So much of what you may hav experienced in the past may no longer be relevant.

It gives them a month to reduce their tier fees, imagine if you'd paid tier yesterday, you're all set for a month's worth of business and now you find out, you can't generate that income. I'd be a bit miffed if I was in that position, whereas if I had a month, I'd still be miffed but would be able to plan to reduce my tier or look other alternatives for my land.

In the UK, pretty much every "enter this competition to win teh prize" promotion on, I dunno, packets of dog food in the supermarket, carry the words "no purchase necessary" and they'll have an address you can send a postcard or something to to enter the contest. If you have to pay for WoW to be eligible to participate in a random draw with a prize considered to have real value, that may well be considered "purchase necessary".

Who knows.

I agree they should give people time to actually close down their gambling without getting banned.

But that amnesty need not include allowing them to continue to operate gambling.

My guess is that stuff being deleted from in-world will be the "first warning of non-compliance". That owner will then be flagged as such. Should they ignore the ban, rebuild a casino, and get caught, then they (rightfully) lose their assets. If they think "oh well" and move on, they can either redevelop their land, or sell the land, and cash out.

I don't think it would be right for LL to close and permaban accounts less than 12 hours after an announcement, without giving people a chance to do somethign about it. However, if a user chooses to ignore the ban, then they deserve everything that happens.

Broccoli

But from their standpoint Teir is tied to land - not what you have on it.

Otherwise theyd have to admit they tacitly supported gambling all along ...

Well they did appear to, or else they'd have banned it when they banned the ads.

Philip Linden: Mulch Ennui: Is the Attorney General of the State of California aware that LL, by endorsing within the SL application, has given actual monetary Value of the currency being traded
Philip Linden: (ie creating it's own currency) and how will this effect things like labor laws for payments, sales taxe collection, legal issues pertaining to gambling, income tax and such.
Philip Linden: A: Without digression its lots of legal detail - We don't think we are breaking any laws, and certainly don't intend to.
Philip Linden: As a follow on though ... we should get our lawyer in here for a town hall. He is actually a fun guy "

Of course they supported gambling!

But they will NEVER admit that - they cant.

One thing that seems to be getting overlooked is that the online gambling law is about ONLINE gambling. It's not like having the servers in Vegas or Barbados or anywhere would solve the problem. (Well, if LL reincorporated and moved all employees and operations to Barbados, say, there wouldn't be any assets for the DoJ to seize, but it would still violate US law.)

And the law really is not the product of the Religious Right in the US: it's not primarily an anti-vice law, but a consumer-protection law. Online gambling is to gambling as theft is to honest labor. To anyone who imagines that their next card in online "blackjack" is drawn at random, well, I have some nice Mainland parcels you might be interested in.

I had a look at it - its not badly done.

The land mass is done like a playboy bunny.

Its not the sort of place that WOULD attract crowds from what I see

a botique, a longue.

Maybe I missed if theres some club there. If so it needs to be better identified.

The problem is most of you are quite ignorant still on what the actual law in the US is. I can gamble online in the US right now legally in Horse Racing, Lottery, etc...

ONLINE GAMBLING is not illegal! The UIGEA was a tricky ass addition to an unrelated bill that made the transfer or those related funds illegal. Get educated before you make a comment.

The US is a mess and has no clue how to deal with issue. It's all about finding a way to get their grubby ass hands on some taxes. The states have laws, but so what, that's not the responsibilty of SL or anyone else to police. It's the responsibilty of any idiot who lives in that state and the state authorities to catch you in the act and to prosecute you for doing something illegal.

It's all about Paypal, but I can't expect someone ignorant to the big picture to really understand how it's all about the money flow. Paypal was the first to stop processing online gambling transactions years ago to/from online gambling organizations. It created havoc and major changes within the industry at the time.

Same thing going on here and all because the US governement is greedy, practicing protectionism, and is too damn lazy to license and tax this industry. They're indiots and SL has just jumped in bed with them.

HUGS Exploder.....(

If this includes the Zyngo type of games that were conceptualized and created within SL, you're going to see a major trickle-down effect. Just wait and watch. Only time will tell.

What do you think drove the initial growth of the internet itself? Sex and gambling. Without those two things the internet would not have grown half as fast as it did. Just the way the world works.

LL can't keep griefers and predators, etc., off SL, so the idea that there will be no more gambling is kind of over-dramatic. It will shift down to the personal level, pools, private games, etc. Is there some reason you can't build a skybox and have a personal game of Texas Holdem with friends?

But... but... its ILLEGAL... so is your office pool, probably. In the end this just shifts the gear down a couple of notches, and frankly I think that is good for the game. I doubt the sanity of anyone who looks at the casino environment on the mainland and pretends it was good for the second life world.

If folks can't figure out a way to make money beyond camping, shoving money into sploders, or funding the the tasteless mess that is the SL casino industry, well, maybe they need to go be cannon fodder for a guild in some MMORPG. The idea that casinos are some sort of social welfare for the dim is hilarious. I'm so sorry that your tenants won't be able to pay their rent, but in the end if that's all they can come up with they really don't have the imagination it takes to get by.