Casinos - dead and gone w/ new policy?

Coming soon to a sim near you...

SL Speakeasies!

It's completely a conservative agenda, online gambling is not illegal in the UK. There are ways around this, this is bowing down to conservatism. This is an 18+ environment.

The only way I make money in SL, is by playing poker. Now without this I have no incentive to stay in SL. This will be the same case for many many other people. It's simply disgusting. People have invested enourmous amounts into casinos, their investments are now worth nothing... I feel sick.

What is the way around this? All their servers are located in California and Texas..where the anti-gambling laws apply.

So why did they change policy on certain issues due to German laws then? They can get around this, they bank in the UK for f*cks sake, they could do something there. This is a cowardly action they're taking, it's a slippery slope.

Oh good lord, read the wording of the policy they put out.... Lucky Chairs don't require a wager.

Are you suggesting that LL voluntarily ignore this US federal law and have their executives face arrest and the Second Life environment shutdown?

How nice of LL to accept so much money from people investing in their little platform to buy islands and build casinos only to have LL tell them so far after the fact that the activities LL has been accepting advertising/land/tier/memebership dollars from them for, for the last 4 years, is now against policy, and could result in the confiscation of your SL land/objects/money as well as get your account suspended.

Note to day-traders: Excellent oppurtunity to buy some cheap $L.

I'm suggesting they do what online gambling companies have done and get around US laws.

"Your world, George Bush's imagination"

Has it occured to you that those companies that have gotten around US laws are not actually based in the US?

It's real money.

And Bingo was his name!

They bank outside the US.

Looks like we're going to see a lot more yellow on the map. How many former Kasino operators are going to keep the land that their blackjack tables are sitting on?

And their base of operations are also outside the US. Everything is outside the US, which makes it a whole lot easier to work around US law.

Sure, LL can move their banks outside the US, but LL itself is still based in the US. And if you don't think that makes a difference, perhaps you should research what happened to the Neteller executives back in January.

the whole German thing was more about PR than anything else. having the tabloid press tell the world that their platform was a paedophile's paradise presented a slight image problem.
banking in the UK is irrelevant. the servers where all of Linden Lab's virtual "land" is hosted, where all our scripts are executed, is located in the United States of America where these gambling laws apply. how do they get around that?

1. there are no federal US laws making gambling illegal, only state and local laws (hence the reason it's legal in Nevada, Atlantic City, Dover Downs, and countless offshore and riverboat locations inside the US).

2. LL apparently had no problems with gambling until 6 months ago, I don't know what the poster you're replying to is suggesting, but I suggest that LL grow some balls. Whether or not gambling online is legal, it still up in the air last I heard.... and if CA and TX want to make an issue about it, they can always move servers to Nevada, Europe, or elsewhere.

You think it'll have any impact on land value Raymond?

So they move their servers to somewhere that doesn't run a gaping whole through a huge part of the Sl economy. They have corporate presence in the UK, move the servers here. It's not that difficult a concept. They can still have their board meetings in the US.

Well I for one have suddenly found myself without purpose in SL. I wonder how many there are like me that will not continue playing the game

They move the servers to Europe or somewhere that doesn't have such draconian laws, maybe Nevada is ok, it's not difficult in this day and age.

Gambling itself is a state by state law. The UIGEA, which was passed in November, made it illegal (technically, it clarified an existing law) to distribute funds electronically to gambling sites. The laws are apparently broad enough to also include sites that, while maybe not themselves allow gambling, act as facilitators of the money transfer process (such as Neteller). I do not know enough about the laws to know how they specifically affect LL, but I am guessing that LL lawyers do know the laws well enough and have acted accordingly.

Move the servers outside the US and use a foreign bank... then there's nothing the US law can do.... but LL won't do that just to keep the gambling environment rife in SL.... although in the long run they should... this is going to cost them badly.

However, the law states that U.S. based credit cards may not be used for online gambling. So even a gambling operation based in another country will be effectively inaccessible by Americans at least.

How many folks are truly dependent on gambling for their income? I feel horrible for the casino operators, but US-based ones should have known that they were treading lightly for some time now.