What about creators?

Folks please stop beating up Linden Labs for this. The responsibility for this lies 100% in the control-freak politicians that have worked their way into "safe positions" and can do any bloody thing they please yet still get re-elected. This was a double whammy because our friendly republicans think people don't make responsible moral decisions so they have to make laws to control your morality and our equally friendly democrats think people don't make responsible financial decisions so they should take all your money and decide how to spend it for you.

Ask yourselves how many times YOU PERSONALLY said "there ought to be a law". Well guess what. Now there IS a law. In fact there are a bazillion of them. And LL and all its users just got ZAPPED by one of those laws. Did YOU support seat belt laws? Did YOU support motorcycle helmet laws? Did YOU support laws banning specific sexual conduct between consenting adults? Did YOU vote for a politician that was pumped up to "DO SOMETHING ABOUT" this, that or the other thing? When a politician vows to DO SOMETHING, it usually means making another law. Did YOU say "I just HAVE to vote for an incumbent Democrat to keep a scoundrel Republican from getting elected" (or visa versa)?

LL was caught in the middle of this. The law gave them no choice. For years we've heard "the internet is out of control..government needs to do something". Well. They did.

EDIT: Ok I see another thread on the gambling topic just got closed because of going too far off topic..now that said, I stand by this post being "on topic" because it does discuss the reasons for the gambling ban. But be careful..if you respond to this post I encourage you to keep it in the context of the gambling ban...second paragraph was simply to make a point .

I never heard myself saying or thinking that. When I was born, we already had all the laws we needed... and a lot of unnecessary ones. I believe that it should be legal to sell drain pipe cleaner, even if drain pipe cleaner can be deadly. I think the same way about rat poison, bread knifes, drugs of all sorts and firearms (the latter two happen to be prohibited where I live).

Not that I would want to use drugs or weapons. It's just mind-boggling that a government tries to regulate which substances I ingest or pump into my blood stream, which technology I'm allowed to own or what I spend my money on. Laws are nonsensical if they don't protect another person from my actions; if a law is meant to protect me from myself, it puts me under disability and infringes on my human dignity.



Uhm... which government exactly is responsible for the internet? Which country should conquer and govern the world, in order to protect people from too much knowledge or from their own urges?

Just as prohibition put bars out of business overnight, so does this new gambling rule put casino owners out of business. Sure, they might be upset. Is their reason valid? No. Everyone who opens a business in the real world runs the risk of their product being made illegal. Why should SL be any different? People invest money in business that fails all the time. Why should SL be any different? Ultimately, the only difference is our level of involvement.

Now, maybe these casino clones can take their ill-gotten gains, and produce something of value and merit, rather than a row of one-armed bandits and a strip club?

Perhaps they can do something new and unheard of with their land like planting trees and making a park for all to enjoy.

I was thinking something fun, like a skill-based game.

My thoughts exactly. Where I live I can own many guns (up to semi-automatic). But I dont own any. I'm enough of a klutz as is.




True. It is up to each country to determine what is or isn't allowed on the Internet.

Take the USA & China, for example.

The USA says "Internet Gambling is Illegal", so its banned here.

Chinese goverment censors other things that are deemed bad for "the health & well-being of the people", including Google searches.
They, or North Korea (I forget which), now have all the MMO's include a "timer" which pops up a message informing the player to get up & get some excercise. This includes games such as Warcraft, which as far as I know doesnt do this for the USA version.

Who's gonna be dumb enough to buy your sploders when their banned? I dont think you're gonna have to worry. I suggest you script something someone will buy if you plan to sell items.

The ban on gambling is not a ban on something which was always (either implicitly or explicitly) in violation of the terms and conditions of SL.

The earlier blog about restricting advertising effectively said that gambling was permitted in SL provided residents did not infringe local laws. As such yesterdays blog did constitute a major change to the stated contractural terms and conditions governing the use of SL.

Under my local laws, it is not just bad customer relations not to give prior notice to such a change in terms and conditions, it is also illegal not to give written notice in advance to your customers of such changes (and a blog post, unlike an e-mail, would not be regarded as such notice) inlcuding a mechanism to cancel any subscriptions early with a refund of unused subscriptions.

Matthew

There's nothing in the policy as stated to suggest that a creator would get in trouble. Given the current climate, I'd probably pull the items from sale and work on more interesting alternatives. (Yeah, I know Sploders are popular--in part because they're so mindless, they don't interfere with any other concurrent activities... so "more interesting" might be a negative.)

But, long term, it's certainly possible that (slightly modified versions of) Sploders and the like could be made legal again. There's a fine but chartable line of demarcation between hosting gambling and holding a sweepstakes -- but one can hardly blame LL's legal counsel for not hurrying to walk that line right now, under the circumstances.

When the dust settles, I would expect that games with chance-driven payouts will be allowed, as long as explicit "sweepstakes" disclaimers are posted, and the payouts are contingent upon presence in the area, say, or participation in some activity, but *not* on having contributed L$s to the pot. So, classic SLingo should come back because one's chances of winning are in no way tied to having paid into the game.

But before that happens, LL's lawyer would need to study long and hard. Which is one reason I find it odd that many folks see the abrupt timing of this announcement to be either surprising or "bad customer service." Having dealt with corporate legal departments in RL, it's fairly obvious how this all came about: lawyers have been talking with lawyers for weeks, trying to figure out what policy will keep LL out of trouble; eventually they arrive at a decision, then consider timing: announce a future date certain for the policy to come into effect, or make it take effect immediately? Now, a lawyer weighing the liabilities on both sides of that will surely pick the one that keeps DoJ and Treasury [edit: read "IRS"] out of LL's skirts, at the expense of a few disgruntled customers who're gonna be almost as disgruntled no matter how it's handled.

Seems like LL would rather invoke user discretion than enforce strict guidelines.

Keeps their work to a minimum and our interpretation more broad.

I'm sure there will be clarification soon on items such as sploaders, but until then it would pay to be safe.

The policy states that it covers objects which use a random number or a real life sport event to "determine the winner".

A sploder does not use a random number to "determine the winner" - since everyone who enters wins a payout.

A sploder uses a random number to detemine each winner's payout i.e. the *winnings*

Under a strict interpretation of the policy it doesn't cover sploders. Whether you can convince LL of the above argument is another matter.

Matthew

I liken this to the " Island owner has taken my money and now has banned me from my land"

Allthough this DOES come from a US Federal Law and compounded by Paypal... Gambling on SL is essentially gambling IRL.
It certainly looks as though SL is cleaning house of what IT deems to be undesirables, certainly WoW has FAR more people than SL becasue WoW has a goal. SL doesnt seem to have a goal to those people who have no creative need.
I would like to see SL develope into a place where there is significant investment in the indevidual ... if your house building skill isnt that good... learn or buy a house.
SL is just a den of greed these days... everyone thinks SL is here for money making and not as an entertainment medium. I certainly dont base my business model on my tier being paid in game, I can afford to not sell a bean BUT I am going to think about building Trivia Sploders with an entry fee

would be willing to pay the tier fee then Susie?

Online gambling is not illegal in the USA. Making payments to online gambling firms via credit card payments is illegal, so I'm not 100% convinced that the reason gambling has been banned here is solely because of the online gambling rules, as we don't directly make payments here via credit card.

As for those saying changes in RL laws affect businesses, yes they do, however generally you're given notice. Smoking in public places has recently been banned in the UK but there was a long notice period.

But... how does one buy L$s, except online? (I'm not being argumentative, I'm just missing the point, I think.)

In other postings (not this one), a rather big deal is made of the distinction between online gambling and online payment for gambling, as if the lawmakers thought online gambling isn't something they wanted to control. But it seems to me that the IRS (and Revenue Canada, and...) can only see credit card and PayPal transactions, wire transfers, etc.--thank god they aren't watching what's executing on our machines nor inspecting each packet for naughty gambling content.

From the blog:
"And, because there are a variety of conflicting gambling regulations around the world we have chosen to restrict gambling in Second Life..."

She didn't once mention any specific law, UIGEA or any other. She said the reason for the policy is there are a variety of conflicting regulations around the world. As a United States based company, they would naturally pay particular attention to UIGEA, but it's more just a general conclusion that gambling in Second Life is going to be too troublesome to try and accomodate, so to protect themselves, the policy will be to prohibit it. Seems fair enough to me.




Apples and oranges. Once you decide that gambling is a serious enough problem that it needs to be banned, you don't give the casinos and patrons 30 more days to have their last harrah, absorbing all the risk on their behalf. This was a business decision, not a public health and safety decision.

Camping lol no seriously, I think there's the issue of unregulated gambing. As you don't directly fund gambling payments via credit card. I have premium membership, I could have used my L$300 Stipend each week to gamble had I chose to. It's not direct funding via credit card.

Actually Zaphod I asked her yesterday, directly, if it was online gambling, unregulated gambling or a combination of the two, and she didn't actually know.




This was not a business decision they all of a sudden realised they had to take, this has been going on for months, which was plenty of time to tell people to stop doing it. They could have announced that gambling was going to stop a month from when they banned the ads.

Clearly, you're not understanding anything I'm saying, so I'll go back to arguing with my chair. Robin likely didn't write the text in the blog. But it's clear enough nonetheless what the reasoning was behind the decision. It's plain as day and night, and I quoted the relevant portion in my last post. Whether you believe it is not something I can help you with, but there it is.

Ah, got it: thanks for the clarification. I suppose, though, if it were that easy, then QieLabs.com (don't really go there, it's just a stub!) could set up online gambling by membership only, charging, say, US$10 for a weekly allotment of, say, Q$300, with which you could play blackjack, etc., perhaps choosing "membership upgrades" for more Q$ chits, with Q$ convertible to US$ for a nominal fee. Sure sounds like that shady Qie is just trying to sneak around the law again.

Hmm i don't think sploders will be a problem, but that depends on the type of sploder. Some of them you do wager money to and hope that you get it back when it explodes, others you just click on and they add you to a list of who to give prizes to when they explode.

I understand what you're saying, we just have different views on how they should have implemented the ban. I think they should have given notice back when they banned the ads and you don't. I think they should have given casino owners time to readjust their business model and you don't. I'm not arguing against the ban, I'm arguing against the implementation.

I'd also like to know more specific reasoning, because if there's any money laundering type issues relating to this, then further down the line that's going to have an effect on other businesses here.

Well actually, some sites do sort of do this.

http://www.internet-poker.co.uk/Poker-Rooms-That-Accept-US-Players/

I wouldn't reccomend anyone from the US signs up but it seems they think it's a workaround.

If it makes anyone feel better about all of this, isn't Robin Linden the public voice of "Broadly Offensive Behaviour"?

Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about how well this gambling ban was managed knowing that, personally.

As I recall, we have Daniel Linden to thank for that one, but Robin ends up "holding the bag" for most anything any Linden says, so "public voice" is accurate, in that sense.