"Your World, Your Imagination"... or not

Reading about the new policy against gambling in SL got me thinking.

SL slogan is "Your World, Your Imagination" but lately it seems that LL has taken a more active participation in redefining what "My World" should be.

Of course they have all the rights to do so, it's their software, their servers, we (the users) are guests in the world.

Anyway, all the latest developments left an eerie feeling, shall we change SL slogan to "My ball, My rules" and be more objective about it?

I think that the more rules they add, the less their 'hands off' approach to governance is going to work...not that it's ever worked well, at least in the year I've been here.

It's a direct result of the "hands off" approach... things have gotten so bad, they've now got no choice but to start policing their world their way.

If they'd done this right from the get-go, people wouldn't be complaining as much - because these things wouldn't be here to get banned in the first place.

Broccoli

Their world, No imagination & their rules.....But guess what its my money and i just took my two premium alt accts down to free, sold their lindens & land. I can only imagine how much of that is going on today!!!!

But are they policing it? Or are they just expecting all of us to report on our neighbors? It's not the same thing at all.

I'm new to Second Life so I really can't say that no gambling in SL really affects me much. I'm not a gambler in real life, I don't see the point of it, so I don't gamble in Second Life except for sploders because it is a simple, fun, and social activity to do while one is dancing at a club. And, I look at it this way: If I don't win, somebody else will so I see it as investing my lindens so someone else might benefit.

However, I would rather see casinos in Second Life as opposed to them being banned (or anything banned for that matter). Linden Labs will not always be the only game in town. If they continue to narrow the view of "your world, your imagination," people will eventually find other solutions be it another virtual world like Red Light District or something that is in development like Sony's Home or some other unnamed project.

If LL does crack down on casinos, I do believe SL citizens should rise up and fight. Take the speakeasy route. Turn casino's into the underground of SL. Make them ultra private, easy to move, and have them at very temporary locations that change on a daily or hourly basis. Groups are perfect for this. I'm a newbie, but I've read how users have banned together in the past to fight LL's rules that seemed to be unfair. I understand that LL is trying to comply with crappy U.S. Federal Law and that puts them in the unfortunate position of "bad guy."

Still, I am uncomfortable with the idea of a virtual world losing it's allure of be all and do all. I really wish LL would do something to keep that idea alive. The U.S. government are hypocrites anyway. You can gamble at real world casinos and with variable rate mortgage loans. It's like the same case with narcotics. I can fuck up my life all I want with alcohol and tobacco, but if I smoke Marijuana, I'm a criminal. No consistency or logic in our laws. It also reminds me of the dumb "no casino on land" law in the USA. I worked with casinos as a software vendor. I have visited many casinos built on rivers or man made pools because some morons in the government thought they could keep casinos from being built. People always find loopholes and work-arounds to the law. I'm sure the same will be proved inside of SL.

I don't see where there's any imagination used in gambling anyways. But that's just me.

There you are...

Exactly

Wheres the link between losing RL money and "your imagination"...sorry...you'r enot imagining it...thats your money disappearing.


I hear that the sploders are gone (not in world to check)...at least, as of last night. I don't see sploders as being gambling though...more like a raffle...everyone contributes and the pot is distributed randomly.

Lol ...

Which perfectly falls under the policy definition of gambling.

Well people have created machines and games just for SL, that's taken some imagination surely?

"Your World, Your Imagination" (As long as you don't break any laws)

but Sl is not more OUR imagination, just THEIR(linden) Imagination...we must only obey.

I think they have to step in somewhere. Should we allow certain sims to have child pornography scattered about because it's "Our World, Our Sickness?"

Rules must be set...if it was our world, and our world alone, then where do you go when you loose money, get scammed, get constantly griefed? LL has to be there for certain things, to enforce particular issues...

I think LL is pretty darn open-minded if you ask me.

It has always been...

"Your World, Your Imagination"

... within the limits of the TOS.

When servers go open-source and people can host their own servers, say, from a country where gambling is legal, then sure, it will still be "your world your imagination." Not sure why everyone is panicking.

It has long been speculated that LL will eventually open up the grid and allow people to hook their own servers into it, for a price. Then gambling will come back, on servers located in Macao or Monaco or wherever. So will anything and everything else that some bluenose somewhere gets banned from SL, as long as it is not illegal somewhere else in the world that also has an Internet portal.

I always thought it was

"Your money, Our rules"

anyhow

I actualy dont see the fuss 99% of casinos had no gamblers 99% of casinos had camping chairs that may have given out a few lindens. Me thinks there will be little to no change except for people running into sl to open a casino think they will be rich in 6 weeks and then abandoning their casinos 2 months later or bribbing people to make them popular by offering them money to camp.

I dont hate camping chairs but if your gonna install em install em in a place that people actually might use and then only a handful as in no more then 5 or so for a sim. Make it part of your venue but empty casinos full of camping zombies bringing in no real funds well ... nevermind

I just figured they didn't want to get fined or arrested by the government for hosting illegal gambilng services.

Did I miss some scandal or conspiracy that some how has anything to do with their vision of an online world?