FBI and Gambling - Australian connotations?

April 5, 2007

Update: According to the Official Linden Blog, the report by Reuters is a furphy….

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As reported by Reuters earlier this week, FBI agents in the US have been investigating gambling within Second Life. The story is well worth a read and it poses some fairly substantial questions for Australians operating businesses in Second Life.

Firstly, every country has different gambling rules than the US so potentially, US-based casinos may need to shut down whilst others do not - on assumption Linden Lab aren’t directed to ensure gambling doesn’t occur at all on their US-based grid.

Secondly, Australian authorities appear to have not taken a great deal of interest in Second Life at this stage although realistically any investigations are unlikely to be public. Aside from some coverage of the Australian Tax Office’s interest late last year there’s been little activity.

Finally, stories like the Reuters one on the FBI crytallise the ongoing issue that governments and their instruments like law enforcement have a great deal of catch up to do in regard to virtual worlds. You’ll know things are starting to happen when Parliament holds a Senate enquiry into virtual worlds - and no, we won’t be proposing that here at SLOz

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Written by Lowell Cremorne · Filed Under Editorial, General News

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william fish 1 year ago 1 point
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im a USA resident and i have a nice sice mall with a rather small casino.

From what i read in the routers report, they are not investigating casino owners rather LindenLabs for allowing "unlawful gambling" the Unlawful gambling act says no transactions of money shall be used for gambling. The main thing the FBI is looking at is how lindens used for gambling would or would not fall under the unlawful gambling act.

LindenLabs VIP of buisness affairs made that quite clear as he/she was quoated in the routers report.

Also to touch on LL's classified ad "solution" to keep them clean.. they do not specificly say what is gambling. Gambling is anything paid to for value of greater gain. In retrospect, buying virtual land is a type of gambling as the land buyer hopes to gain greater value when or if they sell their land. Legally in the USA you need a license to sell land or property. So what is next? does the USA law crack down on land barons too?

Point is, LL needs to tell people like myself that are not dedicating all their land to just a casino what we can put in our classified ads. Is bingo (aka slingo in SL) considered a casino machine or gambling? is an xploder/sploder considered a casino machine or gambling? These are questions that LL needs to answer soon before they start randomly pulling classified ads (which some places pay up to 100,000 lindens or more for an ad).

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Gracie 1 year ago 1 point
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Something else to consider is the fact that many of the poker players do NOT spend RL money to get lindens to play. They have jobs in SL, such as building, scripting, land management, renting apartments to others, stock trading, and the list goes on. This is what makes us different from other online gambling agencies. In those, there was only one way to get chips to play and that was to pay for them. Here, that just is not the case.

I work in one of the casinos. Half of the people that play don't even have payment info on file. They aren't buying lindens, nor selling them.

The U.S. governmment feels this compelling need to advance their micromanaging of our lives from real life, into our fantasy lives as well. They need to stop.

Gracie

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william fish 1 year ago 1 point
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Grace the "The U.S. governmment feels this compelling need to advance their micromanaging of our lives from real life, into our fantasy lives as well."

well yes and no... the unlawful act was set up to help prevent money laundering (sp?) which most cases (the US feels that it does) helps support terroist.

Lets remember it was the kind folks at Linden Labs that invited the FBI to "snoop" around in casino's in world.

Worst case sceniro i predict is the FBI (supreme court ruling) will either look the other way as they put their thumbs back in their arses or say "one can not convert game money made by gambling into us dollars"

My guess it the first one will happen first.

Oh yea and try asking your local law enforcement if your breaking the local laws by gambling in a virtual world, chances are they will replay "huh" and give you a dumbfounded look.

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