Casinos banned from Second Life

The group was very active today, as whole of Second Life probably, because Linden Lab announced on the official blog that all gambling activities are now forbidden !

We had a long discussion about it, discussing if it was advertisment for gambling, or gambling itself. Apparently gambling is now illegal in SL, as the US law makes online casinos illegal. One interesting point was the definition of gambling as "a game one have to pay to enter and which result is chosen randomly, and prize is L$". Some were really disapointed, because this definition also cover... sploders !

Apparently Linden Lab will close such places, and remove such objects. No evidence of such activities have been seen as no member was in a casino by this time. Anyway, casino only help you to loose money, not to earn ;-). I will report later on the closure or not of all casinos.

The post also mention that local laws are applicable, which is not so clear for anyone. Another point was to know if SL is more populated by US or non-US people, and the question of moving the Linden Lab servers somewhere else has been raised, with no satisfactory answer.

The single point on which all present group members did agree is that this could have a strong impact on SecondLife economy, but we all beleive that Second Life will survive it, and business will find another way...

I'm by far not a legal expert, so if I wrote any mistake down, please correct me. Any comment are welcome on this red hot topic !

This is a bit provocative, but if casinos have to shut down, there will still be the sex industry to continue Linden Lab business !

JaneLight and the pimp

As promised, here is the story of JaneLight's encounter with a virtual pimp.

While she was camping by Platinum, JaneLight received an instant message from solotke Voom (yes man, your name goes public now... had to think of that before) who asked her if she needed a pimp ! Not even a hello or something, but this very direct question.

Instead of just ignoring him, I asked for his offer, and he said someting like "20% for you, 80% for me". Not so fair. So my reply has been "90% for me, 10% for you, minimum 10'000 L$ per 'customer'"... to which he agreed !

I did obviously not wanted to starte JaneLight a career in sex industry, but I saw an opportunity. I asked solotke Voom to pay JaneLight immediately 10'000 L$, as a proof of its seriousness, before going any futher in that business. Apparently, this solotke Voom is either poor, or amateur (both are not so good for a pimp, or pimp to be...). He just payed JaneLight one Linden.

So, no big fortune increase, but that was strange / interesting / weired / surprising / shocking to discuss with such a guy... and in the end, that was one more Linden.