FBI Examines Second Life Casinos

UnanimousCoward writes "Yahoo! is running an article reporting that Second Life has invited the FBI to tour their casinos. Under the theory that they may have some objections, Linden wanted to make sure that everything was on the up and up. The FBI has apparently taken them up on the offer, but will not comment on their conclusion. With the recent US crackdown on Internet gambling, visits to Second Life casinos have increased (using Linden dollars that can be exchanged for real currency). 'Most lawyers agree that placing bets with Linden dollars likely violates US anti-gambling statutes, which cover circumstances in which something of value is wagered. But the degree of Linden Lab's responsibility, and the likelihood of a any crackdown, is uncertain.'"

Comments

are the FBI actually going into the game?

[brunascle]

by "examine", do they mean the FBI are actually going to enter the game? i always found that weird, when admin-types have to do their duty from within the game.

one example: i read about a guy in an MMO who got his hands on a character that was accidentally released. he claimed the admins were trying to take it back... but they couldnt "find it". couldnt find it? they own the friggin servers. that should be as simple as a database query, or something like that.

Re:its a freaking game!!!

[blahplusplus]

"its a freaking game!!!"

Yes but lets not forget that capitalist economy must be protected from threats (i.e. places that suck up money from the economy in which there is a FIXED amount of money).

The whole "gambling crackdown" is about the integrity of an economy with a fixed money supply, and gambling sites do suck up money and money pools there under the guise of people hoping to get rich, which does have real effects on the economy. The government is a capitalist nazi, in Canada you cannot leave the country for too much time or you will be cut off from social assistance for instance. Why exactly would they have that? Because money is leaking from the economy (not staying at home).

Could some explain how one places a bet?

[goombah99]

I can't fathom how this even begins to work. How does someone "set up" a casino in second life. When the player and the house engage, I assume there must be some sort of "escrow" function where the players enter a contract for some transaction. In this case the transaction must be conditioned on the outcome of some random number generator. Where does that generator live?

Assuming that what a casino consists of is the coupling of an escrowed transaction and a random number generator then I would imagine that a casino looks like this

1) Person A contracts to buy one item from a market basket of goods for X dollars
2) the market basket is filled with a sample of goods that differ slightly. These might for example be good apples and rotten apples. Sometimes the buyer gets a bad apple. Sometimes they get a good one.
3) a random number generator provided by second life determines which apple they get.

Now substitute 2X dollars for good apples and 0 dollars for bad apples and we have a casino.

If this is all there is to it then all linden needs is the following logic
1) if an escrowed transactions occurs
        2) if the outcome of the transaction is random
              3) if both parts of the escrow are Linden Dollars
Then this is gambling.

How hard could that be?

Re:Could some explain how one places a bet?

[Mr2001]

I'm unfamiliar with SL scripting, but from my MUSH days I suspect it goes more like this:

1. Person A inserts fixed amount of money into a machine.
2. Machine rolls a random number and determines the payout.
3. Machine returns an amount of money to the player. ...where there is no "escrow" step at which Big Brother can examine the entire transaction and see if it looks like gambling. There are just individual payments: money goes in, stuff happens, and later money comes out.

Re:Could some explain how one places a bet?

[goombah99]

I'm unfamiliar with SL scripting, but from my MUSH days I suspect it goes more like this:

1. Person A inserts fixed amount of money into a machine.

2. Machine rolls a random number and determines the payout.

3. Machine returns an amount of money to the player. ...where there is no "escrow" step at which Big Brother can examine the entire transaction and see if it looks like gambling. There are just individual payments: money goes in, stuff happens, and later money comes out. Well Okay different terminology but same effect. The machine is a "trusted" escrow device because it's functional, albeit random, is pre-agreed between the parties. i.e. The owner of the machine can't affect it's outcome after the first party has paid.

Now my set of conditionals still holds.
1) if the output of a machine is money
      2) if the input of the machine was money
        3) if there is a call to a random number generator inside the machine
it is gambling.

If linden imposed such a test how woul dthis break second life?

Thinking about this a second here is one such thing that would break
A juke box that plays random songs for 1 dollar
1) player inserts a 5 dollar bill
2) machine makes change and out puts 4 dollarrs
3) machine randomly selects song.

But this could be patched by inventing a change machine so the player could get exact change.

Okay now step two. perhaps this could test could be voided if the casionos used "chips" instead of cash. then the output/input is chips. and a separate machine redeems them.

That must be the problem. Right?

Re:its a freaking game!!!

[Mr2001]

That it is not "worse" than other things which may have victims but are not crimes does not establish that it is a victimless crime. It may be useful as part of an argument that it, despite not being victimless, ought not to be a crime, but you'd need more than you've presented to make that argument. Typically, for the purposes of deciding whether an act is a "victimless crime", we ignore the person committing the act, on the principle that the kind of "victims" we're concerned about are unwilling, innocent victims.

In that context it's easy to see that gambling is indeed victimless. If I go to a casino and play a hand of blackjack, who's the victim? Not me; I committed the act with full knowledge of the possible consequences and willingly accepted them. Not the casino; they're playing willingly, under mutually agreed rules which are, in fact, tilted in their favor. There is no one else affected by the act, so we can conclude that it's victimless.

Now, some proponents of the idea that gambling has a victim might bring up extreme scenarios: "What if you spend all your money at the casino and you can't buy food for your kids? Aren't they victims?" But of course in that scenario, the reason you don't have any money is because you chose to spend it all, not because the casino made you give it to them. You could just as easily have spent it all on comic books, stocks, gym memberships, vacation timeshares, or Pez dispensers from eBay, with exactly the same outcome... the children in that scenario are victims of your reckless spending, not of gambling.