Friday, December 21, 2007

WTO Rules that US Illegally blocked online gambling

Also gives an unusual form of compensation to Antigua.

Will online gambling return to SL? The answer lies not in government interference, since online gambling is allowed in the US, but in the credit card companies and in a VR company willing to deal with the problems that gambling creates, such as crooked machines.

Do I miss the gambling days? Yes. Am I glad gambling is gone from sl? Yes.

That's not a contradiction, it is the admission that we had a chance and let it slip through our fingers....

3 comments:

  1. I'm no gambler (I get scared just to walk in a casino!), but I'm definitely for having a SL where people should be freely allowed to waste their money in gambling, if they wished. It's just a question of attitude, really; either we're adults and we assume full responsability for our acts, or we're weeny teenagers that need the State to tell us how to think and behave.

    Having a choice between both ends, my own opinion is crystal clear: freedom of action, so long as the only one harmed is our own self, and no "state morality" imposed on freethinking individuals.

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  2. LL is the state that pulled the plug on gambling, but it was credit card companies, not the US government, that supplied the external pressure.

    The "state" does a great deal less than most people think.

    In connection with gambling, it was the unwillingness of LL to regulate the product that was the collapse of the enterprise. The lack of a state, not the presence of one, was decisive in the gambling issue. Credit card issuers were, rightly, not willing to extend credit to buy Lindens in a system where the individual taking Lindens bears all risk for whether they are "real" and there is no assurance that the "gambling" was even gambling.

    The issue in the end is that when there is no enforcement against fraud, those who lend money rightfully do not wish to take risks for which they are not being rewarded.

    I miss gambling as a cultural feature of SL, but it was not the state that put crooked wheels in casinos, nor the state that created an insecure Linden currency, nor the state which defaulted on credit card debts racked up through gambling.

    I wouldn't loan money to someone who was going to gamble with it, and I don't blame the bank that issues my credit cards for not wanting to either.

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