Saturday, April 07, 2007

"We have invited the FBI several times to take a look around in Second Life
and raise any concerns they would like, and we know of at least one instance
that federal agents did look around in a virtual casino," Linden Lab's vice
president Ginsu Yoon told the Reuters news agency. Linden Lab operates the
phenomenally successful online service. There are hundreds of casinos
operating in Second Life, but Linden Lab said that it had not received clear
guidance on gambling within the game. Second Life has its own currency, the
Linden Dollar, 250 of which are worth just one dollar. The US Department of
Justice has been operating a crackdown on internet gambling. It used a 1961
Act outlawing inter-state telephone betting whose application to online
gambling was disputed until last autumn when a new anti-gambling law was
passed. After attempts at passing anti-online gambling laws were opposed in
the Senate the US administration added the Unlawful Internet Gambling
Enforcement Act to an existing ports security bill which was certain to be
passed. The law was passed just before the end of the Congressional session
before mid-term elections. Linden Lab's Yoon said that he believed that the
case against Second Life gambling was not cut and dried. "It's not always
clear to us whether a 3-D simulation of a casino is the same thing as a
casino, legally speaking, and it's not clear to the law enforcement
authorities we have asked," Yoon said.
US law enforcement agencies scored a notable success earlier this week when
they arrested Gary Kaplan, the founder of UK-based online betting firm
BetOnSports. Kaplan had long been wanted on racketeering charges and is also
likely to face prosecution under the new gambling law. The US received a
rebuke this week for its gambling laws, though, when the World Trade
Organisation ruled that its laws were anti-competitive because they treated
US companies differently to ones based offshore.