BopetteYossarian has posted a question regarding online gambling over at SLUniverse, namely whether rumblings in some US states regarding legalising online gambling could see a return of gambling to Second Life. Bopette links to a story on Fox News.
The story mentions that certain states are making moves, or have made moves, to allow online gambling, despite the fact that Federal law still forbids it. However in terms of Second Life, this is pretty much a non starter as far as I’m concerned.
When gambling was allowed in Second Life, it really wasn’t legal online gambling in my view. I say this because I know of no officially licensed bookmakers or gambling institutions who were running online gambling in Second Life. The reason gambling seemed to get a pass in Second Life was due to the fact that Linden Dollars were being exchanged, rather than cash and the authorities weren’t paying close enough attention to new fangled technology. That changed in July 2007 when gambling was prohibited in Second Life, with rumours that it was due to an FBI investigation, hence the authorities appeared to have noticed something may be amiss with this new fangled technology.
The only way I could ever see gambling returning to Second Life would involve Second Life adopting a new model of land ownership and this may actually be beneficial to organisations other than gambling ventures, however we’ll stick with gambling for the example of how this may work. Imagine there were no legal obstacles to gambling, Linden Lab would still probably want nothing to do with it, namely because as far as I’m aware, they aren’t a licensed gambling operator. However what if a licensed gambling operator wanted to come in and it was legally possible? That’s where the different model of land ownership comes in.
The gambling operator would be on a sister grid, this wouldn’t show on the map, but teleporting there would be possible if you signed up with the gambling operator. They would handle the registrations, the age verification and the legal right for people to gamble there, you wouldn’t take your Linden Dollars with you, they’d have their own currency system. Linden Lab would provide the support, maintenance and hardware resources and charge a fee for those services, but they wouldn’t be responsible for the account verification or the TOS on the sister grid.
This could also work in the other direction, if someone signed up via one of these sister grids, they’d also be able to access Second Life, but again wouldn’t be bringing any currency with them and would be bound by the Second Life TOS whilst visiting.
This might sound a bit alien to how Second Life works now, but at its heart Second Life is a virtual world, for virtual worlds to prosper long term they are going to require inter-grid transportation and I believe that virtual worlds will grow in the future.
However as I said earlier, this concept wouldn’t just apply to gambling ventures, there are all sorts of ventures who could benefit from Second Life technology but may not actually want to be on the Second Life main grid. I once thought Linden Lab were heading in this direction when Catherine Linden used to keep talking about the grid at her office hours, but it didn’t transpire. However let’s say an online store wanted a virtual world presence but they were turned off Second Life itself by some of the stigma (wrongly in my opinion) associated with Second Life. The sister grid option might work for them too, they get their customer list, their registrations, their branding and those who want to visit from Second Life can visit, but once there they are under the TOS of the operator of that grid.
This is all of course hypothetical and looking at long term solutions, but virtual worlds of the future will require improved ease of access, such as we have now with websites. People won’t want to download multiple clients, and login to multiple worlds, they will want to hop from world to world pretty seamlessly.
However this is all moot for now, but who knows what the future may hold.