Comments on: The FBI didn’t mind the gambling, Visa did

By: Prokofy Neva

Prokofy Neva — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 05:10:00 +0000

Are you kids still having trouble grasping that gambling was made *illegal* as in “against the law and leading to punitive action” on the Internet in the U.S.?

A law went into effect in the U.S. in July against Internet gambling, and the credit card companies had to comply with it.
http://www.gambling-law-us.com/Federal-Laws/internet-gambling-ban.htm

John Z. doesn’t have chatlogs — for a reason. He doesn’t want to have something in writing somewhere that someone might construe as the basis for legal action.

He verbally said the exact same thing at Virtual Worlds 07 in San Jose. And it is true that we have no evidence that the FBI itself somehow unilaterally made some move. Instead, LL consulted with them some time ago.

By: Anony Mouse

Anony Mouse — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:18:21 +0000

Is it possible that the lindens did it simply because they didn’t want gambling in SL anymore? Maybe they thought it was making SL “seedy” or “unattractive” to potential interests. It’s not like the enormous sex industry in SL doesn’t already achieve that. No offense to anyone who is in that industry, I’m just saying that from LL’s point of view if gambling is bad, I can only imagine how they would view the other things.

I don’t want to theorize too much since this is how rumors get started. I fear that this is something that we’ll never know the full truth about unless we get Philip Linden and Zee in a weak moment.

By: dandellion Kimban

dandellion Kimban — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:44:20 +0000

Maybe… but I did two minutes check… googled “on-line casino” and opened all of them from the first page. Guess! If there is some info about paying on first page or two (was lazy to do deep search) there was a nice gif of Visa and MasterCard.
Then I googled “porn”. If it is not free then… yes, they are quite ok with Visa and Mastercard. So, I suppose that Visa and MasterCard are ok with them and their visitors.
Money is money, never mind where it comes from.

By: Vint Falken

Vint Falken — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:54:15 +0000

Again, But I didn’t find any chatlogs, voice recordings, or ‘decent’ eye witness testimonies on this up to now. Technorati search let me down and so did Google. So if anybody knows of a decent write up of what was said during that hour, I’d be grateful. ;)

But I do wonder, could either Visa or Mastercard say that they do not let their clients pay bills to LL with their credit cards? For instance, if you continue with allowing gambling in-world, we’ll depict all transfers to LL as ‘fraudelent use’ of the credit card? And will refuse them?

(As there were already some testimonies on certain credit card companies blocking transactions to LL, thinking it was pr0n or gambling.)

By: dandellion Kimban

dandellion Kimban — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:47:41 +0000

We have lot of Boolean variables here. First, if Zee said that. Then, if he said “caused”. But, if both gives true…. what does mean “caused”? No CC company can dictate what sellers will sell. Just imagine MasterCard coming to Amazon and say: “it’s ok to sell books, but we don’t want you to sell DVD’s.” Even some “in for eyes” negotiation (which is hardly likely scenario) of CC companies don’t want to mess with something which might be in collision with public moral is foolish. CC’s are used as a verification and for paying on hard-core porn sites.

It seems that either Zee is telling bullshit to residents, in which case I would like to know if any of those who was there asked for an explanation, either this is one more misinterpretation/lie to make things worse than they are.

By: Anony Mouse

Anony Mouse — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:10:56 +0000

How can MC/Visa dictate to customers how, when or what they spend their money on. Whether it’s gambling or anything else, it’s the customer’s responsibility.

By: Vint Falken

Vint Falken — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:10:46 +0000

Anony mouse, I don’t know in which context this was said. That is what I’m trying to find out, as I find this one very interesting, I’m rather sure I want to hear about the rest too.

Widget, not the slightest clue. I don’t have RL gambling debts and to me the credit cards use stays limited to when I see that ‘ow, they don’t accept paypal or money transfer by bank’. ;)

By: widget

widget — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 08:22:27 +0000

It may be that VISA and Mastercard calculated the cost of handling customer complaints and disputes related to gambling and decided it wasn’t worth it. Do they allow gambling debts to be discharged in RL?

By: Anony Mouse

Anony Mouse — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 05:21:26 +0000

Is he hoping this will make us feel better? I’m curious on what grounds they asked for it to be outlawed. This also concerns me as to what other concessions could LL be forced to make by other companies?

Anony Mouse