If you have any exposure to the increasing media frenzy of Web Bubble 2.0, you have probably heard of Second Life. Second Life is a virtual world where you can present yourself in ways untethered by your actual looks and interact with other people doing the same thing in a virtual landscape. There is no overriding goal such as Freeing The Princess or Finding The Magic Sword. Instead, the idea is to participate in a mirror world which presumably is cooler than our own. In a world like this, a few areas have economic value:
- “land” which is sold by the creator, Linden Labs, along with use fees
- design elements such as clothes, pets, and special effects created by users with the patience and talent to work through the code
- and of course, pornography
Similar to their real-life equivalents, all of these cost money. To facilitate such transactions, Linden Labs has created Linden Dollars, which can be traded for U.S. dollars.
In general Second Life does not show up on the radar for background check companies, except for some of their less savory enterprises. But as it turns out, Second Life hosts another familiar online business — casinos. And that is a heavily regulated industry. The U.S. government has begun enforcing gambling laws with substantial vigor recently. Two gambling executives of overseas companies were arrested during brief layovers on American soil, and it is worth noting that in one case at least the alleged violation involved state law, not federal. Congress also passed into law the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which specifically prohibited payment processors from assisting in gambling-related transactions.
The executives at Linden Labs were sufficiently concerned about their legal liability to ask the FBI to visit their virtual casinos and issue a ruling as to their legality. On the face of it, this seems a reasonable precaution, although more cynical bloggers suggested this was a marketing ploy (and judging by the extensive news coverage, a successful one). The truth can perhaps be found in the numbers. The three largest casinos had profits of a mere US $1,500 per month. Yes, you read that number correctly. Whatever the feds decide, it looks like Las Vegas is safe for now.