Am I right to assume that pure exchanges can keep existing as long as they buy and sell lindens and not offer any interest?

LL linked to a FAQ beyond the post on the Blog. It reads:

“Are any other inworld businesses, such as stock exchanges, covered by this policy?

As of today, this policy is generally focused on objects and schemes that involve real-time transfers of L$ and payment of interest or rates of return. Exchanges may or may not do this, so they may or may not be covered. In addition, we reserve the right to remove any objects and take action against any Residents who are violating U.S. or other laws. If you are unsure whether a business you’re operating abides by applicable laws (e.g., banking, securities laws), you should get a formal legal opinion, from a personal lawyer acting on your behalf.”

But it’s worth noting that many exchanges are presently tied into interest-bearing banks.

No need to say that LL has once more managed to place a sensible blow with maximum impact to the economy in SL.

Slowly I get more and more to the idea that LL is nothing more than a Berkeley–acro-economics-lab simulation with some US-government-project that stated the goal to explore how much damage an economy could take.
In this scenario, LL takes the role of an entity, whichs only task is to come up with some “Black-Friday”-staging-incident to see wether this time the whole thing blows or not.

Points that support this view as follows:

1. LL-concentrates on high-cash flow-sectors of SL-economics (e.g.: Ban of Gambling, now Banking - yes I know, its not a ban but “reduction to certified banks”, but face it: which of all these banks would produce a certificate up to 22nd of January to stay in business?)

2. LL always comes totally out of the sun with these measures. When has there been any corespondance with Casino-Owners? Where was the preemptive consultation with the banks before kick off a stone of news that would cause some economical avalanche, that a retarded could forsee?

3. A “world-owned and created by its own users” and “be what you cannot in RL” is over. That might have been true in 2004. With the step into banking-ventures and harsh hits to the economics, LL started to drive down the heartbeat of SL-economics. Users start ventures here because they may have their work to enrich the world rewarded by a small of not-quite-so-small amount of RL-money.

This includes to invest in risky business by your own choice and in the knowledge that the banking and investment scene is somewhat wild-west-like. So the wiseguy spreaded his funds on several institutions and investments to not risk all when one goes down.

Now what? LL blasted them all. Charming.

During the next years we will for sure see more of this “Usually, we don’t step in the middle of Resident-to-Resident conduct, but…”

My bet would be that the experimental team tries the big blast and bans any ventures that allow re-transfer of L$ to real money or something equally creative.

Now white rats that we are we will wait and see. And if they overstretch it we will find some more liberal and non regulative virtual government in the metaverse.
Probably something from China.

Well, I think the Lindens had to do something after than Ginko thing. I had 33,000 Lindens and almost lost it if someone didn’t tell me when I was about to make a deposit, that he heard the bank was failing and to draw out for one day. Thank you!

At the time I didn’t realize how risky some of this investment could be. Anybody can set up a bank and just “fraud” a lot of people through Ponizi and change avatars.

I applaud what the Lindens have decided, but disagree with them on the gambling. That should be choice, because you know it’s a risk and you are responsible for your own legal problems if any.

For the love of God, just let it play out, stop trying to be mommy to every little virtual body. This is exactly like the wild west–a ton of risk, but a ton of reward. Of course there will be losses, to venture into this world you will have to stay on your toes ebb and flow, when an establishment is offering a too-good-to-be-true return, guess what, it probably is… just let it play out. The banks, stock exchanges, whichever markets that are legit will as time always tells, prove itself so. The market is self-regulating. Local unions form accreditation procedures to protect their good businesses, and root fraud out at the get-go… but you have to let it get to that level on its own–plus its much more exciting. The risk and adventure is half the draw. Kiddy-proof the whole metaverse and you’re gonna have one lonely Second Life. Take a poll of all the people that lost their shirt in Vegas, how many go back? They all go back, maybe not to the same casino, but they go back to Vegas even after devastating losses–cause it’s exciting. You can’t just step in every fifteen minutes for the purposes of regulation in a world that was designed to be unregulated. It’s a contradiction that will literally rip Second Life apart. Get your little God fingers out of the way, or Second Life will just be the first virtual world example of exactly what not to do… when real do-anything alternate worlds become developed and offer true reality escape portals.

@Gwyneth

Stand by and brace yourself… the adult content industry comes next.

I doubt it. The issue, as I see it, is Linden backed into disallowing what is manifestly insupportable under US law. Craigslist, or the average alt-weekly, has far more questionable amaterial than anything in Second Life, so long as the no one pushes the ageplay envelope.

I’ve been surprised how many people in SL interpret Linden’s latest dictum narrowly, insisting that stock exchanges for example as non-interest bearing invesments are safe. I would be wary, to say the least, of *any* L$ financial vehicle given this precedent.

.. they will remove all ATMs.

I wonder how many SLExchange or TeleLinden ATMs will be deleted and the land owner be threatened by accident. I hope the cleaning staff know what they do.

Gwyneth wrote:
“Stand by and brace yourself… the adult content industry comes next.”

Eric wrote
“I doubt it. The issue, as I see it, is Linden backed into disallowing what is manifestly insupportable under US law. ”

@Eric:
Well that would indeed be lovely. But I fear it is not that easy. If you remember: LL had undergone the VAT-laws of all residents countries without being asked to do so.

“Why would they?”, some might ask.
Simple answer: Because with a great amount of residents from all over Europe they realized, that some day someone might come and collect that VAT from LL, who so far had executed the VAT-included policy.

So LLs motives are influenced by three factors which are all at once drawn out of the top-hat if one of them is triggered:
- Money (that means if LL could imagine they lose some)
- Foreign Law (if LL realizes someone might sue them)
- and last but not least:
Bad Press

With the adult sector we see LL’s first steps with the age-check and the “voluntary” rating of your own parcel and the ominous announcement of LL that people which do not mark their parcel properly will be “offered consultation”.

If that is the same consultation, people receive, that transfer big sums of L$ back and forth, this may mean waking up with a frozen account.

Here, clearly foreign law comes into play.
For whatever is legal in adult presentation in California, is not in Germany for example.
Over here, to issue publications of any depiction of an erected penis or a closeup of a vagina is considered pornographic and punishable if done openly in normal trade.

Now imagine, what would be considered illegal in any islamistic country.

As soon as the first bad press arises from such a country with a high user ratio, my preduction would be that LL will jump for it,bite another part of economical freedom in SL out of the big cake and swallow it.

The problem started when Linden game money became exchangable between real world currencies. This was a big mistake and pretty much started the destruction of the reality. People come to Second Life to find something different, a fresh creative world, then the same capitalistic crap they have to deal with every day in the real world.

Real estate people early to market started buying up huge tracks of virtual space, making it impossible for later creative people to come in to build anywhere. Follow this progress to see how interest in the game dies, as it die with me:

1. User signs up, and gets stuck on an island with stupid looking default avatar. Probably at some point, most people dump the simulation, trying to find some way to ‘escape’ the island, if they even know there is anything more. Escape turns out to be no riddle, you just have to go to a map and teleport somewhere eles. If you don’t know this, takes you hours of walking around the island until you figure it out maybe by accident.

2. Next stage is a fascination with pimping out your character. Clothes, wings, you name it, you want to look great, so you are scavaging for clothes. Finally you get your character pimped out, but you will change it millions of times thereafter as you get bored with it.

3. Next stage is exploring for beautiful places. This is mostly by word of mouth. You visit seedy clubs, you find castles and islands and gardens and rave dance floors.

4. Next you start to create.. in sandboxes, if you are so creativly inclined as I was and had some previous 3d modeling experience. You build huge towers, and castles, and houses, and awesome things, but guess what, you have no land to put them on, so you design huge towers for the tiniest plots of land.

5. You go searching for cheap plot of tiny land. You realize Second Life has been abandoned by the world, and most of it is a desolat wasteland. You see tracks and tracks of suburbs with nobody in them. You realize, there’s nobody in this game to even see your creation in most parts. Why maintain rent on a plot of land, if its on some nowhereville place that nobody will see it, and you will just be sitting alone.

Its at this point, you quit the game, and never come back. Because Linden gave you a free poor avatar, but they didn’t give you a tiny plot of land and a mule so to speak to start.

Second Life is dead. Dead because they started believing it was something more than just a vaue open ended exploration and building game for creative artist 3D modeling type people. And none of us are coming back.