US authorities are looking at Second Life as part of a crackdown on Internet gambling.
The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act attempted to outlaw online gambling, and Linden Lab - the operator of Second Life - says FBI agents have visited casinos inside the virtual environment.
FBI investigators have visited Second Life’s Internet casinos at the invitation of the virtual world’s creator Linden Lab, but the U.S. government has not decided on the legality of virtual gambling.
“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,” said Ginsu Yoon, until recently Linden Lab’s general counsel and currently vice president for business affairs.
Alice, over at the Wonderland blog, had the chance to see the demo of the new social/game world Whirled . It’s a web-based project with tons of the MySpace/Second Life/YouTube elements that are becoming so common with these projects. The difference with the Three Rings design is the look: it’s ugly.
Second Life, the four-million-strong online community, is turning more and more into a pixelated copy of reality and its institutions, complete with rampant consumerism, political candidates and lawsuits. Whatever happened to the brave new virtual world?
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An Australian company is planning to build an “open unlimited scalable world” using P2P architecture. They promise “the addictiveness and visual richness of World of Warcraft, the personal expression of MySpace and the mobility of internet phone service Skype.
