SL Exchange deletes Casinos and Gambling category, disables objects

More fallout from Linden Lab’s decision not to allow gambling-related advertising.

Per the announcement in the SL Exchange forums on Sunday April 15, they have now deleted the Casinos & Gambling category with the following email message sent out to those selling items they consider to be gambling-related:

As you may already know, SL Exchange has decided to discontinue the sale of items related to gambling. You have received this message because you have at least one item that we consider gambling-related in the Marketplace. We have disabled all such items as well as the Casinos and Gambling category.

If you had any listing enhancements on items of yours that were disabled, you have received a prorated refund for any time they had remaining.

At this time we have only disabled casino-style items and are not yet clear whether other items will also be disabled or when.

Note the last sentence which I bolded, not the author. What is meant by that? Are adult-related items next? Apotheus Silverman indicates in the forum that he checked with his attorney and this was the best course of action for SL Exchange.

Decided to research how good fair SL Exchange was about removing gambling-related games. A search for “slots” as of this writing revealed a featured slot machine for L$5,000:

Category used? Home->Business->Vending Machines. In their defense, I can see it taking them awhile to flush out every instance of gambling-oriented games and it if they attempt to filter by keywords that will lead to false positives. Best of luck to them weeding out these objects unless they go to a moderated objects queue system. Messy.

The other major SL to web shop SL Boutique owned and operated by the Electric Sheep Company hasn’t elected to restrict sale of these type items yet.

Update 4:43pm SL/PST: Shortly after publishing I noticed that Linden Lab still advertises on the Second Life website as one of the business opportunities in world: “casino operator.”

To stay consistent with their advertising guidelines for residents and not be hypocritical, maybe they ought to modify this page? Then again, maybe they mean that page for SL residents who live outside the US? I’ll say it again: messy.