New U.S. rules may impact Second Life, other "games of skill" web sites | Hacker News Reader

New U.S. rules may impact Second Life, other "games of skill" web sites

netfreedomforever.com

23 pointsckinnan7 comments

Wow. Doesn't this effectively cover the stock market?

They have an exemption written in, as do insurance companies and fantasy sports. Pity the other industries that didn't have the vigilance to detect this bill in progress and the foresight to hire a lobbyist.

So just recast participation in the game of skill as the purchase of an insurance policy. (Granted, this is probably easier for, say, Intrade than for something like SL.)

But they probably thought of that and were somewhat specific about the allowable types of insurance.

edit: I went and read the relevant text of the act. Especially in light of recent events, I find it amusing that Congress couldn't come up with a definition of "gambling" that inherently excluded derivatives trading - they had to do that explicitly as well.

I thought one major difference is that in "gambling" your bet is final, whereas derivatives may be unloaded at will (assuming you can find a buyer or don't need one).

I can introduce this feature in gaming - and it will still be gaming essentially.

No it does not cover the stock market anymore than it covers buying and selling oranges.

It also does not cover second life no matter what the article says.

If you are buying and selling something for fair value, that is not a game of skill. Not unless you want to expand the definition to every business in america.

A simple definition of the difference is that in a game of skill the amount of money has nothing to do with the activity. This is not so in business, second life, or the stock market.

That's not true. The law has already driven new types of futures markets from the United States. And the rules that implement the law (drafts of which apparently are far-reaching) aren't even in place yet!

http://www.creators.com/opinion/john-stossel/government-stif...

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