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This was the first comment in my Metanomics op-ed (Benjamin Duranske on the Law and the Grid) yesterday: "The biggest legal impact of 'the grid' is that local laws will govern. Want to run a casino? Drop a server in Antigua."

Re: the UIGEA (it's the "Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act") my view is that no matter how much the representatives from Nevada posture about it, it's not going to get revised unless a court or three finds it unconstitutional. Too many people in the rest of the puritanical country don't like them-thar cardplayers overmuch.

Linden Lab would still be on the hook for payment processing for other installations of "Second Life" in other countries (e.g. mainland and islands) -- but not for, say, third-party "Gambling Life" hosted on an OpenSim server. The key is getting a payment system into OpenSim, and they've left that to the market. I suspect that's on the sooner-rather-than-later horizon, and if whoever is thinking about implementing it needs a General Counsel, give me a call, because I think that an unaffiliated dispersed micropayment solution for "the grid" is the #1 moneymaker in this space over the next five years.