We expect gateways, which handle the movement of actual money, will be subject to AML/KYC compliance issues. We have excellent legal advice and we will continue to follow it. You are certainly correct that this is a major issue.
Anti- money laundering legislation is not restricted to "actual money". Anything that constitutes a transfer of wealth can fall under AML if the transfer is designed to obscure the origin and destination of trade that could be illicit. Transferring deeds to a house, a bunch of diamonds, stock or gold all can be used for money laundering. So Ripple as a whole falls under AML, as does Bitcoin, as does SecondLife linden dollar. With the major difference that currently Bitcoin is the only one that can't be regulated short of a complete ban.
Since Opencoin is a US company it will accept any government interference if it wants to keep it's investment, and that's a single point of failure for a distributed currency scheme. As I've detailed in other posts, even if you publish the source there's no way for the network to fork if people don't like your newest changes; you will maintain complete control of both your ledger and any alternate ledgers for the foreseeable future.