What is perhaps most notable about playing online casino games, is the fact that players who love a gamble, can indulge in their favourite games. They can play these games any time of the day or night, 365, and they can play them for free, for as little as a penny a pop, or even for high rolling wagers. Just about everyone likes taking a gamble …it is a universal pastime, with no one culture, not having a list of games they indulge with a flutter. Advanced technology has brought any and every gambling game known to man, into the convenience and comfort of our living rooms. Now we may even play casino online games wherever we go with the advancement of mobile gambling.

The British online gambling industry has fast advanced into massive demand, for a product which appears to be recession-proof, and now hosts a sophisticated audience. This is the epitome of the online gambling industry, where the world is sitting up, taking notice and emulating industry leading concepts. It is paradoxical in fact that the UK is leading the way, while the USA falls further behind by the day. This is not for want of trying, millions of US gamers across the board, from poker players to Pachinko, want these games online. The government however is at loss of how to control it sufficiently well to allow online gambling inside their borders. The scary thing is that in the land of the ‘free’, these are a series of games which residents are simply not free to play.

While it is fine for a US resident to purchase prescription drugs (without prescription) online and pay with their credits cards, they are not allowed to swipe their card in an attempt to bag a prize playing bingo. One of the softest gambling games known to man! This ‘banning’ of online gambling is in an attempt to ‘protect the public’ I ask you with tears in my eyes – does it not matter where the Viagra and even worse comes from? But a game of online poker for money is a criminal offence – something Joe Public cannot be trusted to spend his ‘own’ hard earned money on.

UK players who gamble at casino online games, do so under the protection of a regulated market; this also offers them the option to continue to pursue their faith in their favourite brands. While US players who are tempted (and many are) have to play with illegal brands; many which may not be above board. So, in the UK we have super choices and the country with one of the most massive choices in consumerism, has very little choice at all. There is no coin toss needed to see who has it better – the US or the UK? This massive ‘Superpower’ is going to find itself, hanging onto Britain’s red-coat-tails, if and when they ever legalize casino online games.

Top online casinos in the UK have had an incredibly easy life up till now, and although the free ride is not over yet, things could be changing soon. These ‘things’ could be a taxing problem! It is not easy to understand online gambling licensing jurisdictions for the UK, but I am going to try and simplify it. Online, real money gaming in this country is legal, but the rate of tax for gambling operations is prohibitively high. So, years ago in 1994 when the UK National Lottery was established; this paved the way for all kinds of legal gambling activities, but also for the British Government to get their hands on their share of the loot, through the vehicle of tax, which is quite normal .

Then, came online gambling, and operators in this industry fast learned that the UK Gambling Commission, although a fantastic licensing jurisdiction – was also prohibitively expensive in terms of tax – 15% prohibitive in fact! The UK being a member of the EU, meant that top online casinos could license their wares offshore, in tax shelters such as Gibraltar, Malta, Alderney, Isle of Man, and others. But, still advertise to sell their wares in the UK, while paying offshore tax rates of something stupid like 1%.

EU offshore licensing jurisdictions enjoyed the freedom of almost instant White Listing, which also allows the freedoms of free trade principles. Any operators licensed in non-European licensing jurisdictions such as Kahnawake, Antigua, Curacao and so on, do not enjoy White Listing status. Many top casinos companies have even moved their UK business to Gibraltar; for example, William Hill, Betfair, Littlewoods and so on. None of this big UK business is licensed in their own country for online gambling operations!

Realizing that they should get their share of this massive potential for excise, the British Government is waking up to the fact that top online casinos, even if they are licensed offshore, should have a secondary license to ply their wares to a UK facing audience – which is only fair as far as I am concerned. You want to do business in a country; you should have to pay the price, especially if that business is generating billions of pounds in revenue! There are 36 million adults in the UK, who have had some sort of flutter this year!

After years of getting away with paying no tax, and pretty much no dues at all for tapping into the gold-mine of UK gambling business, non-domiciled operators are going to find things changing for them, and not before time. If land casinos and other gambling businesses in the UK, have to pay 15% tax; the principle is that if offshore ops also have to pay licensing fees and tax, then, all operators can get away with paying less.

How would the UK govern this? Well…this is another taxing problem, but Italy and France are doing it, and we have the technology. It’s a simple matter of making it illegal for those offshore operators to take wagers, the US DoJ has just done this with the biggest online poker sites in the US!

Needless to say the UK is not painting this as another tax grab – although I think they should be honest. They are supposedly changing regulations as a way in which to improve customer protection…but let’s call a Spade a Spade!

There is yet another news of waging legal battles the promoting organizations and association of online gambling websites are engaged in, this time on the British soil.  Countries like U.S.A., Canada, Australia, Germany and U.K. where the government authorities are frowning upon the activities of online gambling sites are putting spokes and legal hurdles into their operations.  Their contention is proper code of conduct can not be enforced on these sites, simply by the enormity of the task.  So, they are using social, moral and economical platforms for their proclamation of legal fights with the promoters of these online sites.

These authorities have objection to the advertisement of these online gambling sites as a means of promotion.  Normally the practice best made use of in the Internet marketing is website promotion, without which no site can survive.  In the cyber-world every day an estimated 200 million visitors are thronging the World Wide Net.  Hundreds of thousands of websites are catering to the different needs of this mammoth population in one way or the other.  Unless a website has promotional tactics well adopted, there is no way they can attract the attention of these viewers at least for split seconds.  What is the use of floating a site online, if it is not viewed by a legitimate size of audience for whom they are there? They will become a needle lost in the hay-heap!

So crippling the advertisement choices of sites is deemed as preventing their growth by the legal enforcement agencies.  Here again, the British law authorities are making a selection of online sites and show lenience to some by “white-listing” method for making advertisements.  The criteria for being white-listed are not so transparent, as is with the case of legal jargons for enactment and enforcement of statues.

U.K.’s Gambling Commission has recently excluded the Mohawk Council of the Kahnawake in Canada from the “white-list of permitted online gambling advertisers”.  As expected reaction to this exclusion from the aggrieved side – Canadian First Nation Enclave, Montreal Canada and Kahnawake Gaming Commission – have expressed their dissatisfaction in so many words.  They have revealed their intention to take exception to this arbitrary decision on the part of authorities of the British Government and go for appropriate legal action.

The spokespersons of the Canadian side state that they have a long history of controlling and monitoring online gambling sites, hosted and associated with the Enclave and therefore the exclusion from the white-list is unwarranted.  In the same breath they are also citing the inclusion of Tasmania recently in the U.K.’s white list as discriminatory, inasmuch as Tasmania has no such history of rigid controls.

They also feel that due consideration as appropriate under the law has not been given by U.K. in processing their application for white-listing.  Another point in support of their impending legal action, according to these representatives, is the exclusion is complete violation of Article 20 of the United Nations Declaration On The Rights of Indigenous Peoples which was signed in the month of September 2007, of which U.K. is a signatory.

So the chances are the Battle Royal on legal grounds, taking recourse to Article 20 of the above Declaration, is in the offing in the Courts of Law of the British Empire.