Sunday, April 01, 2007

When Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA),
which forced online gambling companies to adhere to Federal and State
gambling laws, it wouldn't have been out of the ordinary to assume that the
reason for the crackdown was the attempt to protect compulsive gamblers from
descending into a morass of debt via their home computers. But, like many
other "sin" regulations, the real story is a lot more complex -- and money
has more to do with it than morals. The entire fascinating story can be
found in Alice LaPlante's article Online Gambling Gone Wild: U.S. Crackdown
Sparks Offshore Boom. She cites Tom W. Bell, a professor at the Chapman
University School of Law, who believes that a driving force behind the ban
on online gambling is the land-based gambling industry (you know, all those
Las Vegas and Reno casinos) which doesn't want the competition. Bell also
adheres to the idea (illustrated by the 1920s Prohibition) that people will
gamble online either through legitimate sites or more shady ones, and if you
eliminate the one, you'll encourage the other. Meanwhile the Europeans are
getting into the picture as well -- although they are the ones who are
profiting, since many of the companies that were involved in online gambling
technology in the U.S. have moved their operations overseas. Last February,
the World Trade Organization said it was going to try to prove the U.S. was
guilty of breaking international trade laws by by banning online -- read:
international -- gambling operations. Now, I've never been much of a
gambler -- my only foray into real gambling was once, as an experiment,
dropping $50 at a blackjack table in Las Vegas during a trade show -- so all
this doesn't affect me personally. And I don't know (or, at least, I don't
think I know) anyone who either has a gambling problem, or who spends a lot
of time at online gambling sites. But I am very interested in the way that
the Internet is slowly affecting our legal and political system, whether
it's the ramifications of a ban on online gambling, the effect of the Child
Online Protection Act on free speech rights, or the slow and steady pressure
that sites like YouTube are putting on our copyright laws.