How Will Illegal Online Gambling Be Enforced?
The US House of Representatives recently voted overwhelmingly in favour (317 to 93) of making online gambling illegal. There still has to be a vote by the Senate. Previous bills have not passed there. As well, US bricks-and-mortar casinos have been lobbying senators to make online gambling legal. [via Bloomberg]
Some people feel this is a political move by the Republican-dominated House, considering it’s an election year, and really has nothing to do with the claim that many online casinos are fronts for a variety of nefarious activities including terrorist financing and drug trafficking. If that were true, would a couple of the largest investment banks in New York own shares in online casinos?
If Senate passes the bill, it’ll be interesting to see how law enforcement will enforce this, when there are millions of players, and the business generates $12 bln per year. Consider that the letter of the law says that online gambling IS already illegal in the US, but that Senate has yet to pass bill confirming this.
Some states couldn’t wait for Washington, D.C., so Washington state recently passed their own law banning their residents from online gambling. In fact, they’ve even made it illegal to write about online gambling, both in print and online on websites. The state has already warned one poker blogger as well as a Seattle journalist.
While it may be relatively easier for a state to enforce such a law, I strongly doubt they’ll be successful. Player outcry will eventually become too strong, maybe to the point of people moving out of state.
Poker has become so popular that, once the domain of men, the number of women in a recent WPT women’s tourney had twice the number of entrants as last year. Charity events all over the country have turned to offering Texas Hold’em tourneys to raise money, but as these are not held online, they would not be affected by any law the Senate passes.
However, the viewpoint being put forth is that most states allow citizens to either buy lottery tickets online, or promote them on websites. This, of course, is hypocritical.
P.S. After I wrote the above post, an article (free registration required) appeared in the NY Times that said that a chief executive and other company officers of a British publicly-traded Internet gambling firm were being charged by United States prosecutors. The total number of people charged numbered eleven.
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The Poker Blog » Poker’s Wild
August 9th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
[…] Now despite concerns these days by many people that being introduced to gambling so early in life would turn us into gambloholics, it didn’t. For example, how many people didn’t play the board games with money such as Monopoly™, where the financial stuff seemed even more outrageous than poker. Monopoly seemed pure luck; poker required some skill. […]
The Poker Blog » Poker Trips - Fri Aug 18/06
August 18th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
[…] Online Gambling Bill Defeated – For Now If you missed the news like I did, the US Senate bill to limit Internet gambling suffered a demise – but not for the reasons that you might think, such as politics. No, it’s apparently because of the way some online payment transactions areconducted, which leave no way for banks to monitor them. Read more/ find relevant links at Payments News. […]