(Online Gambling)

Update October 2006

   

The Internet gambling bill passed by congress was signed into law this week by President Bush. This bill should now make it perfectly clear to all involved in online gambling that online gambling in the US is illegal.

The law is an attempt to prevent banks and credit card companies from completing transactions linked to online gambling, which I believe that most online gambling operations were already set up to use proxies like fire pay anyway.

Personally, I'm ideologically opposed to such measures. I see no benefit when mommy government sticks its nose into people's business. At the same time, online gambling is such a sad endeavor for the bettor that I doubt I will lose any sleep over any of this.

Update August 2006

Considering events over the last few years, and particularly this year, I consider online gambling in the US to be illegal. Therefore, I discourage everyone from participating in any aspect, whether this be offering online gambling to US customers, advertising for online gambling, or gambling with internet casinos from within the US.

Although I personally don't care for online gambling, I believe the current focus on eliminating it in the US is problematic. The jurisdictional questions I have already mentioned have yet to be resolved to my satisfaction and the definition of what constitutes "online" gambling is also full of holes. One example is the practice of using WAN's (wide area networks) to connect progressive jackpot slot machines from many different casinos, sometimes separated by 100's of miles. The network traffic from these slot machines almost certainly moves along some of the same infrastructure used by the public, meaning a lot of the same wires, cables, and network hardware used with the internet and telephone system. It would seem to me that the current reasoning of the Department of Justice and law enforcement that prohibits an individual from gambling online would make these networked slot machines illegal as well.

Furthermore, there have been a couple of cases this year of individuals prosecuted for discussing and providing links to online casino operations. I find this to be particularly troubling. It seems the reasoning here is that a hyperlink is considered providing a means to an illegal activity. ( I disagree with this interpretation.) If this is the case, then search engines that automatically gather this information will need to be censored and their databases will have to be cleansed. Online discussion boards will have to be monitored very carefully by webmasters and moderators in order to say in compliance with US law. And the dynamic nature of the web means that pages pointed to by URL's can be about bunny rabbits one day and online casino reviews the next. And how deep in the path of links do you have to be before it is considered aiding and abetting? (No pun intended.) What if you link to a site that does not offer gambling itself but does link to a gambling site? What if the site you link to just automatically redirects browsers to a gambling site?

All of this is one huge can of worms that is really not worth anyone's time or money to pursue. Maybe the powers that be will come to their senses before this gets too far out of hand. But I don't look for that to happen in an election year.