Fighting H.R. 4777, the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act

[managra]

All in all a pretty positive week for the anti-prohibition lobby - the April 7 issue of Casinomeister News has quite a lot of material on these happenings this week.

Thanks, Jetset. Your posts are always great and this one was no exception. The positive tone of recent events was music to my ears. For all of us who have been busy and haven't had much time to surf the net for info, i recommend reading the Casinomeister News thread. Lots of good info and all at your finger tips!

Cardplayer now features at the top of their home page a very user friendly feature to send emails protesting the proposed legislation to all your State Representatives, in Congress and the Senate. Their link is:

www.cardplayer.com

The Cardplayer draft focuses on poker. However, it addresses another very disturbing feature of the proposed legislation: the need for the banking industry to be Big Brother over your bank accounts in order to enforce such legislation. It's aspects such as these that should make the proposed legislation reprehensible to the general American public, regardless of their views on gambling.

[Cynthia777]

I am glad to hear that Goodlatte, Leach and Kyl will have a hard road to travel trying to get these bills passed. Reading through Goodlatte's testimony, and to quote:

"These offshore, fly-by-night Internet gambling operators are unlicensed, untaxed and unregulated and are sucking billions of dollars out of the United States. In addition, Internet gambling can serve as a vehicle for money laundering by organized crime syndicates and terrorists."


...really irritates me because his statements are unfairly generalized.. and could be just short of slander/libel, IMO. Not all of the gambling operators, as I'm sure we would all agree, are "fly-by-night"...take for example, the Trident Group, which has been in operation as early as 2002, if I'm not mistaken, maybe even earlier. Their site even lists links for filters to ensure that children/minors in the household are not able to access the platform, lists links for Gambler's Anonymous/Addiction if one feels they are "out of control", and enables a player to "set limits" if they feel the need to do so. Many of the sites also state that they are audited by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and not to mention eCogra...which includes provisions for anti-money laundering. And I'm sure that all of us, at one time or another, have had to scan/fax copies of our driver's license and signed credit cards (front and back) upon the request of the casino for their security purposes.


So to Goodlatte:
In the words of the Geico Neanderthals ... "Perhaps you should do a little more research..."

[GrandMaster]

These offshore, fly-by-night Internet gambling operators are unlicensed, untaxed and unregulated

The obvious solution is to license it, tax it and regulate it. I hear the US budget deficit is expected to be near $500 billion, so every little bit of extra income would help.

[Cynthia777]

My thoughts exactly, and I remember Carruthers saying something to the effect that if it were to be regulated in the U.S., even if taxed, he would be right on a plane back to the U.S. to set up shop, instead of being in Costa Rica.

[managra]

Carruthers said (in the NO CHANCE OF PROHIBITION IN THE U.S. THIS YEAR
article in the CM's April 2006 News thread) that online gambling is expected to grow from $12 billion now to $22 billion in the next four years with US players representing about 45% of the market. So, yeah, Goodlatte prefers to rob the US of a nice taxing/regulating opportunity in order to switch US players from immoral poker and casino play to the highly moral activity of . . . horserace betting! Makes good sense, huh?

[jetset]

My thoughts exactly, and I remember Carruthers saying something to the effect that if it were to be regulated in the U.S., even if taxed, he would be right on a plane back to the U.S. to set up shop, instead of being in Costa Rica.

Carruthers has repeatedly appealed to the US authorities to at least consider licensing, regulating and taxing the industry in general and his group in particular, and he has been very active in promoting this concept. Other major groups have done the same for years, notably Nigel Payne of Sportingbet. Alas, this is not what Goodlatte et al want to hear it appears.

I think one of the most common sense observations to be made in that hearing was by Rep. John Conyers, who made what seems to me the obvious suggestion that before prohibiting something one should have an independent and thorough investigation.

Conyers tried to bring this about two years ago with his proposal for a Congressional committee, but unfortunately it was not successful. Contrast that with the recent approach to online gambling legalisation by the South African government, which had a multi-disciplined investigative committee engaged for eighteen months in exhaustively studying the international online gambling industry before recommending that it be legalised.

Interesting that you mention Trident in the context of responsible gaming, Cynthia - that group goes a step further and actually employs a problem gaming counsellor who was once a problem gambler himself. The management's experience goes right back to the early days of online casino gambling btw.

Unfortunately, the industry is ill served by some of the groups we see portrayed in the Rogue section at Casinomeister, or whose activities feature in "Online Casino Complaints" here and elsewhere all too frequently.

These are the nickel-and-diming, player-screwing bottom feeders that players need to be warned about to avoid bad experiences, and that is where player communication through well established and integrity-driven sites like this plays such an important role.

[GrandMaster]

Just to add to the tax angle. I bet that the overwhelming majority of players at US casinos who do not win enough to generate paperwork do not pay US taxes either.

[Cynthia777]

Just to add to the tax angle. I bet that the overwhelming majority of players at US casinos who do not win enough to generate paperwork do not pay US taxes either.

Of course...not to say that about everyone, but, in my experience frequenting casinos, only winnings in a single session/spin totaling $1200 or more in DE or WV require paperwork..other than that the attendants come and pay you, no questions asked (and somehow I doubt that everyone is tallying their winnings and keeping record at tax time). Even State lotteries, I cannot keep count of the number of times I have heard someone play a Pick 3 or Pick 4 number on separate tickets, even if its 50 cents straight on 20 separate tickets (winnings would be $2500 per ticket, which can be cashed right away, no paperwork required)... because the person says "I'm not paying all those taxes". I have even seen people get highly upset if the clerk does not enter their numbers on separate tickets, and loudly state the tax reason.

[srby49]

Not being much of an authority on the workings of congress, I have a couple of questions.

When will this bill be voted on? And if passed, when exactly would it go into effect? When will we not be able to place a bet?

Also (and I know this is more than a couple of questions) how do we get our money out of Neteller if this bill makes transactions ilegal?

The link to the online gambling bill is buried within this thread so I'll post it again here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.04777:

You can check the status of this bill there. So far 118 co-sponsors have signed up, but only 2 joined since the bill's introduction on Feb 16th.

[Cynthia777]

srby49,

A bill has to go through a lengthy process of introduction, debate, referrals to committees, markup/amendments and agreement between both House of Representatives and Senate before ultimately going to the President to be signed. Once it is signed by the President, the bill usually takes effect on the first of the year following his signature.

As far as this bill goes, it is somewhere midway in the process, and business on it will not resume until next week, as Congress is still out of session this week for the "Spring Break Work District Period". Thus far, things are still looking favorable as far as it not passing, or at least we have a pretty good chance that it will not (see Casinomeister's News section).

I cannot really speak for Neteller or other web wallets, but my guess is that in the worst case scenario, any funds remaining at the time the bill is in effect will need to be refunded to the depositor (if anyone has any thoughts/knowledge on this particular subject, please feel free to correct me).