WHY THE ONLINE GAMBLING BAN SHOULD BE OPPOSED

4 January 2008

FoxNews explains the US online gambling dilemma


Radley Balko, the Reason magazine editor and writer, presented a factual and informative article on Fox News this week explaining why the attempts to ban online gambling by US legislators should be opposed.

In his introduction, Balko skilfully outlines the World Trade Organisation predicament in which the United States now finds itself following years of trying to selectively ban online gambling whilst hypocritically shielding Internet betting by the US horse racing, state lottery and fantasy sports industries.

Balko highlights the fact that the U.S. Trade Office won't release the terms of its settlement with some of the nations involved in compensation claims arising from the US withdrawal of its WTO trade obligations on gambling services. This he characterises as an odd development in itself, given that the settlement involves U.S. tax dollars, was negotiated by employees of the U.S. government, and isn't likely to involve any information related to national security.

Then, the WTO awarded Antigua $21 million in annual reparations for losses to the Antiguan economy caused by the American ban on Internet gambling. Because tariffs on U.S. goods would hurt the Antiguan economy far more than the U.S. economy, the WTO gave the okay for Antigua to recoup its losses in the form of copyright infringement, essentially making the country a haven for movie, music, and software piracy.

Had the U.S. not previously settled with the world's economic powerhouses - the EU, Canada and Japan - a massive battle might have unfolded between the U.S. music and entertainment industry, which could be the main target of such reparations, and the moral majority types behind the gambling ban, Balko opines.

"That doesn't mean the settlement is something to be proud of. On the contrary, it's pretty despicable," he continues. "It's bad enough that the federal government feels it's proper and appropriate to tell American citizens what they're permitted to do on their own time in their own homes with their own money. But it's also willing to spend tens of billions of dollars of money paid to the government by those same citizens in the form of taxes to ensure it retains that power, and that it's jurisdiction to enforce that power covers the entire globe."

And it gets worse, he continues:

"The U.S. could have actually resolved all of this and preserved its precious gambling prohibition by simply making the prohibition uniform. But that wouldn't do. Just as important as the ban on Internet gambling itself were the carve-outs for politically-protected special interest groups—lotteries and horse racing. So the tens of billions the U.S. government is paying to settle the trade dispute is not only to preserve the gambling ban, it's to preserve the congressionally-granted monopoly on online wagering for interests with more political clout than poker players."

To the uncaring or uninvolved, Balko reminds the reader that part of the problem here is the mentality that comes with this kind of legislation. The gambling ban seems to have been supported by two similar approaches to governance that, although they come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, are generally quite similar.

"From the right, many feel that if they're personally morally opposed to a particular consensual activity, it ought to be banned for everyone. From the left, it's the mentality that because some people can't engage in a particular activity responsibly and without harming themselves, that activity ought to be banned for everyone. One is moral paternalism. The other is Nanny State paternalism. But the result is the same. The government makes your decisions for you," he writes.

"The other reason even non-gamblers ought to be concerned about all of this is that it will be difficult for the government to enforce this ban without giving law enforcement some exceptionally broad powers.

"Federal authorities can't arrest the owners of gaming sites because they're based offshore, in countries where gambling is legal (unless they're foolish enough to come to the U.S.). The only option, then, is to go after the gamblers themselves. That means deputizing banks, credit card companies, and Internet Service Providers to start monitoring their customers spending and web surfing habits.

"Because the penalties against these companies for violating the law are likely to be severe and because the law specifically exempts them from liability for over-enforcement, your bank and ISP are likely to err on the side of banning legal transactions and erroneously reporting you to federal authorities than to err on the side of leaving you alone.

"You needn't make your living playing Texas Hold 'Em to worry about the effects of the government requiring your bank and ISP to spy on you. If there's any good news in all of this, it's that technology and globalization have made it increasingly difficult for Congress to enforce its own morality on our private behavior.

"The bad news is that because of that, the government will continue to seek increasingly broad powers to get its way."

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa