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Americas Focus on Internet Gambling
A $12 billion-a-year industry in which politics, morals, profits, individuals rights and world trade issues merge and sometimes collide head-on. This is the world of Internet wagering.
The U.S. House of Representatives is likely to vote on legislation aimed to countering Americans' ability to place sports bets, play poker and otherwise risk money in games of chance on their computers. Similar proposals have passed one or the other chambers of Congress over the past decade, but never both simultaneously.
The American Gaming Association is urging Congress to study the online-gambling issue to see if technology has provided a trustworthy way to legalize, regulate and tax online wagering, as Britain is in the process of doing. Industry giants such as MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment Inc. see online players as perhaps their best new opportunity for revenue growth.
Millions of Americans do it regularly, even though the Justice Department says they're supporting an illegal enterprise. Major corporations are looking at ways to make a profit from it, even though Congress is eyeing tougher restrictions. Despite its illegality, an estimated 4 million to 7 million Americans are Internet gamblers, with poker driving the latest surge.
A gambling association survey has shown that online participants are younger, more affluent and better educated than their counterparts who enter actual buildings containing card tables, roulette wheels and slot machines.
"Offshore online gambling Web sites are cash cows, and the greed that propels these companies leads them to solicit bettors in the United States, despite the fact that the Department of Justice already believes this activity is illegal," U.S. Rep Bob Goodlatte, R-Va, said after his Internet ban passes the Judiciary Committee on May 25. Industry analysts believe rapid growth of Internet wagering will continue, regardless of U.S. policy, because of growing participation in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Nonetheless, a pair of bills cleared separate House committees last month aimed at keeping American citizens from taking part, even though they already may make up more than half of the world's Internet gamblers.
Goodlatte's measure would expand the 1961 Wire Act, which focused on outlawing sports bookmaking by phone or telegraph. The other bill, sponsored by Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, prohibits credit-card companies and banks from processing payments by U.S. customers to gambling sites. Major credit-card firms have instituted their own policies to block such payments.
Supporters of the legislative crackdown have criticized Internet gambling for its potential use by minors and easy access by compulsive gamblers who can use it 24 hours a day without leaving home.
Even some gambling proponents back the measure, saying they would add clarity to a muddled legal picture and help the government go after any unscrupulous operators. But casino-industry leaders also want the legal Internet gambling door open.
They know it's too soon to put legalization up for a vote in Congress but believe a year long study could show it's possible to control who gains access to Internet wagering sites and from what computer locations. With such controls, advocates say, it makes sense to allow some Internet gambling in states where card and casino games are legal in person.
Monday, 24. 2006
Victor Copeland