Internet Gambling Act Should Be Scrapped

Friday October 19, 2007

A year ago last Saturday, President George W. Bush signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and online gambling was banned in the U.S.

At least, that was the intention. Twelve months later, there are just as many people gambling online, if not more. Many bettors don't even know the law was changed, partly because it was tacked on as an amendment to a measure aimed at increasing port security.

The biggest difference now is that the companies offering online gambling are privately held and operate out of countries where it is impossible to know who controls them; if you had a huge win, then the risk of not being paid is probably much higher. The major public companies that used to offer online betting to Americans, such as PartyGaming Plc, 888 Holdings Plc and Sportingbet Plc, all quit the U.S. market last October at a cost of several billion dollars to their shareholders.

America's banks and financial institutions were given 270 days from the passage of the law to block gambling transactions. The detailed rules on how to do this and how to spot a gambling transaction are still to be completed. As a result, online poker rooms, sports bookies and casinos are still able to get money from and send money to their customers, albeit not as easily as a year ago.

Meanwhile, Americans are free to place online bets on lotteries and horse racing as those forms of gambling were deemed legal. They can also visit any number of legal casinos, poker rooms, racetracks or Off Track Betting centers, and play state lotteries.

The situation is, in short, a mess.