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Maybe some day Congress will get it. It’s a simple concept that William F. Buckly once explained in a conference at my college more than a decade ago…
Legalize It
Regulate It
Tax ItThat’s the only way for everyone involved to win except for organized crime. This speech was regarding the legalization of drugs, and it was especially surprising to hear a right wing guy like Buckley come out in favor of legalization.
The same rules apply to online gambling. There is a $12 Billion (with a
industry that is largely supported by US consumers. Currently they are forced to play at unregulated online casinos, poker rooms and others. If the US were smart about it, they would legalize it, then they can regulate it, resulting in a safer activity and the ability to help people who do have problems. Then the best part is the tax dollars that results from it, not to mention the dollar savings for the efforts to fight it. This also serves to cut out any of the organized crime or terrorist components that the government is currently concerned with.The conservative right just has to get over their fear of gambling in society and just accept the fact that it is a part of the fabric of society. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing when approached in a responsible manner.
Ok, off my soapbox now.
How can online gambling be banned?
Will ISPs have to download a daily updated list of 100,0000,000 gambling related URLs to add to their blacklist in order to block access to them?
Will ISPs be asked to filter out domains with gambling related terms embedded in them? Will this wipe out sites like gambler’s anonymous, or land casino sites?
Will ISPs be asked to filter out sites with gambling related terms in their pages? Will these sites be scanned daily for gambling terms? Will online dictionaries be blocked because they have the word gambling in them?
Will yahoo, google and msn be forced to remove all gambling search results for the US market?
If worse comes to worse, what’s to stop us from hosting our sites offshore?
What year is this???
JCimrman wrote:Maybe this is the first step towards the government taking over the online gaming industry, not eliminating it. Somebody has to “protect” the citizens from shady casinos. Isn’t that why states got into the lottery business?a ha hah ahaaa haaaa haa ….
:tounge2:ha haha haaaaa haaaaaa
:colgate:Are you serious?
THe government gets into lotteries to apply a tax onto the poorest sector and those that are mathematically illiterate.
I believe that only about 55-60% of entrant funds are returned as prizes. Legal or not … lotteries are the worst and lowest form of gambling …
“protect the people” he said …
a ha ha haa haaa haha hahahaha
:laughing:So you think the idea is funny? Well for the record its already being done! That’s correct, some countries ban certain IPs from gaming sites so that no one in that country can access them.
It’s not if but when this happens here in the states that and if they actually want to do that; because if they actually want to do this you can damn well bet they will. I personally think this new bill is our biggest threat to date for any number of reasons.
I would guess that the greater percentage of politicians are all looking for some sort of infamy when it comes to authoring these type of bills and until the amercian people stand up and put an end to this non-sense its only going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.
What I would like to see happen is all the media outlets that they (our gov) have bullied see all the bills they are proposing and realize that it is in fact not illegal and bring back all the advertising outlets we have lost!
As for the lottery I agree 100% they are preying upon the poor more than online gaming is creating addicts! Hell the record powerball was $350m + 8 people split it and only get to take $124m lump sum; that’s not even half! How many low income families spent their last $20 on a long shot dream? I doubt many of those families have a computer and Internet access to spend it online gambling.
axl wrote:So you think the idea is funny?Yes – I think that the idea that governments have entered the lottery business simply to “protect the people” is extremely funny …
hahahahahahaah …
:rollover:THEY WANTED THE MONEY … that’s what governments do
As for the rest of the idea … banning IP addresses is ludricrous for a country that is the self professed “land of the free” …But unfortunately I agree that they are 100% serious and may even manage to do it .. for a while.
:Ohno:Eventually though common sense will prevail …
:shhh:If the US government forces American ISP’s to ban online casino sites, assuming that is even possible, can’t you just get around that by using a proxy located out of the country?
I think the worst that can happen is ISP’s being forced to report your Internet usage (like downloaders), and if it involves online casino transactions you get busted. I don’t know if this is possible either, but I think I read somewhere ISP’s record your Internet activity for 3-months or so, so possibly such data could be incriminating.
Wouldn’t banning a single IP address that is currently being used by 1000+ of other non-gambling related sites on the same shared server cause all these other sites to be banned also? I wonder how they will deal with this issue.
Am I missing something what would be the big deal if they banned IP’s I would just find another country to get my service from? greek39
Guys they will do it like this:
The Justice Department will send a warning letter to all major ISPs warning that if they allow their users to access Online Gambling Sites, Online Casinos, Poker Rooms, Sportsbooks or any sites which facilitate or advertise online gambling then they will be in violation of whatever new law will exist and guilty of aiding and abetting a felony. Most likely they could and would be charged for each user that access online gambling through their servers.
If they do not comply with the law they will be charged with criminal and civil violations and be subject to prosecution, asset seizure and loss of business licenses. Additionally officers of the company may be subject to criminal prosecution and inprisonment. They will be given a grace period of 30 to 90 days to comply with the law or face further and vigorous action.
Letters like this will be sent to ALL major providers of Internet Access in the US. These include AOL, TimeWarner (Road Runner), Adelphia, Comcast, MSN, Sprint, Bell South, AT&T, Earthlink, NetZero, Juno, Netscape etc…
I am 99.999% certain all of the major providers will comply under advice of their legal counsel. Any foolish enough not to will become test case and examples and WILL be prosecuted and subject to HEAVY fines.
Even if you move your sites offshore, even if all the casinos are offshore 90% of US gamblers will NOT be able to view or access the casinos through their internet connections.
Not a very good situation if these laws are passed.
You are exactly right Professor.
This is defnitely the scariest piece of legislation to date. Still I can’t see it actually getting through because of the free speech issue. It could potentially be inacted, but would probably face a Constitutional challenge that would have to be decided by the Supreme Court. The question is, who would come to argue the case for online gambling.
If it did go through, what will be banned next, oh yeah, probably internet porn for starters. I’ve heard enough stories about how underage people have too much accessibility to all that content. If this were to go through it opens the door for censorship of anything that could be deemed harmful to the general public.
The US Congress has had a long (7 or 8 years) record of overwhelmingly passing bills banning internet gaming, yet not one made it to the white house.
first, if congress wants to stop us, they probably can.
second, each of these attempts these bills to “Ban Internet Gambling” are often part of bills regulating/effecting land-based gaming. There are 2 houses of congress, each introduces a bill, but inevitably, one is supported or opposed by various combinations of Vegas, the Indians, state owned gambling and hawaii and utah, which want no gambling.
as a result 2 bills, usually very contradictory (i think by plan), both end up being labeled as a “ban on internet gambling”, both pass overwhelmingly and both go to the conference committee. The conference is where 1 resolution that can pass both houses is crafted. Well if the house bill says “the legality of online gambling is determined by the states” and the senate say “it’s federal jurisdiction”, that cannot be reconciled, so nothing happens……….
Last Point
When there is a “slam dunk”, bandwagon bill that everyone in congress wants, both parties in both houses, introduce parallel bills. These “Co-Sponsored” bills give everyone a change to get on board, make a fast decision to show the voters, they can do stuff fast.Yet, Kyl and Goodlatte, always introduce their bills separately and seemingly in isolation. So, nothing ever happens.
Oh, 1 thing happens lots of campaign $$$$ from vegas, indian, state gambling, offshore interests, etc.
On the bright side, the US Government are still quite happy for you to buy a gun and go kill someone. So its all not bad news for US residents…you still have some choices.
I think someone should write a very informative article about this issue, while urging our visitors to voice their concerns to the politicians. It’d be great if a special website was set up for such a purpose and everyone linked to it. The only concern is to be careful not to scare our visitors away from online gambling because the DOJ is opposed to it.
Simmo! wrote:On the bright side, the US Government are still quite happy for you to buy a gun and go kill someone. So its all not bad news for US residents…you still have some choices.Simmo !!
I’m surprised at you …
I couldn’t possbily comment on that comment ….
:tounge2:I don’t think this will ever happen. I don’t think that American culture will ever accept “restricted Internet”. May as well live in China…
