The Looming Battle Over Online Gambling

Kadin2048 writes "According to an recent Ars Technica article, the US is headed on a 'collision course' with the WTO over off-shore Internet gambling, if a bill currently in the House of Representatives passes. The 'Internet Gambling Prohibition Act,' (PDF) which updates the 'Wire Act' to prohibit Internet gambling regardless of whether the servers are located in the US or outside of it, is in direct contravention of a WTO ruling. Proponents of the bill claim that it was narrowly defeated in previous incarnations due to the influence of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. However it seems as though some of Abramoff's biggest clients -- brick and mortar casinos -- are really the big winners from passage of this bill, since it does not prohibit gambling in person, only online."

Change is coming in Ontario as well

[Tom Courtenay]

Or at least, a bill has been tabled.

http://www.ontla.on.ca/documents/Bills/38_Parliame nt/session2/b060_e.htm [ontla.on.ca]

Poker Players Over Here To Unite

[cybrpnk2]

Time to join the Poker Player Alliance [pokerplayersalliance.org], which has been specifically formed to fight legislation like this. Besides, they've got a pretty neat T-shirt.

Re:Schitzoid nation

[AuMatar]

Most casino ships are riverboats. They aren't going in international waters. Hell, very few of them even go in interstate waters. A few of them went in the Mississippi to avoid state laws, and then other states picked it up as a convenient excuse for partial legalization.

Re:Gimme a break!

[geekoid]

well, as a tech employee who was out of work for 9 months, I thank god we had welfare, otherwise we would have lost everything.
Just for your info, whiole out of work, I spent 30 hours a week minimum doing something that directly involved finding another job.

Contrary to the republican mantra, a very small minority of welfare reciepents abuse thr system. Point in fact, most people on some sort of assistance work full time jobs.

Re:RE

[nero4wolfe]

Just for background, here's a few areas where the US already has had to change laws to comply with WTO rules:

At one time, there was a push to regulate the tuna industry in the US to minimize or eliminate accidental dolphin and porpoise catches. The Mexican tuna industry protested to the WTO; the WTO ruled for them, and the US "safe tuna" laws disappeared.

At one time, there were rules prohibiting the importation of some high-sulfur oil. Venezuala (iirc) protested to the WTO. Those rules disappeared.

The US congress has tried multiple times to give special tax protection to some export industries. Other countries protested to the WTO. The WTO ruled for the other countries.

I think there are a few more examples.

An anecdote back from when the WTO treaty was passed in the US... The same comments about the WTO treaty possibly impinging on US sovereignity were being said then. The Clinton administration used the typical constitutional end-run for a controversial treaty; instead of following treaty ratification rules in the constitution, they called it an agreement. Then they pushed a bill through a lame duck session of congress saying that the US would follow the agreement. (This circumvents an otherwise required super-majority vote in the US Senate).

To get at least minimal Republican support for the bill, Clinton promised Dole that the WTO agreement could be brought up again if the WTO ever overruled 3 US laws. That point was reached years ago.

definition of "Tabled"

[Bishop]

In Canada and England tabled means "present formally for discussion or consideration at a meeting." [parl.gc.ca] In the USA tabled means "postpone consideration of." Yes it is confussing.

Re:The big casinos want a monopoly in exploitation

[DenDude]

/* Gambling casinos don't gamble. If you play enough, you will ALWAYS lose. */
If this was a slot machine, or other game of chance where the casino has a vested interest in you losing all of your money, that would be true.
This seems to be more about poker, though. In poker, you do not play against the casino, you play against the rubes. The house merely takes a percentage (the rake) of the pot. On the $3-$6 tables I play, that starts a $1 per pot.
Now, what happens is that people come and go on this table, and they tend to lose x amount of money before they leave. When one player leaves the table, the pots get smaller, and that means the rake gets smaller.
Now, using this information, it seems to me that the casinos want you to play A LOT of hands.
More players = bigger pots = higher rake
Poker is the one game where the casino does not care at all how much you make or lose at the table, because they only get a percentage of each pot.

Re:Regulation? How about Open Source instead

[bnenning]

At least in the physical world, there are a lot of physical mechanisms in place to prevent being [too] taken by the house. Can the same truely be said of the online casinos?

Yes, perhaps even more so. For example, in online poker you can save the history of every hand you've played, and slice the statistics any way you want. There are players with databases of millions of hands who constantly analyze them; if there was something fishy going on they'd find it.