U.S. & E.U. Legislative Actions Against Poker

Posted on November 17, 2008 
Filed Under General

governmentsThere was a lot of noise last week when the present United States Administration appeared to finally put some actual regulations behind the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act. On further examination though it appears that nothing may have changed. For one thing, the "new" regulations still say nothing about what is and what is not "unlawful internet gaming". Those definitions seem to be left to either local jurisdictions or to the banks and financial institutions who must bear the brunt of the UIGEA.

Second, the new regulations are now in a comment period and will not be a compliance burden on financial institution until December 1, 2009. This leaves plenty of time for the new administration and a friendly Congress to kill the law, even on grounds of it being "overly vague" or a "regulatory burden on the financial institutions" involved. There is actually no need for any agency to actually address the issue of unlawful internet gaming.

It was and remains a poorly written piece of legislation, which in all likelihood is unenforceable on its face. It was a good scare tactic but it also mobilized the poker industry, which should have positive consequences for poker players in the long term.

The European Union, on the other hand, seems drawing ever closer to actually making some kind of decision on internet gaming policy. Unfortunately, in this case, it would seem that the individual nations involved in the EU dispute seem to be gaining support for local rather than EU control. While the public arguments are centered on moral and social customs about gambling within varying cultures; the truth is more like that some countries are making a huge amount of money via their private gambling fiefdoms and they don't want to share. Remember we are not talking about taxation or regulatory fees, like we are in the U.S. No, the European Union members are after the rake from gaming sites. In the EU, some countries want to be your book maker. Maybe we can replace volunteer armies with just those citizens who are behind on their gambling debts.

The EU position is that gaming is an industry just like wine and cheese and automobiles. The countries who have staked out a private gaming website do not want to relinquish their income stream, so they argue that gambling is a moral question. Right now in the EU, it appears that the decision making scale may be tipping to the side of moral greed and away from an open markets policy.

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