Posted Thursday, September 22, 2011 05:23 PM
Next month marks the 5-year anniversary of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which has been about as welcome in the online betting community as a rattlesnake in your sleeping bag.
It's impossible to understate the chaos that UIGEA has created, from the establishment of hundreds of offshore sites -- many of them unscrupulous -- to Tuesday's indictment of TV poker personalities Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson at Full Tilt . . . the 2006 law has played a prominent role in all of it.
But UIGEA's most obvious victim has been trust. Most bettors, forced to wager offshore, simply don't know what sites are good and what sites aren't. What sites will pay quickly and what sites sit on money. Had UIGEA never been signed into law by George Bush, the online betting landscape would be much different today. Not to say there would not be problems, but it would not be the 100-car pileup that it has become.
Politicians have mostly tiptoed around efforts to repeal UIGEA, fearful of a conservative movement that now appears on the rise in the United States. There is some momentum toward legalization and regulation, but it's impossible to gauge how strong the tide is toward repeal.
In the meantime, we can just sit, wait and wonder what other sites the U.S. Dept. of Justice is planning to close down. All thanks to a law that passed 5 years ago even though many congressmen didn't even know what they were voting for.
Happ... [More]
Posted Friday, September 16, 2011 01:17 PM
Out of nowhere, Massachusetts has joined the race to become the first state in the country to offer safe, legal, regulated and taxed online poker. And if when when it happens, it might be open to anyone -- including out-of-state players.
There is much work to be done, but the effort at least has a champion -- a Republican, no less, who is a former judge.
"We will have actual legislation to vote on," says state Rep. Daniel Winslow, who represents the district in which Sen. Scott Brown lives. "Probably by summer of 2012."
Winslow, an unlikely booster of the right of residents to gamble online, used the debate about casino expansion in Massachusetts to attach an amendment that would have legalized online poker. "We were already talking about gambling," he said in an interview with Covers.com. "Why not talk about online gambling too?"
With the effort to pass enabling legislation for the construction of three major resort-style casinos finally in the red zone, leaders in the Mass. House apparently decided that online discussion might make things harder. So Winslow was persuaded to tap the brakes, and his revised amendment -- calling for a commission that is required to develop online poker legislation by next July -- easily passed.
So Massachusetts is now in the running with Iowa, Florida, New Jersey, California and the federal government to see who will be the first, perhaps of many, to finally allow online poker.
<...
[More]
Posted Thursday, September 08, 2011 10:25 AM
Those of us who are bewitched, bothered and bewildered about how United States politicians can't seem to make up their mind about whether legalization of online gambloing is best handled on the state or federal level can take some solace -- Europe seems to be just as fragmented.
On the surface, the European Union seems like a perfect platform for a unified policy with regard to online gambling. The area is not that large, conferences can be arranged with only moderate travel, and for the most part there is not that much divergence in the general belief that people ought to be able to do what they want, when they want and how they want.
Uh, not quite.
EU member nations have talked about a coordinated, leveled-playing-field approach to online betting, but when push comes to shove member nations seem intent on fluffing up their own pillows. At a recent gettogether to coordinate policies regarding licensing and safety issues, reps of member nations nodded their heads when talking about a coordinated approach and then insisted on their right to set their own course regarding taxation, regulation etc.
Not a lot different than what's going on in America, where state and federal legislation can be compared to railroad tracks that never seem to meet.