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Online gambling a vice that must be controlled |
Over the past few months, the game of poker, specifically the Texas Hold ’Em version, has seeped into many levels of popular culture. ESPN, the Travel Channel, MSG and other TV networks now feature nightly competitions in a “sport” that most viewers had no idea was regulated in any fashion. Poker has its own superstars; chain smokers in sunglasses from the deep South are portrayed as heroes, vanquishing competitors in an epic struggle for ceramic chips and the higher hand.
This writer has also succumbed on multiple levels to the excitement of gambling. I have watched poker tournaments on TV and even used BitTorrent to download a recorded-from-TV special featuring the “legends” of poker. In terms of monopolizing my time, both these activities seem minute when compared to the obsessive hold that the online gambling service Party Poker has on me. It’s fast-moving, involves chat so that a more human element emerges, and is amazingly difficult to stop playing. Fortunately, it will be some time before I hand over a credit card number and most of my savings to this Internet casino, as free play keeps me entertained.
Millions of Internet users, however, are unable to exercise the same basic restraint. Hundreds of online casinos offer flashy software, regular deposit bonuses and the ability to gamble without ever entering a real casino. One can gamble online regardless of his location or his state’s regulations regarding games of chance. Though most restrict players to United States residents, citizens of states such as Utah that expressly prohibit games of chance can freely circumvent the law.
More serious than lawlessness is the eschewing of any social responsibility that these companies participate in while providing a service. Online gambling is faster and more convenient than traveling to a casino. Joining a game takes mere seconds and can be done during downtime at work, home or anywhere access to a computer is possible. The physical restraints that once stood between compulsive gamblers and casinos, time and distance, have now dissolved in the virtual world. A gambler need not worry about where to sleep when traveling to a casino because the felt table has been relocated to his office or living room.
Physical casinos never extend deposit offers to players like online casinos do. These establishments are able to offer up to 100% deposit matching for an unlimited period of time to entice potential customers because the typical online gambler loses three times what he would in a casino.
Some states have begun regulating online gambling for their residents. But relevant federal laws, which also govern most of what occurs on the Internet, are a conglomeration of seemingly irrelevant legislature. A 1961 law that regulates intrastate transportation of gambling devices, like slots or video poker, attempts to cut off the flow of supplies to underground casinos. More than one academic’s interpretation has extended this to include the software used as a conduit to online gambling, but there has yet to be a case to challenge this.
In 1994, a centuries-old law designed to regulate federal lotteries (some of which financed the building of Harvard and Yale) was amended to protect the sovereignty of individual state lotteries when lottery ticket shuttling was becoming popular. Even RICO statutes, most often used to prosecute organized crime virtuosos in the absence of evidence tying them to actual criminal acts, may also be precedent to prosecute the purveyors of online casinos.
While various levels of government attempt to apply irrelevant existing laws to new technologies, online gambling is quickly becoming a billion-dollar industry. This situation is very similar to a situation that occurred in the 1990s, when Congress spent years trying to apply wire fraud laws to prosecute computer crimes, and the real problem grew and new legislation was enacted too late to have serious impact.
States that have legalized games of chance establish commissions regulated by the government of that level. Online casinos offer verification that their random number generators produce outcomes statistically identical to what would occur with a real deck of cards, but no official commission oversees this. Even the most legitimate online establishments display their
approvals as small, inconspicuous graphics, making it difficult for a customer to determine that such approvals even exist. Online “gambling commissions” are merely groups of casinos banding together, accepting each other in an attempt to seem more legitimate.
The American public deserves the same level of civic responsibility regarding online wagering as is given to traditional gambling. An entire industry of online casinos is circumventing gambling and tax laws while contributing to the rapid moral decline of society. Persistent gambling can deteriorate into a compulsive disease faster and easier online than in physical casinos. While the time for a pre-emptive effort at curbing the rapid expansion of this hex on society has passed, action must be taken now before online gambling becomes the latest and most serious social vice.
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