{"id":3701,"date":"2006-10-03T01:27:49","date_gmt":"2006-10-03T05:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2006\/10\/03\/congress-sneaks-through-online-gambl"},"modified":"2006-10-03T01:27:49","modified_gmt":"2006-10-03T05:27:49","slug":"congress-sneaks-through-online-gambling-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2006\/10\/03\/congress-sneaks-through-online-gambling-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress Sneaks Through Online Gambling Restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week, Congress dead-locked <\/a>on many dangerous surveillance, IP, and other cyberlaw-related bills. But they did manage to sneak a new online gambling ban<\/a> [PDF] into the port security bill — it’s an embarrassing, disappointing instance of our country throwing its weight around online, crippling a burgeoning industry and taking away a favorite hobby of millions<\/a> of ordinary Americans.<\/p>\n

For those who needed a wake-up call that the Internet is indeed regulable, this ought to do it.  Sure, some people will be able to work around<\/a> the regs, but many won’t, particularly in the near term<\/a>. Three days after the bill passed, the stock prices of major online gaming companies crashed<\/a>, and major companies like Party Gaming and 888 vowed to ban all US customers.<\/p>\n

The online gaming business is still rather young, yet it was already roughly as big as the US record industry — around 12 billion dollars in yearly revenue. While the gaming industry was cut off at the knees, online payment companies like Neteller also took a nose dive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The bill doesn’t impact all gambling — it exempts fantasy sports, lotteries, horse racing, and purely intrastate gambling. Domestic gaming companies were either indifferent<\/a> to the bill or happy to be rid of foreign competitors. The US has ignored <\/a>WTO rulings against this protectionism before, and it could very well do so again.<\/p>\n

But forget about the companies — what about the ordinary people that Congress is ostensibly trying to “save?” What evidence is there that “we’re addicted to online poker as a people?”<\/a> Addiction implies disease.<\/p>\n

Let me make my bias here clear: I play online poker for about 5 hours a month and head to Vegas with friends to play about twice a year. I make a tiny — but, for me, quite significant — amount of spending money that way. And I have a ton of fun doing it. My poker blog<\/a> is now defunct, but it should give you a sense of how much and why I love this hobby.<\/p>\n

Sample my blogroll,<\/a> and you’ll find many others like me. Some have<\/a> even made their whole income from playing poker — it’s their livelihoods.<\/p>\n

Like the many people who flock to local cardrooms, Vegas, and Atlantic City every year, most online players don’t win money, but they do have a lot of fun. The Internet brought to the fore ordinary Americans’ desire to play poker — it’s no coincidence that poker on TV has grown in parallel, and, at least in California, local cardrooms are sprouting up.<\/p>\n

And, yes, some people do get addicted. My point is not to marshall a complete argument against this paternalist policy-making in general or this policy in particular, as distasteful as I find both to be. Rather, I want to highlight that there are millions of ordinary Americans just like me <\/span>who didn’t ask for this ban<\/a>, oppose it, and will be harmed by it<\/span>. The industry invited<\/a> regulation and taxation<\/a>, and yet poker players are now facing an outright ban. <\/p>\n

Congress completely sold us out — if you care about this issue, head over to the Poker Players Alliance site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Note: as usual, this blog represents my views, and not those of my employers past or present.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Congress dead-locked on many dangerous surveillance, IP, and other cyberlaw-related bills. But they did manage to sneak a new online gambling ban [PDF] into the port security bill — it’s an embarrassing, disappointing instance of our country throwing its weight around online, crippling a burgeoning industry and taking away a favorite hobby of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}