Internet gambling: Community flop or the Texas Hold'em poker rules1

This paper is a revised and updated version of the paper presented at the Third Annual Cyberspace conference held at the University of Masaryk, Brno, Czech Republic, November 2007.

Abstract

Transformed by technology, the virtualisation of gambling has prompted administrations around the world to respond swiftly to the challenges posed by the new way of carrying out an age-old practice. However, approaches to regulation differ. Within the USA online gambling is prohibited by the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act 31 U.S.C. 5361-5367 (enacted in the USA in October 2006). This has been played out by the threats of extradition and arrests of senior executives in Texas and ultimately imprisonment for criminal infringements in among other places Las Vegas. By contrast the UK has implemented a regulatory regime through the Gambling Act 2005. The European Community has provided a regime somewhere between the two following recent European Court of Justice decisions (Plancanica 2 CMLR 25) finding against Member States operating state monopolies preventing the establishment of private providers in this specific sphere of commercial activity, contrary to Article 43TEC (right of establishment) and Article 49TEC (the right to provide services, this will of course also have the corollary of the right to receive services). The appropriateness of these responses leads the commentators back towards embryonic Internet governance discussions on cyber-paternalism and cyber-liberalism with online gambling as the case study.

Keywords:

• online gambling
• regulation
• legislation

Notes

This paper is a revised and updated version of the paper presented at the Third Annual Cyberspace conference held at the University of Masaryk, Brno, Czech Republic, November 2007.

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D. Miers, Regulating Commercial Gambling: Past, Present and Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). See particularly chaps 1–3.

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The former Chief Executive of BetonSports. See M. McCarthy, ‘U.S. Cracking Down on Offshore Betting Industry’, USA Today, 19 July 2006. Available at: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2006-07-18-online-gaming_x.htm (accessed 7 July 2008).

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