Online Gambling

Historically, online gambling laws remained in a legal grey area that no law explicitly forbade. The passage of the SAFE port act, which carried a ride-on known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, disallowed the transfer of funds from a financial institution to an illegal gambling Internet site. Much controversy surrounded the passage of the SAFE port act with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement written on and caused several international gambling websites to crumble when they lost their largest customer base. Non-publicly traded Internet gambling sites ignored the new online gambling laws and continue to serve an American public eager to utilize their services.

• Until 2006, the only online gambling laws that officials referred to, took issue with specifically enumerated types of gambling. For example, the Federal Wire Act of 1961 was often cited as a legal deterrent that automatically initiated online gambling laws, but this fact never took hold unanimously and Internet gambling continued unperturbed. Generally accepted as a law to combat organized crime, the Federal wire act outlawed gambling by phone over state lines but some felt the notion of the law encompassed Internet gambling as well.

• Officials attempted to enact online gambling laws through much of the latter half of the 1990s, but to no avail and Internet gambling user-ship only steadily increased over the next decade. Enemies of online gambling laws note that many states that passed online gambling laws maintained a financial interest in disallowing Internet gambling due to their state-led lottery, horse racing, or casino gambling.

• Several international websites that hosted Internet gambling claimed staggering losses overnight after the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Many of the publicly traded sites dissolved all-together, while others took deep cuts in financial earnings. Several large private Internet gambling websites bypassed the American online gambling laws entirely and still provide gambling services.

• The future of online gambling laws remain unclear even with the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Several institutions favor a revenue-sharing strategy that will act as a tax on the dollars spent by American citizens on a state by state basis, but the possibility of such a plan remains to be seen.

Online gambling laws attempt to rationalize the blockage of Internet gambling by claiming the residual effects that gambling has on an individual and family, however there is hypocrisy in this statement considering state-run lottery and gambling systems. Even though congress passed law disallowing Internet gambling, people continue to gamble online in enormous quantity but the unlikelihood of a reversal poses an additional set of problems.