Some Intrastate Online Gambling May Be Going Legal

Legal experts say that a new opinion from the Justice Department opens the door for states to allow various forms of online gambling operated by lotteries and other gambling interests.

 

Proponents of legalized online gambling say the online gambling industry could provide new sources of revenue for state coffers. But others, including large casino interests that prefer a national system limited to online poker, say that the free-flowing nature of the Internet is ill-suited for state gambling plans, which would attempt to limit online gambling to within a given state’s borders.

 

The opinion from the Justice Department reverses a policy which held that most forms of online gambling were illegal under the Federal Wire Act; the 1961 act prohibits bets from passing through communications lines that cross state borders.

In a sweeping reversal, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said that such gambling within a state would no longer be considered illegal because the Wire Act, a law with contradictory language that has long been the subject of debate, doesn’t apply to any forms of gambling other than sports betting.

 

Online gambling experts said the change essentially gives states the green light to allow gambling within their borders. That is a victory for advocates of state-regulated online gambling, which include companies hoping to provide technology for online gambling and in some cases lotteries and others that operate gambling in states, such as Indian tribes or casinos.

 

Washington, D.C., voted this year to allow its lottery to operate online poker, but the law hasn’t yet been implemented. Several state lotteries, meanwhile, already have been offering subscription services for lotteries online for the past few years.

 

Online gambling became a major industry some years back. It was the advent of the internet that grew that market and many people were quick to understand the money-making possibilities that online gambling offered. Online casinos mushroomed on the World Wide Web and the casinos flourished. There were money-making spin-offs as well. In order to gamble for money you had to establish a credit account in an online casino. To do this you had to transfer money into your account. The US tried to halt the gambling but found it impossible. What they did do was to stop the use of credit cards to transfer money and this led to the overnight birth of money transfer systems.

 

Other industries benefited from the online gambling industry as well; for example the bottle shops where gamblers bought their drinks to keep them going at home while they gambled. Then came the home computer stores who sold PCs and Macs to would-be gamblers.

And there was a downside: Addiction was the worst of these. Solitary gamblers sat at home and gambled away their life’s savings in an attempt to hit the big one, the jackpot that would bring them millions. And then there were the kids who sat at home gambling their parent’s money while they were away at work.