Gambling on the Internet

Authors

• Aaron Craig

Abstract

This article analyzes current proposals to regulate gambling on the Internet and suggests that their flaws stem primarily from a failure to appreciate the complexity of the vice/economic gain dichotomy that has been incorporated in American gambling regulatory policy. Americans have historically prohibited some forms of gambling while tolerating others. An Internet gambling regulatory system should view the Internet as a medium across which current gambling policies should be extended. Regimes that legalize all forms of gambling on the Internet are politically untenable and unwise. Proposals to outlaw all forms of gambling fail to recognize the Government's interest in permitting and capitalizing on some forms of legalized gambling and fail to suggest adequate methods of eradicating undesired forms of Internet gambling. This article faults existing proposals for being soft and suggests that in devising policy, regulators should treat Internet gambling as an extension of real-life gambling.

Additionally, the proposals in Part V acknowledge that the Government faces unique enforcement, constitutional, jurisdictional, and comity issues in enforcing criminal penalties against those who engage in forms of Internet gambling, casino games, and wagering on sports events, that the government should most strenuously try to outlaw. Once regulators decide to develop an eradication strategy against a web gambling game, there are six distinct groups that may be targeted: (1) operators of Internet gambling sites, (2) Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Online Services (OLSs), (3) operators of indices and search engines, (4) sites that accept gambling advertising, (5) fund transfer providers, and (6) the purchasers of gambling services. Current proposals have limited regulators' gambling eradication tactics on the web to criminalizing the activity of the web gambling vendor or subjecting ISPs and OLSs to civil or criminal liability. This article recognizes that practical and constitutional obstacles will prevent severing any single link in the web gambling chain. Thus, the article's proposals in Part V aim to raise the costs of Internet gambling and create disincentives to deter and depress both the supply and the demand for web gambling services.

Recommended Citation

Aaron Craig, Gambling on the Internet, 2 Computer L. Rev. & Tech. J. 61 (1998)