SuperBook’s Blog

I wanted to use this week’s blog to clear the air on the hot topic I’ve been writing about for the past few weeks and that is the issue between the United States vs. Antigua in the WTO case. I don’t know what else you folks have been reading about this issue but there is plenty of false information out there.

The most common misconception I’ve been reading about elsewhere is the difference between the actual lawsuit Antigua won and what rights other nations impacted by the US GATS withdrawal has on them which may open the door for more lawsuits on their behalf against the US. Here is how the GATS portion of the WTO works. It is an opt in clause which basically means that it’s relevant obligations are those which specific countries have decided to opt into. So in this particular case, the WTO found that the United States had made specific commitments regarding international gambling and betting functions. As such, the US was obligated to allow its market to be available to international operators such as Antigua. The WTO ruling in this regard was that the US was in violation because the UIGEA was now prohibiting the use of the Internet for its citizens to use the international gambling services. This was a breach of the GATS agreement and makes the US open to the Antiguan lawsuit.
Regarding the US attempts to sidestep its responsibility to pay up, remember, the US had been taking a moral high ground to justify itself by saying they were trying to control youth gambling and illegal activities such as money laundering and fraud. They were not successful with this argument because of its own obvious hypocrisy which still allows legal online horse betting. Big oops to the US on that one.

Now a little history lesson. Back in 2006, Antigua participated in a WTO compliance panel to explore what options they had in their fight against the US. The US tried to use this forum to argue its case again, this time by claiming that it was impossible to regulate internet gambling, and then lying and saying that Internet horse racing was not legal in the US. Oh really? Very interesting blatant lie on that one. Not surprisingly, the US lost this appeal and in March of this year, the WTO issued its ruling. Among their findings were some very interesting facts. Among them:

• More than 15 states in the US allow wagering on the Internet, sometimes across state lines.
• Even though in its initial argument to the WTO, the US said internet gambling could not be regulated, the UIGEA states that it is in fact possible to do so.
• The UIGEA completely ignores the entire online horse betting issue.
• The fact that the US is actively trying to prosecute foreign gaming operators, but none of the US-based horserace betting operators.

Now, let’s clear up what the sanctions will do. The WTO does not have the jurisdiction to carry out or enforce punishments. However, now that the WTO has ruled against the US, it is up to Antigua to specifically request certain sanctions and then, and only then, does the WTO decide whether the proposed sanctions are acceptable.
So, what is it that Antigua wants? Hold on to your seats for this one. The nation has informed the WTO that it is seeking annual payments of over $3.4 billion! Yes, you read that correctly. It’s not just an arbitrary number at all however. They figure that if you take into account trademarking, copyrights and patents, in addition to lost revenue streams that this figure is accurate. If the WTO agrees to this, it can open the door for Antigua to go ahead and violate other US patent laws as well. So at best, it may still be a longshot.

One other misconception is what right other effected countries have here. The answer is simple. None, zip, nada. Let me explain. Two months ago, the US announced that we would be repealing our commitments to online gambling services. It is for this reason that other countries will have difficulty in proving that the US is deliberately trying to harm them.

The US is trying to keep the floodgates from opening up as besides Antigua and Barbuda, it has been reported that the E.U., India, Japan, Costa Rica, Canada, and Australia have filed claims against the U.S. Yikes. If they are all successful, that could cost the US a fortune. Rather than take on the world, it may seem that the US may be better served by seeking a compromise. Regulation anyone?

Let’s see what happens now.
We need to continue to unite and grow in numbers and make our voices heard. Why? Because we can, that’s why. You can play a part in making your voice heard. On our blog’s main page, click on the banner link that says “Sign a petition to repeal this law to fight the UIGEA. There you can sign up to help repeal the UIGEA. This is your chance. Take it!

Let’s get the dialogue going as alone we are weak but united, we are stronger.

As we all know and have felt in one way or another, Congress has launched an offensive in the battle against the online poker and gaming community. Several months ago, they passed a controversial bill which forced many of our favorite gaming sites to seriously alter their operations or completely shut down in the United States. Why has the government taken such a stern stance on online gaming? There are many theories as to why this is the case. The most obvious of course is money. Because the sites we know and love so much aren’t regulated, the United States isn’t getting their slice of the pie and we all know how important money is to the powers that be. But even so, the way the whole bill was handled is just plain sneaky and deceptive.

It is widely believed that any online gaming bill would not have passed as a stand alone and several attempts to do so simply stalled and never came close to passing. So what they did was attach the bill to the Safe Port Act. This act was good for the country so no one was going to vote it down, so the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act was piggybacked onto it. How it basically worked was to limit the way online poker fans deposit money into their accounts.

The official name of the bill is the Safe Accountability for Every Port Act of 2006. In late September, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist worked to get the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act attached to the port act and Congress passed the act nearly unanimously in the last vote before an extended election-year recess. So like a ship sails into the night, the law was passed in an attempt to alter the online poker and gaming landscape.

You would think that online gaming sites are against the United States but that is not at all the case. In fact, online gaming sites are begging to be legalized and regulated. A better approach would be to allow them to set up shop in the U.S., contribute to the U.S. economy, be regulated by U.S. markets, and be subject to U.S. courts.

Of course, that would require Congress to treat all of us as adults, and understand that we ought to be free to spend our own money as we please, even in ways some morally crusading Congressmen happen to find distasteful. Throughout history, the government has taken great steps in attempting to tell Americans how they can live their lives even as many of their own members digress and engage in several forms of impropriety. We saw it during the Great Depression with Prohibition and as we know, that did not work out for them either. So we should firmly stand by our beliefs and allow our voices to be heard. We should not just curl up in a ball and allow the powers that be to tell us how to pass our time and spend our money. That’s right, “Our time AND our money .

For myself and many other members of the gaming community, we were outraged when we woke up on that cold September day and heard the news. We didn’t feel resigned to what was happening however. Rather, we tried to figure out ways we could continue to do the things we love to do and play poker, the game we love to play. We went out and found sites that still were willing to do business with us and we set up community forums where we could air our opinions and share our ideas. We found that through uniting, we were a louder voice and that we weren’t alone in our beliefs.

If you are out there reading this blog, then you feel strongly about this or at least have an opinion. Don’t be afraid to share your opinions or stories as you are not alone. Millions of us value our freedoms and believe strongly in them and that very freedom is what we hold dear. The issue is much larger than just being able to bet on a Monday Night Football Game or play in a sit and go poker tournament. This is about our right to choose and to live how we see fit.

We want to hear from you. How do you feel about this and how have these acts by Congress impacted your lives? Has it altered the way you operate or have you become even more determined to live your life as you see fit? Let’s get the dialogue going as alone we are weak but united, we are stronger. Send through your comments to becauseican2006@hotmail.com .

By CHARLES MURRAY
Published: October 19, 2006</strong>

New York Times

Harry Campbell

LAST week President Bush signed a law that will try to impede online gambling by prohibiting American banks from transferring money to gambling sites. Most Americans probably didn’t notice or care, but it may do significant political damage to the Republicans this fall and long-term damage to Americans’ respect for the law.

So, a month before a major election, the Republicans have allied themselves with a scattering of voters who are upset by online gambling and have outraged the millions who love it. Furthermore, judging from many hours of online chat with Internet poker players, I am willing to bet (if you’ll pardon the expression) that the outraged millions are disproportionately electricians, insurance agents, police officers, mid-level managers, truck drivers, small-business owners that is, disproportionately Republicans and Reagan Democrats.

In the short term, this law all by itself could add a few more Democratic Congressional seats in the fall elections. We are talking about a lot of people (an estimated 23 million Americans gamble online) who are angry enough to vote on the basis of this one issue, and they blame Republicans.

In the long term, something more ominous is at work. If a free society is to work, the vast majority of citizens must reflexively obey the law not because they fear punishment, but because they accept that the rule of law makes society possible. That reflexive law-abidingness is reinforced when the laws are limited to core objectives that enjoy consensus support, even though people may disagree on means.

Thus society is weakened every time a law is passed that large numbers of reasonable, responsible citizens think is stupid. Such laws invite good citizens to choose knowingly to break the law, confident that they are doing nothing morally wrong.

The reaction to Prohibition, the 20th century’s stupidest law, is the archetypal case. But the radical expansion of government throughout the last century has created many more.

For example, all employers are confronted with rules and regulations from Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that they regard with contempt not because they cut into profits, but because they are, simply, stupid. They impede employers yet provide no collateral social benefit. And so employers treat the stupid regulations as obstructions to be fudged or ignored. When they have to comply, they do not see compliance as the right thing to do, but as placating an agency that will hurt them otherwise.

The same thing applies to lesser degrees to all of us who find ourselves doing things that we know are pointless (think of various aspects of tax law) only because we fear attracting a bureaucracy’s attention. For millions of Americans, our day-to-day relationship with government is increasingly like paying protection to the Mafia keeping it off our backs while we get on with our lives.

The temptation for good citizens to ignore a stupid law is encouraged when it is unenforceable. In this, the attempt to ban Internet gambling is exemplary. One of the four sites where I play poker has blocked United States customers because of the law, but the other three are functioning as usual and are confident that they can continue to do so. They are not in America, and it is absurdly easy to devise ways of transferring money from American bank accounts to institutions abroad and thence to gambling sites.

And so the federal government once again has acted in a way that will fail to achieve its objective while alienating large numbers of citizens who see themselves as having done nothing wrong. The libertarian part of me is heartened by this, hoping that a new political coalition will start to return government to its proper functions. But the civic-minded part of me is apprehensive. Reflexive loyalty to the rule of law is an indispensable cultural asset. The more honest citizens who take for granted that they are breaking the law, the more their loyalty to the law, and to the government that creates it, is eroded.

Charles Murray is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

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