Minnesota Latest To Try To Block Gambling Sites

BcNexus writes "A story is developing that the state of Minnesota is contacting ISPs with a request to block about 200 gambling sites online. Minnesota is claiming authority to do so under a 1961 federal law, apparently the Federal Wire Wager Act. There are a couple interesting aspects to watch as this unfolds. Will the ISPs cooperate or will they argue about applicability to casino games, as other have? Will Minnesotans lose their money or access to their money in escrow accounts like the state is warning will happen?"

Comments

Gambling

[arizwebfoot]

We gamble every time we buy stock, how is this any different than on a poker table. Somehow, I don't see the "fairness" in this. Personally, I think the odds are better at Black Jack than on Enron.

And what about those sites that lets us play with "chip count" verses real money - are they going to be banned as well?

Re:Gambling

[TinFoilMan]

It's all about the tax money, which ain't funny.

I also agree that if the state allows a lottery - which is gambling - they why not make gambling sites add a penny tax for each dollar bet and submit to the state from which that person resides?

Re:Gambling

[Duradin]

Well see, in gambling, there are rules against cheating and bad things tend to happen to cheaters, therefore, gambling is bad.

With the stockmarket, cheating is called creative accounting and cheaters get even bigger bonuses, therefore, the stockmarket is good.

If you gamble, you can only gamble away your life savings, and that's bad.

In the stockmarket, you can gamble away everyone's life savings and make a huge profit for yourself, so that's good.

See, gambling is like socialism, and socialism bad. The stockmarket is like The Capitalist Free Market, and the Capitalist Free Market is good (and you're a dirty socialist commie pinko bastard hippie if you say otherwise).

Re:Gambling

[Dhalka226]

Buying stock is tied to business success - It's "investing" rather than "gambling".

That's only true indirectly. You actually make or lose money based on the moves of the other "players" (investors), which we hope is based on company success but isn't always in the way we would expect. You can literally lose money in the stock market if a company you invested in made $1/share last quarter if the speculation was saying it would make $1.05/share; it doesn't even take a long or detailed look into history to see many examples of exactly that. Either way the company was successful and profitable, but if people feel they can get a bigger return elsewhere they can and often do pull their money, leaving what you're left with worth less. Possibly less than you bought it for, depending on when you got in and what happened since.

In that sense, it really is more like poker than strict investment. In an investment, I make money if you make money. In poker, I make money if I can successfully read the other players at the table and act accordingly--even if I don't necessarily have the best hand.

Federal Wire Act seems to say casual gambling okay

[PoolOfThought]

According to the act cited in the original post:

"In analyzing the first element, the legislative history[60] of the Wire Act seems to support the position that casual bettors would fall outside of the prosecutorial reach of the statute. During the House of Representatives debate on the bill, Congressman Emanuel Celler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee stated "[t]his bill only gets after the bookmaker, the gambler who makes it his business to take bets or to lay off bets. . . It does not go after the causal gambler who bets $2 on a race. That type of transaction is not within the purvue of the statute."[61] In Baborian, the federal district court concluded that Congress did not intend to include social bettors within the umbrella of the statute, even those bettors that bet large sums of money and show a certain degree of sophistication.[62] "

IANAL, but I would say from that statute that it is not illegal to gamble or to use gambling cites to gamble. It's illegal to be a bookie (sp?) or facilitate organized gambling as a business. The sites themselves my be illegal, but the users seem to be okay?

No?

Come on...

[cwiegmann24]

5 to 1 odds they have to back down within a week.