Gambling-Focused Internet Cafes Now Illegal In Florida

retroworks writes "I ignored the warning posted here on Slashdot on March 23. Surely someone was setting up some April Fools day hoax. But the Governor has now signed the bill. Whose cold dead hands will they pry the computer mice out of?" Note: while this might not change your opinion of the Florida law or other things it might lead to, it is aimed specifically at the kind of "Internet cafe" where the "Internet" part is essentially just a portal to online gambling, rather than at conventional Internet cafes.

Comments

Seems very reasonable

[dwhitaker]

These are NOT internet cafes - they masquerade as such, but are really mini casinos. They are popularly known as "sweepstakes cafes" and often provide free food and drinks to encourage people to stay and gamble. This article (http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120512/ARTICLE/120519835) does a pretty good job describing some of their features (e.g. one in Sarasota, FL gives out 50 kegs of free beer each month and offers $20,000 jackpots). You can think what you will about whether online (or offline) gambling is a good or bad thing, but this seems well within the purview of a state government to regulate or shut down, and they seem to have acted reasonably.

Re:Seems very reasonable

[porkThreeWays]

It was reactionary to a bigger scandal that happened here. I doubt they were very careful. It passed pretty quickly.

Re:Seems very reasonable

[SharpFang]

Was it Wisconsin, where following worries about contaminating groundwater with oil they passed a law stating "any even motor vehicle even partially immersed in water must be immediately moved to dry ground" efficiently banning all ships and motorboats?

Re:Seems very reasonable

[tilante]

Quibble: the state doesn't 'allow' gambling on Indian reservations. It has no power to stop it. The Supreme Court has held that states do not have power to regulate activities performed by Indians on Indian reservations.

What kind of Mickey Mouse State

[Chrisq]

What kind of Mickey Mouse State would pass .... Oh wait!

Summary?

[mpicker0]

I don't understand the expression of surprise in the first part of the summary. The "cafes" referred to are set up specifically to skirt the state gambling laws by taking advantage of the "sweepstakes" loophole. They make it appear that you're playing video poker, roulette, etc. but you're really just revealing your sweepstakes winnings, which were predetermined when you bought into the game. Bloomberg Businessweek had an interesting article on these things a few years ago.

... rather than at conventional Internet cafes.

I'm not sure what "conventional Internet cafes" refers to. The idea of the "Internet cafe" as a place where people go to buy time on the Internet died shortly after it was born in the late 90's. You can still go to Starbucks, Panera, etc. and use the Internet there; this bill isn't aimed at that. This is not a big deal.

Florida resident here

[porkThreeWays]

This story has a long history. Basically these places were operating with a variety of names (cafes, arcades, sweepstakes, probably others) for many years. They operated based on loopholes in Florida law and their sole purpose was for gambling. A very large one got shut down because they crossed the line from simply unethical to illegal. They were operating under the premise they were a veterans benefit organization and not actually giving veterans and significant amounts of money. The lieutenant governor was involved with the company somehow so the story exploded. Rick Scott is already wildly unpopular and the Florida Republican party is on the path to possibly losing 2014 so the hammer came down to make a point that the legislature can still get things done.

It's pretty telling that the company that was shut down was run mostly by lawyers. They operated along the cracks and loopholes of Florida laws. These places are usually in poor and retired neighborhoods so I'm not that sad to see them go away. Maybe if we can do something about the "WE BUY GOLD" and check cashing places we can start to clean up these communities.

Re:Florida resident here

[TheCarp]

> Maybe if we can do something about the "WE BUY GOLD" and check cashing places
> we can start to clean up these communities.

Right and maybe if we can get fever under control, we can stop malaria.

We all know, afterall, the primary reason they are poor is that they are out there selling their gold and other hard assetts rather than hording them.

The "Check cashers" are pretty eggerious poverty profiteers, and I know people who have ended up fucked by those deals.

Cleaning up those neighborhoods is not contingent upon stopping them, any more than extending life expectancy will be accomplished by destroying saprophytes. Kill them all, and you still wont be cleaning up the neighborhoods. You need to address the real causes of poverty, for which there likely are no simple single solutions. Do that, though, and the vultures will starve.

Bigger problems are that the economy needs to grow significantly to deal with massive underemployment, and people need to be trained for jobs. Do you have any idea how big the real problems are? We have entire communities where significant portions of the population are technically disabled and on disability.

Why? well... because they can't work. They are easily disabled because they have no ability to get a job that doesn't involve physical labor. A 40 year old woman with a high school level education, who has back pain, likely IS disabled...even though I, and many people I know, could work with the same condition, just because we can get jobs where we sit.

One woman I heard interviewed recently, when asked what job she COULD do, she said she could "find cheats in the welfare system". After being pressed a bit on how she chose THAT of all jobs.... it turns out.... its the only job she knew about where people could work sitting down.

There are entire communities like this, of people who are either disabled from the only work available to them, or who are on their way to being there. The long term answer has to include education and worker training (something that wont even be considered once people are officially "disabled"), but even that wont magically fix things...but it might give the people in those communities a leg up on attacking their own problems.

Of course, it doesn't help that our "justice system" has been systematically abused to disenfranchise uppity niggers who think they can get away with using the same drugs that white kids get slapped on the wrist for using. (which is why I consider the call for more "background checks" incredibly racist) This has also lead to a situation where these communities have well higher than makes any kind of sense rates of felony and minor crime backgrounds, helping to shut the members of their community out from better jobs (and often education)....just adding to the financial woe and human misery.

Its funny, when I call for the drug war to end in reparations, I am sometimes told "you are not getting any money for smoking pot", as if I think its my white middle class pot smoking ass that has suffered, not even close. I thank my lucky stars for my situation, and it makes me mad that others suffer for their persuit of happiness.

Actual Bill Text

[dwhitaker]

Here is the actual bill as signed as a PDF: http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2013/0155/BillText/er/PDF Florida (and governing bodies in general) can easily pass bills with unintended consequences as pointed about by others' comments, so read the bill yourself to see what actually took place. The actual bill is called "CS/HB 155: Prohibition of Electronic Gambling Devices".

Re:Actual Bill Text

[squiggleslash]

Good link. Most news reports have simply used "Internet cafes" as shorthand, and I was worried that the bill really was drafted widely enough to cover ordinary Internet cafes (Starbucks with terminals) type businesses. It does appear, however, that the law is focused on gambling, and a genuine Internet cafe - one where you buy time, and only time, to use a computer to connect to the net - will not be impacted by this law.

I don't think there are that many actual Internet Cafes (as opposed to "Internet Cafes") left, but this doesn't look like it's going to outlaw them.