Slashdot Mirror
US Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The U.S. Justice Department's decision that all internet gambling is illegal will cast a pall on the industry as businesses and state lotteries evaluate the implications of the change and the government's plans to enforce it. The U.S. now says federal law bars all internet gambling, reversing its position from 2011 that only sports betting is prohibited under a law passed 50 years earlier. Although the federal law specifically prohibits transmission of wagers and related information across state lines, the Justice Department's new interpretation will impact all online gambling because as a practical matter it's difficult to guarantee that no payments are routed through other states, said Aaron Swerdlow, an attorney with Glaser Weil Fink Howard Avchen & Shapiro LLP in Los Angeles.
The reversal was prompted by the department's criminal division, which prosecutes illegal gambling. The opinion issued about seven years ago that the 1961 Wire Act only banned sports gambling was a misinterpretation of the statute, according to a 23-page opinion by the department's Office of Legal Counsel dated Nov. 2 and made public Monday. The new reading of the law probably will be tested in the courts as judges may entertain challenges to the government's view of the law's scope, the Justice Department said. It may also affect states that began selling lottery tickets online after the 2011 opinion, as well as casinos that offer online gambling. In contrast, the Supreme Court last May "cleared the way [...] for states to legalize sports betting, striking down a 1992 federal law that had prohibited most states from authorizing sports betting."
The reversal was prompted by the department's criminal division, which prosecutes illegal gambling. The opinion issued about seven years ago that the 1961 Wire Act only banned sports gambling was a misinterpretation of the statute, according to a 23-page opinion by the department's Office of Legal Counsel dated Nov. 2 and made public Monday. The new reading of the law probably will be tested in the courts as judges may entertain challenges to the government's view of the law's scope, the Justice Department said. It may also affect states that began selling lottery tickets online after the 2011 opinion, as well as casinos that offer online gambling. In contrast, the Supreme Court last May "cleared the way [...] for states to legalize sports betting, striking down a 1992 federal law that had prohibited most states from authorizing sports betting."
Yes. An investment has a measurable, predictable, and controllable outcome.
Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that investing in the stock market is
investing. It's not; it's gambling. It's the biggest lie the government tells people
to make people believe that their 401K is actually an investment in their future.
Now, an example of an investment is money spent on one's education. You have
a particular goal, and there are milestones along the way to measure the distance
to said goal.
People who do well in the "market" have the same skill set as a good poker player.
And poker is mostly an games of luck and memory. There is no formula to always
win. That's why it's gambling. Plain and simple. Now chess / go, etc. are games of
skill. There's no luck involved. A certain sequence of moves always produces the
same outcome. Gambling in the stock market has no such characteristic. Truth!
So, the stock market is legal sanctioned betting / gambling. Those are the facts.
Believe what you want, but don't expect sympathy when you lose from me...
CAP === 'posture'
No, the legal definition of gambling specifically excludes any activity governed by the securities laws (as that term is defined in section 3(a)(47) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934[1] for the purchase or sale of securities (as that term is defined in section 3(a)(10) of that Act); or any over-the-counter derivative instrument; as well as insurance contracts
Gambling I thought was harmless until I witnessed first hand a buddy of mine go down the tube with online gambling on the early days of online poker. We're talking the age of dial up modem. The guy lost a ton of money, basically wiped out, started running up credit cards, getting cash from cards, just everything to gamble. After first making fun of him, as this progressed we really started to get scared for him. Ended up sabotaging his modem, then his computer, then basically what nowadays they would call an intervention. Though less touchy feelly and more "Dude, you are a *&#$$ dumb*@!#, you better get your @#$@ together, or we're kicking you out of the place."
He got over it, but a couple times years later we'd meet up for a wedding or something where you can gamble, Nassau, Bahamas etc, he would hit the tables and go nuts, lose all his cash. Though he did win $9k one night, and we ended up hiding $8k of that from him until after the trip. By that time he was smart enough to let us take his credit cards away too. But that impulse looks scary and call it what you want, addiction, moral deficit, habit, whatever...its the real deal and if I were running the world I would seek to minimize it as much as possible.