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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."
The article does not explain why it would be difficult as a practical matter to ensure that payments do not get routed through other states. Can anyone clarify what they mean by this? What exactly would need to be done, and how difficult would it be?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
So investing in the stock market, or anything for that matter, is illegal?
Investing in anything has a risk/probabilistic component. Therefore it is a form of gambling. Well isnâ(TM)t it?
And donâ(TM)t retort with BS that playing blackjack online is 100% luck based .. it isnâ(TM)t. I mean, let me know randomly how clicking âoehit meâ for everything works out. All gambling takes some amount of skill to improve your odds.
The fact that Trump has had an interest in several casinos in the past and says he seeks to be in the casino business again in the future has absolutely nothing to do with his Justice Department outlawing all online gambling.
Nothing whatsoever.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I bet you 5 dollars the courts strike this down.
Yea definitely. You pay $5 for a loot boxes and potentially win an item worth $1000 in some games. Typically you win some skin worth 5 cents but that doesn't stop people from playing for the $1000 item. When I say $1000 also that is the market value of the item due to rarity of the item. In reality it is worth next to nothing (it's a digital copy) that the company could easily mass produce if they wish. So is that gambling? The results seem like gambling but in reality you only win a few 1s and 0s that someone else doesn't have.
I live in the UK.
In my last house (in quite a respectable area of London, famous for very posh schools etc.), the local high street was dead. There were a handful of shops.
What happened is that betting shops moved in. Dozens of them. At one point, six in the same street (which was only short).
The people going in are pissing away their money to fund an addiction. They've now had to introduce laws to reduce the maximum bet on a "fixed odds betting terminal" (fruit machine to you and me) to £2, because it was getting up to £100 for one spin in some instances.
To generalise, the clientele are generally unwanted - dozens and dozens of people who crowd the ATMs on the day when benefits (social security) are paid, draw it out instantly, and spend all day in the betting shops and drinking.
It's not everyone. I have what the British call "a flutter" occasionally, and I'm a mathematician too, so I can do the maths to tell you that you'll never win on average. But you don't really want your population gambling away money unless you own and tax the casinos so heavily that it's beneficial - even then, the social cost is enormous because the people who gamble the most are those that can't afford to.
Las Vegas is tainted because of this for me - I get that it's a part of the US culture in that area, and casinos are different to grubby betting shops, but the clientele are the same.
You'd think you could just tax it to oblivion to counteract any effect, but it does more than just encourage people to get into debt. It's an addiction. There are "gamble aware" programs, where anything advertising gambling has to offer certain functions (i.e. to let people "lock" themselves out of their account for a period of time, to encourage them to "gamble responsibility", and so on). In Italy and other places in Europe, cruise ships (which used to be seen as luxury liners for the rich) are now just regarded with condemnation because they are just used as offshore gambling and drinking dens, usually for British tourists!
The TV is full of adverts for bingo and casinos (online and offline). It's become "the norm" to be swamped in gambling advertising.
There's a big difference between someone playing a lottery once a month (what I'd say was analogous to, say, a village fete tombola) and high-level gambling establishments. Online can be dangerous - it's just a number on a screen.
Gambling will always exist. But it can lead to a degeneration if it's unchecked. I don't get the online/offline distinction but certainly controls need to be in place. The UK ditched most of the legislation about what can apply to be a casino or gambling establishment, and all it means is that the whole high street is just full of gambling places, and websites full of gambling ads.
I've gambled in Las Vegas. I've gambled on cruise ships (but the QE2 was the last of the luxury liners and wasn't gambling-focused at all, it was just a fancy evening dressed up). I know the odds and play games for a living. Hell I have a felt card table, card shoe and poker chips in my lounge as I speak... but even to me, unrestricted or lax gambling legislation has lead to an easily observable phenomenon and every-day news story headline... "My boyfriend stole our benefits to gamble away all our money, and now we're homeless".
I can understand them wanting to limit it. The ruling is a bit arbitrary, but gambling isn't as victimless as you might think. It's not the people losing the money they need to live that are hurt... they are suffering for their own stupidity. It's the knock-on effect on society.
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.
the government heavily regulates who can buy and sell stocks. You can't for instance, as a small investor, just pick a random company to give money to. There are rules about how, where and when you can invest specifically to prevent predatory investment instruments. To say nothing of the rules about soliciting investments.
A friend's company went on the lookout for investors for a new product and it's crazy how many rules there are on both sides of the equation. The only thing that makes gambling any different is the rules get suspended if you go to Las Vegas or an Indian Casino. For the most part those two self regulate to keep the absolute worst excesses in check (though they still take advantage of people to what I would say is an appalling degree).
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This /. article leaves out key pieces of information quoted in the source: this is an opinion (and NOT a law or regulaton!) and impacts forms of online gambling *crossing state lines* ONLY.
As long as online gambling does not cross state boundaries AND the state itself has regulated online gambling, such as New Jersey, online gambling is perfectly legal but ONLY on those sites regulated and approved by appropriate regulators. Other states where itâ(TM)s perfectly legal to gamble online include Nevada, Delaware. But everything - e.g. players, servers, also taxes ;), have to remain within the state boundaries.
E.g. for New Jersey hereâ(TM)s the list of authorized and legal online gaming sites regulated by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement: https://www.nj.gov/lps/ge/gamingsites.html.
The other part worth mentioning is this is ONLY an *opinion* that does not carry any legal weight whatsoever.
As an avid gambler and video gamer who follows legal trends in both fields, I'd say a quick and dirty test is how easily the value can be officially extracted from the system.
In a casino, I take my chips, walk 30 feet to a counter and get cash. In most online games... There's no official mechanism, just black market exchanges against the ToS. In parts of Asia, you put money in, get points, redeem for a tsochke, sell the tsochke to a store across the street. In an arcade, you put money in, get tickets, redeem for worthless junk. In different parts of Asia, you put money in, get points, redeem for actual products that people want or gift cards.
I'd say that 1, 3, 5 are definitely gambling, 4 is arguably, 2 is not because you're not supposed to be able to remove value. But the line gets more complex with games that DO allow it, like the D3AH.
Gee, a cynic would say think that the Trump administration did this to benefit brick-and-mortar casino owners, such as, oh, I don't know, Sheldon Adelson.
Do loot boxes count?
I would think this benefits physical gambling establishments. Who do we know that owns physical gambling establishments?
Trying to make it illegal is stupid, since it won't stop people.
Really? Do you want to bet on that?
I feel like I've heard this story many times. Drugs, alcohol, sex, internet. Then there's ones people don't consider addictions, such as work and love.
For most people, they get caught in one of those traps. It ruins them for a while, then they learn not to do it again.
It's definitely worse for them than not having been addicted at all, but I don't think there's a way to learn that lesson without going through the process. If it's not gambling, it'll be one of those other things. It's just unfortunate that for some of them, it ends up being fatal.
I've never understood why gambling is so much of a controlled substance here in the US.
Because it's as addicitve and damaging as some controlled substances are.
Humans are manipulatable monkeys for the most part. And gambling organisations have shown they have no qualms about using that to the maximum extent regardless of lives they destroyed. The law in this case doesn't recognise some idealised form of human that doesn't really exist, it actually recognises humans as they are.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
moral deficit
I think it's a quite common attitude that it's a moral deficit so they deserve it really. I mean they should just be stronger.
I am not likely to ever get addicted to gambling because I simply don't get any kind of rush from it. It's very easy to not be addicted to something which to me is a bit boring and expensive.
But there's no moral fortitude in me not gambling.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Are you voting for prohibition too? Or not yet, because you don't know anyone who had their life ruined by alcohol?