Do Governments Have the Right to Ban Online Gambling?

In many countries, particularly the more economically advanced ones, there is a conflict happening; a war between players who want to gamble online, from their own PCs, and the countries governments who want to criminalise internet gambling.

The American government has tried several times, through many different means, to stop their citizens from participating at real-money online gambling casinos, but they have never succeeded completely.

Following the events of 9/11 the US government closed down Paypal and other casino funding options, citing the reason for the decision as the eradication of the funding of terrorist organisations by online casinos.

Five years later the US government, in a stealth-like manner, managed to pass the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) into the SAFE Port Act- clearly linking internet gambling with national security.

The UIGEA effectively served to prohibit all methods for depositing money with online casinos, and other internet gambling sites, by American citizens. With the introduction of UIGEA the gambling industry went into free-fall, but through careful analysis the industry found several legal loopholes and attempted to circumvent the new laws that had been created.

Exponents of the anti-gambling movement cite many reasons for there political stance, the oft quoted comment that it is "simply too easy to lose your home from the comfort of your own home" is just one such reason, others include: a perceived link between gambling and illegal activities; financial difficulties; gambling addictions; that the gambling industry targets, and exploits, ‘the weak'.....

A more sinister view is forwarded by individuals, who advocate the gambling industry, for the reasons of prohibition of the activity by certain government institutions, particularly the US government- and that is the financial losses that affect the nations coffers because the governments are unable to tax monies that are being paid into online casinos whose headquarters are not in the country of origin of the citizen who is spending the nations dollars. In other words, the government do not like the free-market when it is not operating from its own nation.

A key reason for this belief is the fact that there are many bricks-and-mortar casinos that are open to the public, in America just think of Atlantic City and Las Vegas- if the problems were with the act of gambling these would be closed down too, but they are not. All the problems of gambling can occur both online and in real-life, so any reasons cited as such must be untruthful.

Yet another interesting fact to consider in evaluating the UGIEA is that there are many real-life casino lobbyists in Washington, for whom it is in their best interests to ban online gambling, in order to curtail the competition.

Finally, the idea that there is a link between terrorist funding and the online gambling industry has never been proven. In fact many of the online casinos are publicly trading, multi-million (in some cases billion) pound companies...it is now up to you, as an informed citizen, to make up your own mind as to why governments may want to ban online gambling...