The Online Gambling Ban is the stupidest internet regulation initiative since “War on Pr0n”. I haven’t done any statistical research about this, but I think that next to pr0n and email, gambling is one of the major uses of internet for average Americans.
It’s a multi billion dollar online industry, with grows at the astonishing rate of $12 billion a year. There are literally thousands upon thousands of gambling websites out there – and most of them are located outside of US. Sure, we can close the gambling websites located within the country but how do you prevent people from using foreign websites?
The House bill would outlaw electronic money transfers by credit card or other means for betting purposes, and protect banks from being held liable for blocking transactions they reasonably believe to be outlawed. The bill would require Internet service providers to block illegal gambling Web sites.
Awesome! So if this legislation goes live, ISP’s will have to spend millions of dollars building sophisticated firewalls to censor their customers’ internet use! Banks and credit card companies will have to invest in creating a no-pay blacklists and take the heat from furious customers who suddenly can’t gamble online.
And since there there will be no legal way to pay for gambling, all the online bets will have to be channeled through unsecure, and shady payment sites. Net result – more internet censorship, allot of online shops will be accidentally blacklisted by credit card companies, and more people will be ripped off by shady gambling websites that slip under the radar.
I think UserFriendly described this situation really well:
comic © userfriendly – click to enlarge
[tags]online gambling, online gambling ban, gambling, user friendly[/tags]
I was waiting for you to post about this.
good old politians, thinking they can control the internet.
Ps. They should turn off the “pipes” that allow access to sites outside the U.S.
It’s tubes, not pipes. :mrgreen:
Btw, watch that John Stewart clip I posted earlier. He explains why state lottery is not banned – in terms of tubes and stuff that floats in them.
I haven’t gambled online myself, but I think the ban is completely ridiculous. What’s even worse is how strongly it was supported. They have no business trying to legislate morality.