Tom W. Bell, the director of telecommunications and technologies at the
Cato Institute in Washington, did a one-on-one with CNNfn's Steve Young
on March 5 in which he offered his expertise on issues concerning the
legality of Internet gambling. Following are a few excerpts from that
conversation.
On the enforceability of proposed legislation:
YOUNG: What's wrong with cracking down on Internet betting?
BELL: These bans are not going to work. They're unenforceable.
Anybody who offers gambling services is going to move overseas. They've already started to and U.S. authorities won't be able to catch the individual bettors here in the U.S. who use those overseas sites. They've already started setting up sites in Antigua and soon Australian and New Zealand will be offering overseas Internet gambling services so anyone who wants to offer those gambling services is just going to move to one of those countries and then they'll be free from U.S. prosecution.
On the wire laws:
YOUNG: Might it be a better solution to change the wire and other
laws here and let the Atlantic City and Nevada casinos do betting
online?
BELL: Well, actually, nine states already allow their citizens to
gamble via telephone lines from home, so really the Internet gambling
is nothing fundamentally new, but I agree that states could step into
the void and legalize Internet gambling-unless the Federal authorities
stop them. Oregon has a new law on the books that looks like it's broad enough to allow Internet gambling and some Indian reservations claim that they're going to get in this business too so it's even happening domestically.
On the legislation itself:
YOUNG: You dislike both the House and the Senate bills. Which do you
dislike more or are they equally loathsome?
BELL: They each have their unique vices actually Steve. The Kyl bill
on the Senate side is particularly odious because, frankly, it
discriminates against Internet commerce. It doesn't touch telephone
commerce. On the House side, the Goodlatte bill, well, it's real
problem is that it puts the burden of regulating Internet gambling on
Internet service providers and to enforce this law, they're going to
have to get into every nook and cranny of our personal files. That's no
good.