The U.S. National Gambling Impact Study Commission will be getting around
to looking at several topics including riverboat gambling, internet
gambling and the regulatory structure of the financial markets. The
Commission is charged with studying the social and economic impacts of
legalized gambling in the US. They will host a panel called Internet
Gambling: The implications of Prohibition v. Regulation.
The NGISC has requested that the industry representative address the merits
of regulating internet gaming and how such a regulatory scheme might
operate. They posed the following specific questions...
- Why is there a need for regulation or prohibition (consumer protection?)?
- How would regulation or prohibition remedy (or fail to remedy) those concerns?
- What are the economic consequences of regulation v. prohibition?
- Who would regulate internet gaming?
- What does internet technology offer over efforts to regulate traditional forms of gambling?advantages/disadvantages
- How could regulation ensure the integrity of the games? Could problem gamblers be identified by patterns of play or centralized account tracking?
- Can underage or pathological gamblers be effectively "screened out"?
A tall order for a 10 minute presentation!!
The meeting will be in the afternoon of May 21 and will be held in the
Assembly Hall of the James R. Thompson Center (100 W. Randolph St.) in
Chicago, Ill.