There are many good arguments for and against the
regulation of online gambling. The solutions are not simple and the moral and ethical questions are tortuous. And I don't mean the morality of placing a wager with your own hard earned money. I think most of us would agree that it's nobody's business but your own or your family's if you have a problem but we'll get to that later.
It's not just an exercise in philosophy to argue that the Internet belongs to everyone on earth and could be seen as a proving ground for ultimate personal responsibility.
We must ask ourselves this question: If the United States enacts laws specifically regulating online gambling which means certain things will be legal and other things will be illegal, do we have the right to arrest people of other nationalities that happen to set foot on American soil? It was done in the Neteller case. It could happen again. How far a stretch is it to think that an agency like
'Interpol' might arrest a foreign national on his or her own soil for violating US law? It's something to think about.
Maybe we can give Justice the benefit of the doubt and simply trust that sovereign laws will be respected, and no one will be forced to pay great sums of money to avoid prosecution. And maybe we can imagine a form of regulation that looks like the
Nevada Gaming Commission's regulatory and enforcement model, one where casinos are regulated by licensing, auditing, and oversight. One where they are taxed and where all the state sanctioned casinos offer their games from servers located in a US Jurisdiction so the operators are accountable to the regulatory agency. Also, one where careless operation is fined and cheating is punished by prison terms. That would make the Internet a safe place to gamble, wouldn't it?
