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INTERNET GAMBLING
Popular, Inexorable, and (Eventually) Legal
by Tom W. Bell
The Internet offers new and better access to something that American consumers demand in spades: gambling. Lawmakers and prohibitionists can neither effectively stop Internet gambling nor justify their attempts to do so. In the long run it will, like so many other forms of gambling, almost certainly become legal. In the short run, however, Internet gambling faces some formidable opponents. As a market activity devoted to the pursuit of happiness, Internet gambling draws support from neither Democrats nor Republicans. As an upstart competitor to entrenched gambling interests, both public and private, Internet gambling threatens some very powerful lobbies. Not surprisingly, Congress has been considering bills that would prohibit Internet gambling. But the architecture of the Internet makes prohibition easy to evade and impossible to enforce. As an international network, moreover, the Internet offers instant detours around domestic bans.
Consumer demand and lost
tax revenue will create enormous political pressure for legalization, which
we should welcome if only for its beneficial policy impacts on network
development and its consumer benefits. We should also welcome it for a
more basic reason: as the Founders recognized, our rights to peaceably
dispose of our property include the right to gamble, online or off.
____________________________________________________________
Tom W. Bell is an assistant professor at Chapman University School
of Law and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute. He is coeditor with
Solveig Singleton of Regulators' Revenge: The Future of Telecommunications
Deregulation (Cato Institute, 1998). March 8, 1999
Introduction
For better or for worse,
the Internet offers new ways of satisfying age-old human desires. For the
most part it serves blandly virtuous ends, such as private correspondence,
public discourse, and legal commerce. Clean living sells few stories, however,
and buys still fewer votes, so reporters and politicians tend to focus
on the Internet's salacious side. They dwell especially on pornography
and gambling, both of which mix big money with powerful temptations. In
the eyes of overeager regulators, however, Internet gambling presents something
even more shocking than sex: the threat that entrenched gambling monopolies,
nurtured and sometimes even run by government officials, might face new
competition. This paper describes the powerful demand for Internet gambling,
analyzes the forces arrayed against it, and argues against its prohibition.
Attempts to outlaw Internet gambling will inevitably fail. The very architecture
of the Internet will frustrate prohibitionists, while consumer demand for
Internet gambling and the states' demand for tax revenue will create enormous
polit-ical pressures for legalization.
Public deliberation and government action will determine whether legalized
Internet gambling comes slowly and painfully or quickly and cleanly. All
facts indicate,
however, that sooner or later Americans will legally gamble over the
Internet. We should welcome this inevitability. The legalization of Internet
gambling will have several beneficial policy impacts, and, as the Founders
recognized, our right to peaceably dispose of our property includes the
right to gamble. Lawmakers therefore can neither effectively stop Internet
gambling nor justify their attempts to do so.
Consumer Demand for Internet Gambling
Americans love to gamble.
At least 56 percent of Americans gambled in 1995. It was estimated that
Americans would wager more than $600 billion in 1998--nearly $2,400 for
every man, woman, and child. About $100 billion of that sum would go toward
illegal bets on professional and college sports, evidence that Americans
already pay little heed to anti-gambling laws. Having already embraced
traditional games of chance, Americans will almost certainly extend a warm
welcome to Internet gambling, legal or not.
The Internet offers cheap
and easy access to a variety of gambling services, bringing competition
to an industry that has long operated under highly restrictive
licensing practices. Thanks to the Internet, gamblers no longer have
to fly to Las Vegas to play the slots, drive to the nearest authorized
track to play the horses, or
even walk to the corner store to play the state lotto. Consumers can
now play those and other games at home via the many Internet sites--well
over 100 and growing--that offer gambling services. Americans have already
shown that they support the nascent Internet gambling industry. Analysts
calculate that of the $1 billion in revenues that Internet gambling generated
in 1997, about $600 million came from the United States. Online casinos
will have worldwide revenues of some $7.9 billion by the year 2001, $3.5
billion of it coming from U.S. consumers. Because the Internet offers bettors
instant access to overseas gambling sites and relative safety from prosecu-tion,
online gambling will grow regardless of what lawmakers and prudes want.
Futility, however, seldom bars bad public policy. So it remains quite uncertain
how quickly consumers will enjoy legal Internet access to new gaming services.
The Prohibitionist Lobby
A variety of political forces
pushes for a ban on Internet gambling. Left-wing activists have shown no
interest in defending consumers' rights to assemble and
speak on the Internet about gambling. And conservatives, while nominally
in favor of free markets, make notable exceptions for activities that,
like gambling, smack too much of the pursuit of happiness. Since neither
Democrats nor Republicans will defend Internet gambling as a matter of
principle, lobbyists have rushed into the vacuum. A number of powerful
lobbies have financial reasons to favor a ban on Internet gambling. The
established, offline gambling industry has huge sunk and overhead costs
that nimble new competitors might prevent it from recovering. The incumbent
industry also brings very deep pockets to the political process; it contributed
nearly $7 million to candidates in the 1995-96 elections. Lobbyists
for the offline gambling industry do not openly demand the prohibition
of Internet gambling. They have, however, objected that Internet
gambling unfairly escapes heavy regulation and have already demonstrated
their power to shape legislation
banning Internet competition.
State and municipal authorities,
having grown fond of nurturing and taxing local gambling, can easily see
that Internet gambling might put their cash cows out to pasture. In 1996
state authorities alone collected $3 billion in taxes from casinos and
other licensed private gambling operations. Because of their lottery monopolies,
which in 1996 sold $43 billion worth of tickets (up 12 percent from
1995)11 and earned revenues of $14 billion, state authorities have a direct
stake in preventing citizens from shopping for better odds on the Internet.
After all, state and local officials collect $0.00 from Internet gambling
operations. Even religious groups may have a conflict of interest when
it comes to opposing Internet gambling. Charitable games raked in $2.5
billion in 1995, a 3.4 percent share of the legal gambling market. Whether
or not Internet gambling represents a moral scourge, it certainly represents
a competitive threat to church bingo games and the like. It bears noting,
given the fervor with which some self-appointed moral guardians attack
gambling, that few Americans regard gambling as immoral. A 1993 survey
found that only 25 percent of those who did not gamble cited moral or religious
reasons. Political Efforts to Ban Internet Gambling Both the U.S. House
and Senate have recently considered bills to prohibit Internet gambling.
Although they differ in their details and may well change as they work
through the legislative process, any of the proposed bills would, if signed
into law, impose draconian, unjust, and unenforceable restrictions on Internet
gambling. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), sponsor of the Senate bill, summed
up how many U.S. politicians regard Internet gambling (and, undoubtedly,
much else) when he said, "I don't believe it can be regulated, so we have
to prohibit it." That existing laws cover Internet gambling makes the rage
for new legislation all the more perverse. Several federal statutes plainly
outlaw the business of Internet gambling, though the paucity of relevant
case law makes their application to individual amateur bettors uncertain.
The current version of the Federal Interstate Wire Act (the Wire Act) prohibits
using interstate communications to run a gambling business. The Organized
Crime Control Act of 1970 similarly makes it a federal crime to engage
in a gambling business that is illegal under state law. The federal Travel
Act,21 as read broadly by the courts, criminalizes all interstate communications
that attempt to facilitate the distribution of gambling proceeds. Still
other federal laws may apply to Internet gambling. Federal law enforcement
agents thus lack not the authority but the will to go after Internet gambling.
The Justice Department has admitted that federal law already prohibits
transmitting gambling information via the Internet but confesses that enforcing
the law "isn't one of our priorities." Even Senator Kyl's office admits
that he "has the view that it is already against the law to gamble on the
Internet." Given that courts have hardly had a chance to apply existing
laws to Internet gaming, why would Congress rush to pass new and potentially
unnecessary legislation?
A close look at recent legislative
proposals suggests that, by invoking the supposed need to address the horrors
of Internet gambling, Congress aims to expand federal power over both currently
legal gambling activities and the Internet as a whole. Enforcing the proposed
statutes would require law enforcement officials to engage in detailed,
constant, and intrusive monitoring of citizens' Internet use. That would
wreak havoc on the Internet and our civil liberties while doing little
to inhibit Internet gambling.
The Kyl Bill
Senator Kyl's Internet Gambling
Prohibition Act of 1997 initially banned every sort of online commercial
contest, everywhere in the United States, for everyone
involved. That blanket prohibition stirred up a swarm of lobbyists,
however, and Kyl amended the bill. As passed by the Senate in 1998,
Kyl's bill included a loophole for certain sectors of the incumbent gambling
industry, such as state lotteries and intrastate parimutuel activities,
when conducted by parties licensed under state or federal law. Another
loophole exempted widely popular fantasy sport leagues from prosecution.
Apart from those concessions to special interests, Kyl's bill continued
to subject Internet gambling to a blanket ban. The Internet Gambling Prohibition
Act failed to make it to the president's desk in 1998, but Kyl has vowed
to renew his fight in the 106th Congress. Kyl presented his bill as merely
an update of the Wire Act, a federal statute that already regulates wagering
over the wires. In fact, however, Kyl targeted Internet gambling for new
and special penalties. His bill would subject amateur bettors to federal
liability for gambling, whereas the Wire Act applies only to people "engaged
in the business of betting or wagering." Phone in your picks to the office
football pool and rest easy. E-mail them in and, under Kyl's bill, you
would face as much as $500 in fines and three months in jail. Even the
Department of Justice criticized Kyl's discriminatory treatment of Internet
gambling, noting that lawmakers may find it "hard to explain why conduct
that is not a federal crime in the physical world suddenly becomes subject
to federal sanction when committed in cyberspace." Kyl's bill would also,
unlike the Wire Act, make interstate gambling a federal crime, even when
carried on between states that have legalized the games in question. The
Wire Act exempts from prosecution bets transmitted between two states,
or a state and a foreign country, so long as both jurisdictions permit
such betting. The Wire Act rightly keeps the federal government out of
locally legal business, whereas Kyl's bill would create a whole new class
of federal crimes. Kyl's bill reaches beyond the Internet--and even interstate
communications--to interfere with matters better left to state and local
authorities. Its coverage includes "any information service" that "uses
a public communication infrastructure" to "enable computer access by multiple
users to a computer serrver." Kyl's bill would thus cover e-mail merely
sent across town. Given that many office e-mail systems rely on outside
service providers, it might even cover e-mail sent across the hall! The
Wire Act that Kyl claims to take as his model modestly, and properly, limits
its scope to transmissions "in interstate or foreign commerce."
The Goodlatte-LoBiondo Bill
Although it shares the name
and the professed aims of Senator Kyl's bill, the Internet Gambling Prohibition
Act of 1997 that Reps. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.) and. Frank A. LoBiondo
(R-N.J.) introduced in the House differs from the Senate bill in some important
respects. Whereas Kyl's bill targets only Internet users, the Goodlatte-LoBiondo
bill would expand federal law to reach all individual amateur bettors,
online or off. It would make it a federal crime to telephone a neighbor
and casually bet a six-pack on the big game. Together, the two bills thus
offer a Hobson's choice between unjust inconsistency and unjust breadth.
The Goodlatte-LoBiondo bill would require an interactive computer service
provider, once given mere notice by law enforcement agents, to discontinue
furnishing any
facility that "is being used or will be used for the purpose of transmitting
or receiving gambling information" in violation of law. As discussed in
the next section, the
architecture of the Internet renders this provision utterly impractical.
Even if it were enforceable, the Goodlatte-LoBiondo bill would make Internet
communications less eco-nomical, less efficient, and less secure. The Inevitable
Failure of Prohibition Several factors will frustrate attempts to prohibit
Internet gambling. This section discusses three of them:
¡E First, Internet technology renders prohibition futile. The
Internet's inherently open architecture already hobbles law enforcement
officials, and relentless technological innovation ensures that they will
only fall further and further behind.
¡E Second, as an international network, the Internet offers an
instant detour around merely domestic prohibitions. Principles of national
sovereignty will prevent the United States from forcing other countries
to ban Internet gambling, and it takes only one safe harbor abroad to ensure
that U.S. citizens can gamble over the Internet.
¡E Third, consumer demand for Internet gambling and the states'
demand for tax revenue will create enormous political pressure for legalization.
The law enforcement community, which has until recently enjoyed the media
spotlight, will quickly find its calls for prohibition drowned out by those
and other political forces.
Internet Technology Renders Prohibition Futile
The very architecture of
the Internet renders gambling prohibition futile. Even the Department of
Justice admits that traditional attacks on interstate gambling "may not
be technically feasible or appropriate with regard to Internet transmissions."
In contrast to telephone commu-nications, which typically travel over circuit-switched
networks, Internet communications use packet switching. Each Internet message
gets broken into discrete packets, which travel over various and unpredictable
routes until received and reassembled at the message's destination. In
other words, sending a message over the Internet is a bit like writing
a letter, chopping it up, and mailing each piece separately to the same
address. The recipient can piece it together, but anyone snooping on your
correspondence has a tougher go of it. Understanding Internet communications
as akin to the postal system clarifies why prohibition of Internet gambling
will not work. Imagine telling the U.S. Postal Service that it must henceforth
crack down on all letters conveying information used in illegal gambling.
It would rightly object that it already has its hands full just delivering
the mail and that it lacks the equipment and personnel to snoop through
every letter. Furthermore, it cannot always tell which messages relate
to illegal activities. People use "bet" and "wager" in everyday conversations,
whereas gamblers often speak in code. Finally, customers of the mail service
would strongly object to having the Postal Service paw through their correspondence.
Prohibitionists could not expect the Postal Service to simply stop delivering
mail to and from certain addresses associated with illegal gambling. The
Postal Service would again object to the burdens of implementing such a
program, and citizens would again object to law enforcement officials'
spying on private correspondence. More important, trying to cut off mail
to certain addresses would utterly fail to stop gambling: gamblers would
rely on post office boxes--which they could change at a moment's notice--and
drop off outgoing correspondence with no return address.
All of those considerations
apply with equal or greater force to Internet gambling. The high volume
of traffic alone ensures that Internet service providers would
find it impossible to discriminate between illicit gaming information
and other Internet traffic. It is easier to encrypt messages, to
change addresses, and to send and
receive messages anonymously over the Internet than through the postal
system. The inherently private nature of the Internet would also
stymie prohibitionists. In contrast to the quasi-public and monolithic
postal system, the Internet relies on thousands of separate and wholly
private service providers to carry out its deliveries. All of them would
stridently object to the burdens of enforcing a ban on Internet traffic.
More than a few would simply refuse to cooperate. Does that sound like
a pessimistic account? To the contrary, it merely describes the current
situation. As technological innovation continues to drive the development
of Internet communications, law enforcement officials will fall further
and further behind the tricks used by illegal gamblers.
Given the technological
constraints, prohibiting Internet gambling plainly will not work as intended.
As an unintended side effect, however, prohibition would sorely compromise
the cost, efficiency, and security of Internet communications. In
criticizing recent legislative proposals to outlaw the consumption of Internet
gambling services, the Department of Justice observed that "this would
likely require the backbone provider to filter messages by examining the
content of traffic flowing across its network in a way that may have serious
economic and societal consequences for Internet usage generally." We would
never accept the cost--in money, time, or privacy--of authorizing the post
office to open every letter in a futile crusade against gambling. Internet
users will hardly allow their network to suffer a similar fate. Given the
inevitable failure of technical fixes, legalizing Internet gambling offers
the only viable solution. Internet Gambling Can Escape Domestic Prohibitions
Outlawing Internet gaming services domestically will simply push the business
overseas. Federal law enforcement agents admit that they cannot stop overseas
gaming operations. "International Internet gambling? We can't do anything
about it," Department of Justice spokesman John Russell said. "That's the
bottom line." Even Kyl has confessed that "this would be a very difficult
kind of activity to regulate because we don't have jurisdiction over the
people abroad who are doing it." Both practical and legal considerations
ensure that no domestic ban on Internet gambling will have an international
reach. Because the Internet provides instant
access to overseas sites, to be effective, any domestic prohibition
on gaming services will have to cover the entire planet. American law enforcement
agents can--and
recently did--arrest local citizens accused of running Internet gambling
businesses, but smart operators will quickly learn to set up abroad and
stay there. Gaming services can find ample shelter overseas. A growing
number of countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Antigua, and Costa
Rica, have decided to legalize
and license Internet gaming services. Principles of international
law, which protect each country's sovereignty, bar the United States from
extraditing its citizens merely for violating domestic anti-gambling laws.
Furthermore, the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution's Bill of Rights,
because it guarantees criminal defendants the right to confront their accusers,
prohibits the prosecution of those who remain overseas while operating
Internet gambling sites. Law enforcement officials in the United States
can therefore neither arrest nor sentence anyone who offers Internet gambling
services from a safe harbor abroad. Even if through international negotiations
U.S. authorities managed to export a domestic ban on Internet gambling,
that sort of foreign trade carries too high a price. As the Department
of Justice observed in its critique of the Kyl bill, "If we request that
foreign countries investigate, on our behalf, conduct that is legal in
the foreign state, we must be prepared to receive and act upon foreign
requests for assistance when the conduct complained of is legal, or even
constitutionally protected, in the United States." That threat looms
all too large, given that most foreign states regulate speech in ways forbidden
by the First Amendment.
Political Demand for Internet Gambling
As discussed above, consumers
have already demonstrated a huge demand for Internet gambling. Soon, though,
the prohibitionists will have more than angry voters to worry about. Law
enforcement agents have seized the media spotlight by telling scary stories
and demanding new powers to crush Internet gambling. As the futility of
prohibition becomes more and more evident, however, cooler heads in state
revenue departments will begin to see Internet gambling as a huge new cash
cow. Prohibition merely ensures that Internet gamblers will ship their
money to places like Antigua, New Zealand, and Australia. State governors
and legislatures will soon demand a share of that bounty. The same political
forces that have led to the widespread legalization of lottery, casino,
and riverboat gambling will eventually favor the legalization of Internet
gambling.
Indeed, the trend toward
the legalization of Internet gambling has already started. When he introduced
his bill banning Internet gambling, Senator Kyl proclaimed, "Gambling erodes
values of hard work, sacrifice, and personal responsibility." He
nonetheless amended his bill to ensure that the incumbent gambling industry
would remain free to exploit the Internet (even while would-be competitors
remained shut out). Kyl's generosity attracted the attention of the Department
of Justice, which noted that "the numerous exceptions for parimutuel wagering
would expand the scope of permissible parimutuel activities beyond what
is currently permitted by existing law." As Internet gambling grows
and spreads, both in its officially sanctioned legal forms and in its unstoppable
illegal ones, so too will the power of its lobbyists to wear down prohibitionists.
Notwithstanding lawmakers' apocalyptic tales to the contrary, legalized
Internet gambling will come as no
great shock. Representative Goodlatte defended his bill to prohibit
Internet gambling with the claim that existing laws "have been turned on
their head" by the Internet
because "no longer do people have to leave the comfort of their homes"
to access casinos. In fact, however, nine states already allow their
citizens to access professional gaming services at home via telecommunications
devices. Far from revolutionizing American culture, legalized Internet
gambling will merely extend current social and technological trends.
The Benefits of Internet Gambling
For the reasons set forth
above, attempts to prohibit Internet gambling will inevitably fail and
give way to legalization. Futility, however, hardly suffices to bar
bad public policy. It thus bears noting that the legalization of Internet
gambling offers a number of benefits. Internet gambling will encourage
the private sector to
develop network capacity and commerce. Just as real-world casinos have
competed to build innovative and appealing environments, so too will Internet
gaming services compete to offer the flashiest graphics and most sophisticated
user interfaces. That competition will result in broader bandwidth and
better software for all sorts of Internet applications.
Critics of real-world casinos
fault them for luring consumers into windowless caverns far from the real
world, with money traps at every turn and free-flowing booze. Some gambling
analysts even claim that casinos, tracks, and other real-world sites rely
on giving gamblers a place to socialize, creating little communities that
console losers and--for a price--administer to the lonely. Regardless of
the validity of such criticisms, they certainly do not apply to Internet
gambling. To the contrary, consumers who log on from home computers will
find it impossible to escape yelling kids, barking dogs, and all the other
distractions of the real world. Internet gambling thus offers a more wholesome
environment than its real-world counterpart. Gamblers deserve all the benefits
that other consumers of entertainment services enjoy--including the benefits
of a competitive marketplace. By giving consumers cheap and easy access
to a variety of gaming opportunities, the Internet will bring competition
to an industry that has too long enjoyed the shelter of highly restrictive
licensing practices. Freeing the gambling market will help to ensure that
only the most honest and generous casinos succeed in drawing bettors' business.
Gamblers also deserve the same legal protections that other consumers enjoy.
Prohibition will not cut off access to Internet gambling; it will, however,
cut off access to the courts. Internet gamblers, like other consumers,
will undoubtedly suffer fraud, breach of contract, and other legal wrongs
from time to time. Prohibition ensures that Internet gamblers, like people
involved in the drug trade, will have no recourse to legal remedies. Prohibiting
Internet gambling will not make it inaccessible, whereas legalizing it
will put the benefits of increased competition within the rule of law.
On the Regulation of Internet Gambling
For the reasons set forth
above, we should both recognize and celebrate that legalization will trump
the prohibition of Internet gambling. But regulators will no
doubt remain worried. What role will they have in the brave new world
of Internet gambling? Playing off that worry, proponents of a ban on Internet
gambling have
argued that, if prohibition will not work, then neither will any scheme
of regulation. Such an argument fundamentally misunderstands a basic
principle of governance: if
they offer greater benefits than burdens, regulations can succeed even
where prohibition fails. The comparative advantage of limited regulation
over prohibition explains why people do not illegally shoot craps in Las
Vegas alleys. In the case of Internet gambling, the benefits of winning
an official stamp of approval might convince an online casino to submit
to regulation, even if that same casino could easily flout a total ban
on its business. Exactly how much regulation will the Internet gambling
industry tolerate? In all likelihood, not very much; for the reasons set
forth above, providers and consumers of Internet gambling services will
find it relatively easy to escape unduly burdensome regulations.
It may well turn out that
Internet gambling tolerates only such simple and general rules as those
that common law stipulates for property, contracts, and torts. That would
still constitute regulation of a sort. Those basic principles already suffice
to make regular many other types of commerce, after all, and would probably
suffice for the rest were commerce more free. Politicians and bureaucrats
might not regard it as "regulation" to treat Internet gambling as an ordinary
business, but their preferred solution--detailed and particular rules enforced
by specialized administrative bodies--would arguably do more to make Internet
gambling subject to rent seeking and industry capture than it would to
make it regular. At any rate, such statist "irregulation" has little chance
of affecting Internet gambling.
The Right to Gamble, Online and Off
Friends of liberty argue
convincingly that the right to peaceably dispose of one's property includes
the right to gamble. Although utterly sound in philosophical terms, such
an argument will almost certainly fail to affect public policy. Lawmakers
typically care more about practices than principles. They will thus comfortably
ban Internet gambling on the assumption that history has demonstrated the
legitimacy of prohibiting, or at least heavily regulating, games of chance.
Of course, history alone
could never defeat the moral argument for the right to gamble. Somewhat
surprisingly, however, history does not even support lawmakers who would
infringe on that right. Gambling in fact played a major role in the personal
and political lives of the Founders of the United States. The infamous
Stamp Act, which triggered the shot at Concord "heard round the world,"
infuriated colonists by taxing playing cards and dice. Thomas Jefferson,
while drafting the Declaration of Independence, relaxed by gambling on
backgammon, cards, and bingo. Jefferson later declared the lottery preferable
to conventional means of raising government revenue on grounds that it
is "a tax laid on the willing only." Benjamin Franklin--using his era's
most advanced technology--printed a good portion of the colonies' playing
cards. George Washington regularly bet on horses, gambled in card
games, and bought lottery tickets. Washington also managed public
lotteries, as did Franklin and John Hancock. Lotteries even helped
to pay for the first home of the U.S. Congress, as well as for public
buildings throughout the new U.S. capital. Clearly, the Founders embraced
gambling as part of their inalienable right to "the Pursuit of Happiness."
The historical record should
give pause even to lawmakers willing to ignore the moral argument against
interfering with the right to gamble. How could any modern politician justify
stripping the American people of rights that the Founders fought for, won,
and exercised? Certainly, the advent of Internet gambling is no excuse
for ignoring honorable historical precedents.
Conclusion
Pundits have described the
Internet, typically in overblown prose, as a powerful tool for decentralizing
political power and advancing human liberty. Whether or
not the Internet will live up to such hyperbole remains to be seen.
True, the Internet has frustrated censors and brought worlds of information
to our fingertips. But it
has never fought against the combined forces of big money, political
power, and moral rhetoric--not, at least, until Internet gambling began
to compete with entrenched, real-world, public and private gambling interests.
Gambling presents the Internet with the greatest test it has yet faced,
but it will probably prevail. Its prohibitionist opponents must not only
pass legislation banning Internet gambling (a relatively easy task), but
enforce it (a nearly impossible one). Sooner or later, as the futility
of prohibition sinks in, as consumers demand the benefits of competition
in gambling services, and as states tire of seeing potential tax revenues
flow to foreign jurisdictions, Americans will enjoy legal Internet gambling.
The legalization of Internet gambling will advance vital public policy
goals. It will reaffirm the values,
so dear to the Founders, of individual liberty, property rights, and
the pursuit of happiness. And it will establish the Internet as a bona
fide technology of freedom.
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