In the USA Today article, “U.S. cracking down on offshore betting industry,” Michael McCarthy writes about what the government is doing to try and shutdown the online gambling industry. In this article, McCarthy addresses many different things related to this issue. He explains what the United States Government has already done to try and shutdown the online gambling industry, he also cites different revenue figures and how much of them the United States accounts for, and he explains why online gambling has been illegal since before its creation. He also writes about what U.S. Attorneys have promised to do, why these companies say that they are not breaking the law, and why gamblers say that they will not stop gambling.
One of the things that McCarthy highlights that the government has already done is the passing of the bill that has prevented these gambling websites from accepting American credit cards. This caused a major stir among the online gambling industry. The Justice Department states that online gambling is illegal and has been for 45 years, because of the Federal Wire Act of 1961. McCarthy stated that authorities have not however pursued the arrests of individual bettors, rather they are only looking for the executives of these online companies.
The online gambling industry has revenues that exceed $12 billion dollars, and unfortunately for them, the majority of those revenues come from the United States. Thus, the shutdown of online gambling from American residents would force these gambling companies to forfeit over half of their revenues. This would undoubtedly be detrimental to the growth of these companies. There are an estimated 23 million Americans who play online poker as well as many other people who participate in other forms of online gambling.
Critics of the new bill are complaining that the bill makes exceptions for state lotteries such as the power ball and horse races, while regulating casino games. They believe that...