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Online Casino Gambling Hearing Specifics

Congress met just days ago to address what was one of the most under-represented topics in Washington up until this point. The UIGEA (a controversial ban on online casinos gambling in the U.S.) was enacted roughly 18 months ago and even though the international gambling industry protested the U.S. offshore gambling restrictions, many in Congress were quite unaware of the details of the UIGEA, how it got passed, and the largely negative impact it has had on the U.S. foreign relations with other countries and U.S. trade policy with the World Trade Organisation (WTO). It has taken many months of lobbying and heightened debate in the U.S. to bring the issue to the forefront of Congressional concerns – which took center stage is the Congressional Hearing about online casinos gambling regulations in the U.S. entitled: Proposed UIGEA Regulations: Burden without Benefit?”

The Congressional hearing took place on April 2nd and featured witness testimonies from multiple industries that have been or will be negatively affected by the proposed online casinos gambling regulations. The complaints largely centered on the fact that the UIGEA is simply unenforceable as it is currently written – it is fundamentally flawed and places an undue burden on the U.S. banking and financial institutions.

As for exactly what the witnesses had to say about the current online casinos gambling ban and regulations, Congressman Luis Gutierrez summarized, "One of the most common complaints is that the proposed rules fail to sufficiently define key terms, leaving financial institutions with significant compliance difficulties. For example, the regulation fails to adequately define what constitutes “unlawful Internet gambling” or a "restricted transaction," yet requires the financial institutions to make a determination on their own about what is lawful or unlawful.”

Once the government released the first round of proposed regulations a furor of negative debate and concerns rose from the banking and financial sectors. The way that the current UIGEA online casino regulations are written would make the financial institutions culpable for blocking internet gambling activities which could then lead to a widespread ban on even legal transactions. Gutierrez remarked, "Consumers will be placed at risk of having lawful transactions blocked. It is easy to see how these regulations, if implemented in their current form, could wreak havoc on electronic commerce in the U.S." This is the chief complaint of the banking industries, the online gambling regulations would simply place to much additional burden on the industry with little clear rules for how the industry would delineate between legal and illegal gambling transactions.