Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming December 2016 30 Gambling and the law “As the most heavily regulated consumer industry, gaming is one of the slowest to change. Technology is playing havoc with the law of gambling. It is not even clear who should do the regulating.” Take, for example, the clock – “One of the surprising facts of technology is that for most of human history people had only the crudest ways of measuring time.” For gambling, themost potent inventions have been the video screen and computer chip. Every form of gambling, from lotteries through bingo, poker, horse racing and casinos, can now be played on a screen, for money. And the video screen need not be restricted to a licensed location. Inventions expand experience. Video games and home computers created the ability to play faster games more conveniently, almost wiping out slower forms of gambling. New inventions do not mean that old forms disappear – but the games do change. Inventions blur traditional boundaries. The internet made national borders seem like little more than lines on a map. Technology defies existing legal categories. The New Jersey State Lottery and casinos in Atlantic City battled over which would have the right to run Keno games. Does blackjack on the internet qualify as casino gaming? There’s usually no live dealer. In fact, there are no cards, tables or chips, only their images. Perhaps online blackjack is legally a lottery. Players are actually picking numbers and win if the computer on the other end says those numbers are winners. Or maybe it is bookmaking. Bettors are using wires to place bets on future uncertain events. And where does the bet take place? Laws, definitions and fine distinctions on these matters are often made by courts, but because there has to be a live case before a judge can rule on a question, many of the issues of where to draw the lines with online gaming have simply never been addressed by even trial courts, let alone final courts of appeal. One of the few internet gambling cases that did result in a final judgment held that internet casinos were gambling devices like slot machines …but the case involved a guilty plea and an unusual set of facts. The Attorney General of Missouri had obtained a permanent injunction against the online casino, located in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Although the casino had agreed not to accept any applications from Missouri residents for casino gambling services, it did, including from undercover