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Comment by maerek | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like Antigua is threatening the nuclear option over online gambling. I'm not clear what sort of jurisdiction (or influence) the US should have regarding gambling by American citizens in other countries, but it seems the simplest solution would simply be to legalize it in the US.

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As a non-American, I've always wondered why online gambling is banned in the US. Is it simply because the casinos and other non-online sources were able to lobby to make it that way?

As far as I can tell, yes. This seems particularly clear in cases where states that have otherwise banned gambling run their own lotteries.

I think a lot of people don't consider the lottery gambling. Gambling is like a lot of vices. People want to do it, but they don't want other people doing it near their homes. Vegas and Indian casinos appear to be the nimby equilibrium point.

The hilarious part is that if the reasoning really is that one doesn't want to see it being done near their home, then online gambling is ideal. People would do it "in the privacy of their own homes", and I think you'd quickly find people preferring it to going to a building (due to ease and sheer variety). The brick and mortar places "attract riff raff" precisely because they are by definition concentrations of theoretically socially unacceptable behavior, which are then additionally usually combined with alcohol sale.

Yeah, I don't really know where online gambling fits in. Though some people probably like that gambling is inconvenient because they have poor impulse control. "I want you to stop me from doing this thing I'm gonna want to do later before I regret it."

Not my monkey, not my circus.

To get a gaming licence for an online gambling game in the UK, you need to provide a mechanism to allow players to block themselves from playing.

It's not hard to make that kind of requirement, if it were the real reason online gambling is restricted.

I believe the nimby stance against gambling is that it creates poverty. An opponent with such a stance might say something to the effect of "People are only keeping this in the privacy of their own homes until they run out of money. Then they start performing crimes in our neighborhood to feed their addiction."

I don't agree with this stance, but I've heard it made before.

Don't forget about gambling on horse and dog races.

Online gambling is not illegal in the US.

Transferring USD to an online gambling service is illegal.

Many gambling websites operate completely legally in the US using Bitcoins instead of USD.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-03/bitcoin-maki...

How long before someone gets taken down for this?

I could forsee some ambitious DA deciding that a BTC exchange was simply a way to launder dollars into online gambling and drug tokens...

Very interesting point of view, I have never thought about it that way. I think you're right.

I always assumed it was because the US prefers that people gamble in the market rather than in the casino.

To use a now-trite expression, "follow the money." Expressions of moral outrage (e.g. pity the poor gambling addicts) serve mostly as a smoke screen.

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