Online Gambling Regulations In The USA

Online gambling has been around in the United States for a long time now, ever since the gambling industry opted for an online presence. However, there are Online Gambling Regulations In The USA in place to control and also ban (as the case may be) online gambling in the USA. Unlike in many other countries that oppose online gambling, there was no federal law that banned Internet gambling or online gambling.

The federal government has left it to the discretion of the governments of the different American states when it comes to legalizing or banning online gambling. Thus you have it that there are some states where online gambling is okay, while there are others where it is considered illegal.

Different Online Gambling Regulations In The USA – The Early Days
There have been a few online gambling regulations over the past few years. However, in the early days of online gambling, when everyone in the online gambling industry was rushing to create an online presence, there was not much clear legislation to determine if USA online casinos were legal or illegal.

In those early days of online gambling, the government opted to use the Wire Act to hit out at online gambling. The Wire Act was a grey area for many because it made no reference to the Internet when it came to banning gambling; the only thing it considered illegal was using an online casino operator using a wire facility for sending out any data that could in any way link to betting for money. While the Department of Justice was convinced this law was enough to ban online gambling, the courts did not seem to agree, stating that this act was good enough only for sports betting.

Then in 1997, a Republican senator from Arizona, Jon Kyl, brought into existence the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act.

Online Gambling Regulations In The USA in the New Millennium
After the Wire Act, the next legislation that cropped up relating to online gambling in the USA was the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. This Act required organizations in the betting industry to abstain from knowingly accepting any payments that mapped to online gambling.

There were other bills that were introduced to the House in 2007. These included the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act and the Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act. Another Act in operation was the Skill Game Protection Act.

At the state level, a number of states have passed legislation that directly bans certain types of online gambling in the United States of America. One such state was Washington State, which enacted legislation in 2006 to make it a crime to receive and transmit any data related to gambling through the Net. Some of the other states have adopted a slightly softer attitude, in their Online Gambling Regulations In The USA, mapping the act of receiving and transmitting data over the Net a misdemeanor, not a felony.