Toronto Star Article Suggest Legalization
As we have reported previously, the media has gone crazy over the online casino
scandals from the previous year regarding the websites Absolute Poker and
Ultimate Bet websites. The article from the Washington Post has received a
pretty high level of attention which was then followed by the Toronto Star. The
writer of the article, Dave Perkins, offered an argument for the regulation of
online casinos in a logical and persuasive way. He suggested that the online
casinos in Canada should be licensed and regulated across the board. His points
were backed by the fact that regulation would protect the players who choose to
partake in online casino play, while every Canadian citizen would benefit from
the tax revenue provided by the industry.
There have been several online casino websites that have written stories on the
Kahnawake sovereign tribe and their income that they provide from internet
gambling. If they are willing to follow in the footsteps of Great Britain when
they legalized and regulated online casinos in 2004, they may see some of the
same benefits Britain has gained from it. Perkins said in his article that now
is the time to make the change in order for the law change to benefit in a time
of financial peril. Governments all over the world are struggling for revenue,
it seems that an easy solution would be to legalize and regulate online casino
gambling. This would in turn make all of the companies legally accountable for
their ‘shady’ dealings as most companies would have to be translucent about
their finances.
The people who gamble are going to gamble whether it is legal or not. Whether it
is ina land based casino or in an online casino. Perkins’s article read:
"Gamblers will gamble, whether it's legal or not, but they would prefer to bet
with legal, regulated companies. For one thing, this kind of online poker fraud
could be addressed and punished openly, instead of handled secretly, as is
happening in the cases at the centre of the WashPost/60 Minutes story." He also
added: "We already allow most forms of gambling and people can't be stopped from
doing it on the Internet now. So step up and do it right. Rake a square game of
online poker, if that's what people want to play. Allowing single-game sports
betting also would provide revenues that could go to everyone from amateur
sports to the pro events on which a majority of betting will take place. This
decision is both so obvious and so far overdue that it should be a no-brainer.
Even for Ottawa."