Minnesota DPS Challenge: 2

The question that now lies for the state of Minnesota is whether or not they will have to ban online gambling throughout the state. Online casinos cannot generally be played in the United States and this is one of the issues that has been heavily debated for a long time. In 2006 the Bush Administration passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act which had the whole online casino industry up in arms. This caused a lot of online casinos to go out of business since the United States was such a huge market and a large revenue resource. The way that some online casinos have been able to stay alive is by making internet gambling clubs and having third party websites make payments to the online casinos instead of having the payment go directly to the online casino, which would alert the financial institutions.

The United States made the financial institutions responsible for denying any illegal internet gambling activity. The only thing that was wrong with that was their initial vagueness regarding what actually constitutes illegal internet gambling. This brings us to the issues that are occurring right now in Minnesota. All of the issues that the Minnesota Department of Public Safety is facing is regarding their attempts to ban over 200 online casinos. The Federal Communication Commission has already threatened the organization that they may not be complying with their standards. However, it is very unclear since the Federal Communication Commission does not have any regulatory authority over the content in the internet, let alone whether or not an online casino should be shut down or not.

Representative Garofalo added that he is currently, "Demanding that a private-sector Internet service provider block access to websites is not a proper function of our state government." The people that are trying to rid Minnesota of the online casino industry are not taking this lying down. A representative from the Department of Public Safety, John Willems said, "It reflects a 180-degree turn from the current enforcement efforts towards illegal online gambling, particularly those that are being currently undertaken," about the bill.