The Legality of Online Poker in the USA and Canada
Introduction
Incredible as it may seem, and allowing for one or two minor changes according to the State in which you live - playing online poker in the USA is illegal. Even more incredibly, considering that we’re now in 2009 - any online, or internet, gambling activity is still illegal in the USA.
Why is online poker still illegal in the USA?
If you actually spend a little time looking through some of the arguments currently being put up against legalizing online poker a strong feature of those arguments can be summarized as ‘protecting the moral fiber of the citizens’. Or, put more simply, the government thinks that its citizens will all go stir crazy as soon as online poker can be legally played throughout the country. We’d all immediately start spending rent and food money gambling in online poker competitions, neglecting our children, failing to turn up for work and no doubt contributing to a rise in anarchy and terrorism throughout the land! Now to be serious on those points - yes there are people who have addictive personalities and may well play online poker games to their personal and financial detriment. Also, any nation must have adequate federal laws to ensure that online poker websites have very stringent controls to prevent under-age players accessing any online poker games and, for example, that money laundering cannot take place. There are many other controls that could also reasonably be insisted on, for example: ensuring that online poker players a have to deposit money for their betting chips in advance of a game, that gambling credit can’t be raised during a game, that there are time limits for playing an online poker game etc. I know some people will think that even measures like those would be too restrictive and online poker players really should be left to make their own decisions. However, the fact is that some people do need protecting from themselves - but not all of us and certainly not all of us all of the time! So perhaps we could accept that our government quite rightly wants to ensure that they have adequate controls over online poker ‘for our own good’. But surely here’s an analogy here between online poker being illegal and current USA gun laws. Anyone of the right age can own a gun - and the government trusts us to use them responsibly. If they can trust us with a lethal weapon - why can’t they trust us with playing an online poker game? Which brings us to the real reason as to why the USA government doesn’t want to legalize playing online poker - money! Bricks and mortar casinos and gambling houses are easily regulated and have to pay taxes to the appropriate state and national authorities. With online poker, or even online gambling in general, the ‘government’ may well have very little chance or control over obtaining any tax revenues from it.
Online poker - censorship, law and reality.
Why should the USA government in effect censor us from playing online poker in our own homes? During 2008, and especially in the run up to the Beijing Olympic Games, the US government threw up a hue and cry about internet censorship in China; and yet hypocritically it seeks to deny its own citizens access to an online activity, playing online poker, that is a perfectly legal activity in a regulated bricks and mortar casino or gambling house throughout the land. Of course this censorship in the use of the internet is difficult for the authorities to maintain. After all there are far less salubrious and more distasteful things on the internet, than online poker, for the authorities to spend their time prosecuting. So the reality is that whilst playing online poker, or owning an online poker website, in the USA is illegal - you can probably carry on playing online poker without risking being prosecuted. After all, if in Nevada, that Mecca of gambling in the USA, they can advertise on TV and billboards online poker games - what real chance is there of being prosecuted?