1 1 March 2002

News:

The Nevada attorney general’s office has warned that regulators still ‘face a daunting task’ in fulfilling the remit given to them by the state legislature to report on the legality, reliability and ability to control online gambling. In a 37 page report published on 19 March, Jeffrey R Roedeffer, deputy assistant attorney general, highlighted the problems that have to be addressed before legislation legalising online gambling in Nevada can be enacted.

Industry has welcomed the much trailed UK government plans for radical reform of the gambling industry which are set to make the UK a centre for both online and offline gambling. A government White Paper outlining their plans was set for release by Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, as we went to press.

The UK High Court has ruled that the William Hill Organisation could breach a UK gaming patent despite hosting its games on a server in Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles. In Menashe Business Mercantile Limited and Anr v William Hill, Jacob J was asked by both parties to rule on a point of law. The purpose of the hearing was not to ascertain whether William Hill’s system fell within the Patent claim. Instead William Hill took a short point, namely, that they could not possibly infringe the patent claim. The company alleged that patent law could not catch it because it had placed its host computer outside the UK.

Features:

The launch of World Online Gambling Law Report comes at an exciting time for the industry. As our lead stories report the UK looks set to make a leap forward into legalising and regulating online gambling. In Nevada the regulators are struggling with a range of issues that leave it an open question as to whether they will proceed to enact legislation or remain in a tangled web between Federal and State Law.

With the advent of e-gambling, we find ourselves in a new world that seems to have arisen almost instantly and is moving in every direction at once. The first edition of a new publication provides a good opportunity to take stock of where we are, and where the industry might be going. This article attempts to survey the very basics of the industry.

The UK’s general gambling laws apply to both interactive and online betting and gaming services, and to all those involved in providing these services, including the providers of links or other access to the licensed gambling provider. Thus television broadcasters, sports websites, ISPs and WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers), as well as the bookmakers and gaming operators themselves, must ensure they are compliant with the law. This article examines the legal issues that define the differences between Interactive TV and Online gambling.

To date, the online gambling industry has relied greatly on the use of credit cards as the main method for transferring money in and out of customer accounts. However, recent steps taken by the world’s leading credit card companies, Visa and Mastercard, threaten this primary payment solution and have made online gambling less convenient for the punter.

In the context of a gambling service the expressing “regulation” may be taken to encompass the administrative controls exercised over the provider (and in certain instances the recipient) of that service together with its fiscal treatment. Most Governments regulate gambling services to a greater or lesser extent. The spectrum of administrative controls is virtually infinite ranging from outright prohibition on pain of imprisonment or worse to relatively permissive regimes which concentrate, in the main, on the fitness of the service provider and the protection of the recipient. Online gambling challenges conventional models for the regulation of gambling services to a hitherto unimagined degree.

One of the most vexing issues that has arisen in the online betting circus over the last couple of years is the right to use sports content. There has been huge industry debate over who owns what (if the “what” in fact exists) and what is the price worth paying. The traditional betting environment of the licensed betting office (“LBO”) has never been disturbed by such unseemly debate, largely because it is only in the online (and particularly the idTV) arena that people have seen the potential for big returns with betting products reaching the masses.

The opening up of the gaming industry in Macau has attracted the attention of online operators around the world to the potential of the Hong Kong and China market. This article, the first of a series on the region, examines the background and the potential.