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European Court to Confound US Nambling Policy?

The European Commission has bought into an argument between the Irish Lottery and the UK lottery over the sale of UK Lotto tickets at street vendors in Ireland. For the geographically challenged, there are two Irish states. One is part of the United Kingdom and is where "the troubles' take place mainly and the other is the Republic of Ireland (the bottom bit) which is a Independent country and member of the European Union.

Now as if the likes of Kyle and HHH, (not to mention the new boys on the block Congressman Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey and Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va., 6th) who have their own anti-Internet bill in the House of Reps), don't have enough trouble with cybergaming law, now they are possibly up against the European Court.

The reason for this is that anti-nambling laws as proposed by Kyl "et al", (a fancy Latin word for " and others" that lawyers and legislators like to use), are not really anti-Internet as such. What they seek to do is firm up the "cross border" laws. Now, as the "wire" (the telephone) and the mail were the main conduits of this in the past, we already have laws that say that you can't send lottery tickets in the mail, (but people do all the time) and you can't make a bet by phone across state borders unless the activity is legal in both states, (but people do, even the Queen of England, by gum).

It's not the Internet they are after. It's the Internet's capacity to transmit bets in such a way that the current laws may quite not cover. That "gray" area that everyone is on about.

Now, fine so far...but now we have some European thinking that might just confound US law.

It seems the Irish lotto took offense at the number of UK lotto tickets. The local Irish lotto had a turnover of 303 million UK Pounds back in 1995 before the advent of the Camelot Lotto operation. By 1996, sales had dropped to 270 million UK pounds. This loss of sales was blamed on the "illegal sale" of UK lotto by shopkeepers who brought the tickets in from Northern Ireland where the Camelot operation has many agents. (That bit of Ireland is part of the UK, at least until the IRA blows it to bits).

To stop this flow of cash north of the border, the Irish Government and their lottery operation fell back on the Lottery Law (The Gambling and Lottery Act of 1956) which bans Irish citizens from playing Foreign Lotteries *.

Now the reason the Irish punters are doing this is at the core of the Lottery Directors Internet dilemma...it's the size of the prize. The local lottery jackpots grow to around 3 million pounds on occasions while the UK lottery hits 10 million pounds plus on regular occasions. This is the issue that strikes fear into Lottery Directors in all small states and countries. They know the lotto punter will always go for the bigger jackpot if he can get on. Given the fraud that passes for Lotto jackpots in the USA, the US is very vulnerable to this phenomena.

(In fact if the Senate and the House really wanted to do something to prevent consumer fraud in gambling in America, they could do no worse than ban the absolute falsehood that passed for Lotto Jackpots. When you are allowed to call 5 million bucks 10 million and get away with it, it's false misleading and deceptive. If anybody else did it, HHH 3.0 would be down on their heads so fast it wouldn't matter. Now that Ralph Nader has been dragged into the nambling argument maybe he could have a look at jackpot fraud!)

Meanwhile, back in Ireland, the government and the lottery got a serve when they tried to enforce this law against the lottery vendors. The European Commission gave them two months to end their ban on foreign lotteries...or be taken to the European Court. The basis of the threat was the position taken by the European Commission that the present lottery laws break the "Single Market" EU rules.

According to the London Daily Mirror, a Euro spokesperson said, "The organization and promotion of lotteries should be regarded as economic activities which should benefit from the single [European] market." She further said "no other EU country banned it's citizens from playing foreign lotteries."

The Irish Times newspaper said, "The indications from Brussels were that the [Irish] Government would change the law. The legal position has been confused since the Director of Public Prosecutions withdrew a case against a Dublin news vendor for selling foreign lotteries in January 1996."

No doubt, all this has caused panic in the European lotteries and their association AILLE who have been pushing for a ban on Internet-based operations like Plus Lotto in Liechtenstein. If cross border sales tickets are considered legal, then what hope have they of banning over the Net sales?

Now, if the barriers fall in Europe some lotteries may grow to amazing jackpot levels. As these are paid in cash and are tax free, US citizens would be mad to ignore what is on offer. If the Europeans can't make their own local laws stick, do you think for a moment they are going to care what Kyl et al are trying to push through Congress?

It isn't easy being a Senator or Lottery Director these cyberdays.

* What an Irish joke, huh ! The Irish banning foreign lotteries!! The damn Irish sweepstakes was responsible for most of the current US anti- cross border lottery laws...in particular, the Postal Act provisions banning cross border mailing of lottery tickets. Back in the good old days, the Irish Mafia up around Boston and New York used to bring in crates of Irish Sweepstakes tickets labeled as "Machine parts". So many US dollars were finding their way back to the Emerald Isle that Uncle Sam had to step in to stop the flow. Funny how times change.

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