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On Sunday, August 6th philly.com had a heartbreaking piece titled "The line on online gambling", about gambling addiction and the people it affects. They wrote about the innocent lives squandered and ruined because of this horrible affliction. My heart bled for the guiltless lives which were broken. Ok, I'm lying. I read the piece and got annoyed. Their first sob-story was about "18-year-old Ryan". Apparently Ryan became hooked on poker (is that like hooked on phonics), less "than a month after his first time on an Internet poker site." Sounds tragic, right? Well it gets worse because he "racked up nearly $20,000 in gambling debt on a stolen credit card." Did you catch that last bit? That bit about the stolen credit card? Ryan didn't rack up $20,000 worth of debt on his credit card. Nope, he stole one. What do you want to be that he stole the credit card before playing on the internet casino? He's 18 and is highly unlikely to have his own credit card. The article would lead you to believe that it's the online casinos fault that Ryan is addicted. It sounds to me like Ryan had plenty of problems before internet gambling came into play. Poor Ryan, he now "attends Gamblers Anonymous meetings twice a week in Basking Ridge, N.J., trying to piece his young life together. He said he lost a baseball scholarship to Duke University - where he would have been a freshman this fall - after officials there found out about his arrest for identity theft. He is currently on probation." I worked in fraud assessment when I was the manager of an internet casino group. People steal credit cards and then don't know what to do with them. They can't go buy anything with the credit card because if they buy something there's a chance that a camera will catch them and they will be caught. They don't buy online because then the credit card company will trace it to their house. So they go to online casinos and play there. They make huge bets as it isn't their money they are playing with and if they win they attempt to cash it out. This kid got caught, he obviously bought things online and sent them to his house (or something similar). Someone that stupid would never have made it through Duke anyhow (or, considering the situation their Lacrosse team is in, perhaps Ryan would have fit right in). Either way, my heart doesn't bleed for Ryan. He annoys me. The article annoys me. This piece was published in the Business section of the online paper. I don't see how writing about people who obviously had problems well before they started gambling has anything to do with business, but the article does go on to write about the industry as a whole. Albeit, from a very negative slant. Objective journalism this is not. Suzette Parmley clearly has an agenda. She calls the 1961 Wire Act, "a 1961 antiracketeering law". She goes on about how internet gambling companies in the US are illegal but gambling in them by US citizens is not. Then she goes on about the House legislation and gives full disclosure. Finally she gets to the WTO issue and she cuts it short, she describes "a simmering case before the World Trade Organization brought against the United States by Antigua and Barbados, which are home to many Internet gambling outfits. In short, the two Caribbean countries accuse the United States of restraining free trade in banning Internet gambling." What Parmley neglects to mention is why the WTO has this case. Many states already allow a form of internet gambling. Making off-shore internet gambling illegal is not only economic protectionism, but hypocritical as one can bet on a horse race in New Jersey from Mississippi on the internet via a website based in the US. Of course, this wouldn't serve Parmley's agenda of making off-shore betting sites the root of all evil, so it makes sense that she wouldn't add it to her piece. Parmley does, finally, write about the online gambling business at the end of the article. Here she makes up for the emotional drivel in the beginning of her article, noting that the American Gaming Association (AGA) has changed its mind towards internet gambling. She even added a quote in favor of legalization. "There's a real discussion that the technology exists now to provide the screen to prevent minors from placing bets, and for pathological gamblers to be able to get help," said Frank Fahrenkopf, president and chief executive of the AGA. "So let's take a look at it if it's out there." That goes in direct opposition of the stance she took in the more personal part of the article. She even adds the voice of gambling industry executives who are in favor of internet casino industry regulation. "When it comes to online gaming, I think the issue is very simple: License it, regulate it and tax it," MGM chairman and chief executive Terry Lanni said. "If we could add our brand, and the credibility of a publicly traded United States gaming company, this could be a vast business." She goes on to point out that many countries are in favor of the online gambling industry. "More than 85 countries allow Internet gambling in some form, including France and Germany. The industry's revenues are projected to double to $25 billion by 2010. Next year, online casinos will be licensed, regulated and taxed in Britain, which already allows sports betting." In fact the entire third part of the article is pro-internet gambling. So why the beginning two-part tear jerker? I think it's her personal bias coming through. There's no way she could have written a business piece solely regarding the financial end of the internet gambling industry without writing about those that are negatively affected by it. I suppose that is fair enough, but she could have found a better example of someone hurt by the industry. Or maybe she couldn't, which is how she ended up with a thief who got caught and had to spin it as if it's online gambling's fault that he went astray. Perhaps there's a moral in her story after all. Related Links: Posted on: August 8, 2006
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