It seems the United States gaming industry is unhappy with an old statute that has the effect of preventing electronic gambling.

‘It represents an enormous opportunity’, said Alan Feldman, spokesman for US-based MGM Mirage, the world’s second-largest gaming operator. ‘And it is an opportunity that is being completely handed to foreign companies right now.’

Standing in the way of this potential windfall is a 1961 federal law that forbids interstate telephone betting that the US Justice Department has said also applies to the Internet, making it illegal for US companies to offer online gambling.

A similar ban exists in Australia by way of the Interactive Gaming Act 2001 (Cth). Although such prohibitions deny domestic entities access to a $15 billion global industry, they remain, in my opinion, justifiable. In addition to maintaining the integrity of the .com.au namespace, they ensure the effectiveness of existing offline gaming regulations. Such regulations would be impracticable to enforce in an electronic context, and may lead to the proliferation of socially undesirable behaviour.

How much longer the bans can be upheld in light of vocal industry criticism remains to be seen. For now, though, like Australia’s ban on domestic internet pornography, they remain in force.