US Internet Gambling Payday from PartyGaming Earns Scorn
Last week, the US Department of Justice agreed to not follow up on potential prosecution of online gambling firm PartyGaming, in exchange for a $105 million payment. Now, legal scholars and civil libertarians are wondering what precedent has been set by dropping the online casino investigation for a massive fee.
PartyGaming admitted it conducted gaming operations in the US prior to the 2006 passage of the UIGEA. But it never took sports betting, and it withdrew from the US market after the payment transaction ban was passed. Legal experts have said that PartyGaming engaged only in legal activity, and stopped any action as soon as laws making those activities illegal was passed.
But the threat of continued US harassment was costing PartyGaming both in a depressed stock value and in lost business opportunities. By applying relentless legal pressure, the US Attorney's Office was able to basically extort punitive payment from the Internet gaming company.
The idea that US law can be applied to a foreign company, let alone retroactively, leads to a dangerously slippery slope, says J.D. Tuccille. Writing for the Tampa Bay Examiner, the civil liberties expert points out that the notion of such countries as China or Iran expecting US companies on the Internet to abide by their law is not an attractive one.
Such a concept, Tuccille says, could result in censorship forced on companies based in the US, "where sexual and political content forbidden elsewhere is perfectly legal."
If turnabout is fair play, then the Examiner considers what the EU might want to charge the US for breaking WTO rules concerning free trade in services such as Internet gaming.
