The International Herald Tribune has a great article on the dispute before the WTO on gambling between Antigua and Barbuda and the United States.
Online gambling case pits Antigua against U.S. and challenges WTO, By Gary Rivlin
It lays out the angles that you wouldn’t see in just reading the case documents. My favorite quote in the article is from Charlie Nesson of Harvard Law School:

Think of this from the WTO’s point of view. They’re this fledgling organization dominated by a huge monster in the United States. People there must be scared out of their wits at the prospects of enforcing a ruling that would instantly galvanize public opinion in the United States against the WTO.

I saw Prof. Nesson speak at this year’s iSummit in Croatia about online gaming. He’s trying to lead efforts to restore a bit of sanity to the US approach and to regulate activities like online poker rather than try to ban it. He handed out packs of Berkman Center playing cards, with which I’m playing Texas Hold ‘Em.

In contrast to the US, the UK approach has been to welcome online gambling and to try to make Britain a centre for a sensibly regulated industry. The actions and reactions with the US and the WTO will have huge effects on this industry, and may encourage even more operators to the UK.

This entry was posted Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 9:56 am and is filed under gaming, net regulation. Both comments and pings are currently closed.