Hypocritical attitude on gambling

Posted on Sun, Aug. 29, 2004

Hypocritical attitude on gambling

By Dan Gillmor

Mercury News Technology Columnist

A classic example of audacity is the man who kills his parents and asks for clemency on the grounds that he’s an orphan. A few weeks ago, a California gambler who lost a bundle online joined a lawsuit against search engines that sell advertising for Internet gambling sites.

The case, filed in state court in San Francisco, is just one example of our society’s utterly inconsistent and hypocritical treatment of gambling. We love it, we hate it, we use it, and we are being wounded by it.

I would never suggest banning it. Yet I’m puzzled by people who gamble online or offline, because they’re usually working against stacked odds. Over time, they’re likely to lose. Still, we allow many potentially harmful activities, on the principle that freedom means the freedom to make mistakes.

The damage gambling causes to our society is not so fine with me. Addicted gamblers can’t stop throwing their money away, and their families — and the rest of us — pay a price for that. (And please don’t let the industry get away with calling this activity “gaming” — that’s a PR-word trick we should reject.)

An even more troubling addiction is the governmental one. State governments have come to need the money that gambling spins off, and they’re happy to sacrifice people and communities that bear the real burden.

States like California ban or strictly control privately sponsored gambling. Then they turn around and run a numbers racket called a state lottery.

The advertising for these things is some of the sleaziest flackery around. It entices people — mostly from lower-income groups — to bet money they can’t afford to lose, against almost impossibly long odds.

Sad to say, California is racing to become America’s gambling capital. That will turn out to be a fool’s bet, but the momentum seems almost unstoppable.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration has made an odious deal to allow a giant Indian casino in San Pablo, in the heart of the Bay Area, in return for money to whittle down some of the huge state budget deficit. Key members of the Legislature were having qualms late last week.

But the Schwarzenegger administration is still pushing to squeeze as much tax revenue out of gambling as possible and the Legislature is awash in campaign contributions from tribes — $175 million since 1998, according to the Los Angeles Times. So more gambling is a certainty, not a possibility.

Then there are the two ballot measures, Propositions 68 and 70, to be decided in November. If passed, they would almost certainly lead to a dramatic expansion of casinos in the state. I plan to vote against more gambling, but I’m probably in the minority.

The gambling boom — a nationwide phenomenon — helps explain why so many people are getting so antsy about online gambling. After all, cyber-betting cuts into the local tax revenues, and we can’t have that, can we?

According to a new lawsuit filed by Casino City, a Louisiana company that publishes an online casino directory and other information on the topic, the U.S. Justice Department has been peppering media companies with subpoenas about the advertising they’ve accepted for online casinos based outside the country. The suit says this is a violation of free speech rights, and I tend to agree.

Then again, I also tend to think that anyone who gambles on a Web site based offshore may be asking for some trouble beyond the kind they can expect to have through domestic sucker’s betting. Do we really need the feds on this case? Don’t they have other things to worry about, like maybe terrorism?

The California civil suit by the online gambler who lost a bundle leaves me cold. The complaint (http://www.techfirm.com/yahoocomplaint.pdf) makes pious references to the problems caused by Internet gambling, and to the money that local casinos (and the state) don’t get as a result.

The bettor and his co-plaintiff, through several high-powered law firms (including the Rothken Law Firm in San Rafael, which has done some admirable work on behalf of consumers’ rights), want the search companies to stop taking such ads and to pay large damages.

Suppose Yahoo et. al did both — though I hope they fight this case hard. Gamblers could still find the offshore sites just by using the search engines. Are they supposed to delete all references to sites some people don’t like? Slippery slope, anyone?

– from the Mercury Times, http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/9528193.htm