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http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2006/0805/biz/stories/5aug_netgambling.htm
Antigua may best U.S. in WTO case
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Locked in a federal prison in the Nevada desert, tortured by the distant lights of the Las Vegas strip, Jay Cohen couldn’t stop thinking about getting even with the government that had put him away — and his revenge fantasy had a unique twist.
U.S. prosecutors put Cohen behind bars in 2002 for running an Internet gambling site in the Caribbean country of Antigua and Barbuda. Not long before the prison gates shut, he had learned that the federal crackdown on online betting might violate global trade rules.
So he got Antigua and Barbuda to instigate a complaint at the World Trade Organization.
Fast forward: Antigua and Barbuda, population 69,000, is winning. The case has become an embarrassment to Washington, one that could result in economic pain.
Please finish reading by following the above link.
Good reading… Thank you
In the end I guess its more of a moral victory for Antigua rather than anything that will really make a difference. What do we ship to them that we need to rely on them to buy?
I am still glad they are doing it though.You have to look at the global picture. If they succeed this will bring many other casinos to thier local government to force the same actions. Remeber a tiny victory, or even the though of such by an underdog can create a world wide change. Almost like finally saying what everyone is thinking, people wont shut up after it happens.
allfreechips wrote:You have to look at the global picture. If they succeed this will bring many other casinos to thier local government to force the same actions. Remeber a tiny victory, or even the though of such by an underdog can create a world wide change. Almost like finally saying what everyone is thinking, people wont shut up after it happens.
Very true.Canada, the EU (covering the UK), Japan, Mexico and Taiwan reserved the right to join Antigua in the WTO complaint, so this is not the last we have heard of it.
What this victory will allow A&B to do is to put into place ‘retaliatory trade sanctions’ against companies based in the US. They are currently considering their retaliation to be in intellectual property, i.e to legally ‘bootleg’ DVDs, and music.
So we could be seeing legal ‘super Napsters’ and ‘Film88.coms’ (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-933558.html ) based out of Antigua and Barbuda as early as 2007.
The victory will not be financial but moral.
America cannot parade around acting like the “defender of democracy” and “bastion of free-trade” when they’re in obvious breach of WTO rulings.
Well .. actually they can .. and currently do … :dajudge:
But the posturing will look more and more pathetic the longer it goes on.
:withstupi
On the downside ////The item linked actually touched on the free-trade in agricultural products too – and it’s a fact of economies that most first world farmers in the US and EU only exist thanks to maasive subsidies offered by their governments.
Basically the high cost of living – and low price of food – means that farming huge tracts of first world land is not economic – but successive European and American goverenments have propped it up in order to retain votes and stay in power.
The third world is crying out for fair free-trade on this issue – as the meagre profit involved (by first world standards) are still very attractive to third worlkd economies – and it’s a very real problem that has exisited for 20 years.
Unfortunately, trade talks after trade talk seem to be blocked – and we are probably still 20 years away from getting it solved …
What this means is the the online gambling WTO uling is probably NOT going to have a real impact for a decade at least.But at least it scores a few points against the pompous posturing senators eh?
:Nod:
