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http://money.canoe.ca/News/Sectors/Technology/2006/05/16/1583098-cp.html
Online activity soon to be regulated, gambling proponents told
By DENE MOORE
2006-05-16 16:48:00
Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and founder of the university’s centre for internet and society. (CP PHOTO/Paul Chiasson)
MONTREAL (CP) – Government regulation is coming to the Internet, and the $12 billion US online gambling industry shouldn’t bet on continuing unfettered into the future, says a leading expert on cyber law.Thanks to the proliferation of spam, child porn and other “evil” online, there will be an increasing demand for governments to tame the wild web, Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and founder of the university’s Centre for Internet and Society, told gambling proponents Tuesday.
“Today it is, effectively, unregulable,” Lessig told about 1,600 delegates from around the world attending an online gaming industry summit in Montreal.
“But it’s a mistake to bet the industry on the capacity to escape government’s ability to regulate.”
The United States is already mulling an Internet gambling prohibition law aimed at cutting off Americans from most forms of gaming.
It would be difficult to enforce in the current climate, where sites based in other countries, predominantly in the Caribbean, make gambling accessible beyond the reach of a nation’s own laws.
But most of the big players in Internet technology, including Microsoft, are already working on a mechanism that would add an identity requirement to the web.
Within five years, Lessig predicted, cyberspace will be divided by virtual borders and Internet users subject to national laws.
“That Internet will mean that freedom will be a function of your passport,” Lessig said. “What you’re allowed to do in different places on the Internet will depend on where you come from.”
Nations will enact laws and sign treaties just like they do to enforce current laws on their citizens, he said.
Read more at the above link.
