The Rise of Internet Gambling

Over the centuries, gambling has always been a source of making quick money for some, and losing savings for others.  In the United States alone, gambling rolls in an estimated amount of 40 billion dollars a year, more than the movie and music industries combined.  With the making of the world wide web, internet gambling, too, has become a slowly rising sleeping giant.  Although the internet gambling industry makes an estimated 600-800 million dollars a year, experts predict that the gambling turnover on the internet will soon surpass the billion dollar mark.

In the US, internet gambling is illegal, but due to the vast influx of online gamblers, it has been impossible to enforce this law.  Casino website operators bypass the law by creating their websites via countries in which gambling is legal, for example, the Caribbean.  Thus, due to the global use of the internet, any citizen with a dial-up connection can gamble away.

Authorities in the US attempt to combat the problem in several different ways.  One way is be trying to pass a law in Congress the enables legal action to be taken not only against the online casino operators but also against the gamblers themselves.  The US Federal Justice Department announced that no such action will be taken given that it stands in contradiction with the rights of the Constitution.

Casino operators often have difficulties in collecting their earnings since users are able to stop their credit card payments by claiming that the industry is illegal to begin with.

Despite these obstacles, there is no doubt that internet gambling is on the rise, and that the industry will continue to blossom.