The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Info Highway May Convert Your PC Into a Gambling Mecca

On Sunday I placed a $10 bet on the Angels to win the American League pennant at irresistible odds of 35 to 1 (irresistible because the Angels were five games ahead of the pack in the AL West).

But I didn’t go to Las Vegas or consult a local bookie. I placed my wager on the Internet at a sort of virtual casino based in Antigua, a sovereign island in the Caribbean. I made the bet from Los Angeles, sure, but did I break any laws? And if I hadn’t mentioned it here in the paper--just between you and me--who would ever even know about it?

If new technologies need a compelling application before they really take off, the compelling application for on-line commerce may well be gambling.

The reasons aren’t complicated. Americans love to gamble; last year we’re estimated to have wagered a staggering $394 billion, according to International Gaming & Wagering Business, a trade journal, whose calculations don’t even include the commodity pits.

Yet betting is illegal--or at least highly circumscribed--where most of us live. You can always go to Vegas or Atlantic City, of course, and there are the state lotteries as well. But at home, most forms of wagering aren’t legal.

This situation makes the Internet a natural for eliminating the barriers between bettors and a chance to bet. In this instance, as in so many others, the Internet gives us a good idea of where any future “information highway” might be headed.

I’m not the only one who thinks it’s headed toward gambling. For some time now, interactive television visionaries have been saying that wagering will be one of the most popular things people will do when they have hundreds of TV channels available and can send information as well as receiving it. For example, John C. Malone, chief executive of the cable industry leader Tele-Communications Inc., has said that the big winners for interactive television will be “games of skill for prizes” and “near-gambling.” He has also observed that laws, not technology, are the only barriers to full-scale gambling.

*

Personally, I don’t believe either will be much of a barrier. The Internet has shown again and again the futility of trying to regulate consensual information exchanges in the era of the microchip. Moreover, the legal situation with respect to Internet gambling is murky, according to I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School in Los Angeles and an expert on gambling law. He adds that many of the laws that might be relied upon to prosecute such gambling aren’t up to the task.

“Applying anti-bookie statutes to the Internet is like performing brain surgery with stone tools,” says Rose. “It might work, but the result will be awful messy.”

It’s not clear, for instance, that overseas casino operators are violating any U.S. laws by taking bets from geeks like me in Los Angeles. Rose says authorities would be on the firmest legal ground in bringing cases against the geeks--er, that is, the bettors who make such wagers. But few prosecutors are likely to win reelection by dragging the voters out of their living rooms en masse for laying a few bucks on the Dallas Cowboys.

Rose says the laws we have probably give authorities some grounds for prosecuting Internet access providers who knowingly allow their services to be used in making such bets, but these providers have striven to adopt a neutral role analogous to the phone companies, and probably work hard to avoid knowing what people do with their accounts (as long as users aren’t doing something so irksome to fellow ‘Net users that it begins raining mail bombs).

Besides, the Internet isn’t the first place where something like this has happened. Some Americans place bets by phone with a British “turf accountant,” people in Michigan bet on horse races in Canada, and state agencies in New York and elsewhere accept bets by phone, as do some private bookies in the Caribbean.

As for the technological barriers to gambling on the Internet, they are falling fast. Using the World Wide Web, placing bets on the other side of the continent is as easy as point and click. At the Global Casino, for instance, operated by a public company called Sports International, I simply selected the Angels from a list of teams; the odds appeared to be from May, which I guess accounts for 35-1. (The odds have since dropped to 7-1). I received a confirming invoice by e-mail.

Other parts of the casino aren’t open yet, but the promise is that most of the usual games will be offered, including blackjack, slots, roulette and poker. Meanwhile, there is some sports betting, a logical offering given that the majority of Internet users are men.

To complete my bet on the Angels, I have to send a cashier’s check or postal money order to Antigua within seven days, but if I plan to make further bets I can do so more easily if I send in some money first and open an account.

As secure Internet payment systems develop, of course, betting will become easier. And if some form of digital cash--crypto-currency that can be exchanged like cash via the Internet--really does take hold, betting will be even easier still. The real problem, rather than laws or technology, may well be simply controlling underage gambling.

It’s worth noting that a certain amount of trust is involved here. Rose points out that gambling debts aren’t enforceable in U.S. courts. And try collecting from someone in Antigua who has decided not to pay. Then again, when have bettors ever lacked for faith?

*

Dan Akst can be reached at akstd@news.latimes.com or at https://www.caprica.com/~akst on the World Wide Web.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Place Your Bets

If you want to try a little Internet gambling for yourself, point your World Wide Web browser at the Global Casino (https://www.netaxs.com/people/sportbet/casino.htm). You also might visit the graphics-crazed Internet Casino in the Turks & Caicos Islands, also in the Caribbean, at https://www.casino.org/cc/. For a taste of some casino games, try Michael Greene’s World Wide Casino at https://eagle.sangamon.edu:8081/greene/casino.html.