Let’s look back to 2006, when UIGEA was enacted, Party Poker decided on legal advice to leave the US and focus ops on a UK and European facing audience. At the time this online poker site was the most popular in the US. PokerStars and FullTilt took up the gap left behind by this site and PokerStars soon became the biggest online poker site in the land. They continually protested the fact they offered real money online poker games to US players, and was not illegal. Certainly not according to their lawyers – but this is a legal battle for the future, as the site is no longer allowed to operate in the US and owners and so on, have all been indicted, having charges brought against them. Once thing is for certain, this will be an epic court battle.

Whether or not gambling online is illegal in the US? At the moment we would say NOT! While the laws enacted in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act leaves a lot open for conjecture, and it is tagged onto some very obscure Wire Act of 1960; there are very few online casinos in the US that are taking a chance and allowing online gambling. Certainly a player might find themselves in hot water with a rogue operator who is only out to get their money. This is the difficulty when online gambling is not legislated in a country, charlatans may be able to take advantage of vulnerable people who don’t know any better. There is also no recourse in terms of dispute resolution.

In the UK and many European countries things are rather different, and more and more European countries are legalizing online gambling. The UK has a very mature marketplace as everything changed with the Gambling Act of 2005. Although online gambling operations appear to have been getting away with not paying tax by licensing their ops offshore; the British Government has had enough of this situation and are going to be revamping this law by the looks of things.

Understanding the legality of online gambling is important in a way for the gambler, as the internet is of such a nature that these activities are perceived to be “without borders”, and this is absolutely not the case. Poland is another case in point and they have just enacted draconian laws to limit internet gambling. It is also a strange set of circumstances in Europe, because of the EU and fair trade principles, while countries obviously also have to be able enact their own laws autonomously. What has happened however is the EU courts take countries to task when they enact laws which are not in keeping with EU fair trade principals and probably Poland is next on the list.