Online casino gambling has seen a steady uprising for many years, up to these recent events which made it illegal to advertise online. The legality of online gambling depends on the context, but some are calling this advertising ban a violation of the Free Trade Agreement.
Since many of these sites for online casinos gambling are internationally based, these marketing restrictions have brought a heavy price to the players. Keep reading if you want to know why many online casinos have banned players from the United States.
At this given point in time, it is legal for players to participate in online casino games on a federal level. Although the rules may differ from state to state, this type of game play is generally not frowned upon to harshly. The companies that advertise online casinos in United States have a bit more to worry about.
The small-scale marketers had not too much to worry about, but sites like Yahoo, Google, and many other search engine-based companies recently faced legal issues and fines for the monstrous amounts of advertisements being shown.
Once the advertisements of international online casinos were halted, that is where the ban began. Sites overseas decided to restrict the access of US players as a way to make a statement based off of the recent litigation. It has been very well-known throughout the industry that these companies placed the ban in hopes of the United States lifting their advertising ban throughout the country. This ban on the US led to even more complications that followed.
Since players in the United States became banned from many of the international sites, a number of them enlisted the services of someone who was comfortable placing the bet overseas for them. This gave way to a great deal of scams and dishonest sites that claimed to be able to provide just this service. Not only did this prove to be problematic, it also was illegal.
There are also many documented reports of players placing their bets from off shore servers, with the intention of transferring money from international banks into the United States. Too many players have ended up in handcuffs by trying to attempt bringing gambling earnings into the country this way, which caused problems for the overseas sites as well.
Even though there is no law clearly stating the legality of off shore betting, federal agents began to crack down on these off shore sites with much haste. The 1961 Wire Act has been used to justify prosecuting these gambling hosts, which has detoured many of the international online casinos. Fearing that they too could face stiff punishment for what has been sometimes been called “money laundering,” many companies decided to join together in their ban of US players to avoid complications.
There are many other outlets for advertising online casinos that took a hit as well. Magazine publications were some of the hardest hit, due to the amount of revenue that was lost by the marketing restrictions. Esquire Magazine was fined in 2005 for accepting online casinos advertisements in their publications, just like the 3 major online search engines.
The federal agents have made attempts to make examples of those who have tried to get around this ban by finding other ways to place their bets and wagers. It is unfortunate that all US citizens are having to pay the price for what they consider to be a completely legal activity for them to participate in. Now that the dust has settled somewhat, maybe international online casinos will slowly regain their trust in US players, and lift the ban for good.
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