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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/gambling/0,3800010160,39155666,00.htm

Leader: Can online gambling clean up its act?
Is it the UK's place to show it how?

By silicon.com

Published: Tuesday 17 January 2006

London is to host a summit on online gambling with the intention of encouraging the nascent industry to clean up its act and regulate itself more effectively.

Representatives from around the world are being invited but yet again it seems a case of the UK leading the way into an almost impossible war to win.

This is an international problem and not something the UK can sort out by turning to others and encouraging them to get their own houses in order. We can hope they will listen but while questions over how we gamble may seem important to us, with our consumer-led, disposable income-fed lifestyle, other countries aren't likely to lose sleep over such a matter.

And then there are the businesses themselves. They will only change if they want to change. The way the UK can force their hand is to educate consumers on what they should be looking for in an honest 'bookie' or 'casino' - and some businesses in the industry do have some work to do.

But the nature of online gambling is that they are businesses which have long embraced the advantages of offshore bases for a variety of reasons - whether it's tax breaks, light-touch legislation or simply the realisation that the weather and conditions in Aruba, Bermuda, Grand Cayman or Macau tend to be a little more conducive to a higher standard of living than Britain.

If the UK gets too strict then the remaining businesses will simply find a way around this island's own legislation, by heading for another rock in the sea elsewhere. And the UK will have surrendered what little control it currently has - leading to a situation like that in the US, where the government says online gambling doesn't go on and the public gamble more money online than any other population on earth.

Betfair.com, for example, is rightly held up as a stalwart of responsible, ethical gambling in the UK but even they have opened an operation in Malta in order to run an online poker game. And the move to Maltese soil may not stop there for Betfair if conditions in the UK become unfavourable.

The situation is that, with the exception of a few necessary tweaks, such as the greater enforcement of anti-money-laundering regulations, gambling laws in the UK are pretty effective.

We can try to set an example for others to follow but this is an international industry with a truly global audience. Thus we would back UK-led attempts to educate and inform, rather than run the risk of treating gambling as the 'big bad' and simply forcing it further outside the jurisdiction of one of the few countries to be taking the issue seriously.