Briar Patch Justice
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:08 AM

Apologies for bloggish neglect of late -- Tbilisi does not believe in blogging. But I have pried a moment away from my khachapuri to send along an update on those federal obscenity charges aimed at a woman who placed sexually violent stories on the internet. Among the unusual features of this prosecution is that the charges -- which concerned adult obscenity only, even though some of the characters in her fictional tales were minors -- were aimed at text, mere words: there were no drawings or photos. A second unusual feature is that the defendant, who seems to have had a hard life, suffers from agoraphobia. This latter feature played a role in the resolution of the case, because she was in no condition to be coming to a courtroom for weeks on end. The woman has agreed to a settlement in which she pleads guilty and is sentenced to --- home confinement, to which her medical condition had essentially sentenced her long ago. A sad story all around, though not as sad as what might have happened with a full blown trial. And federal prosecutors have succeeded in cleaning up the internet through this fiendishly clever legal maneuvering. Of course, it has come at some cost: they may have momentarily averted their gaze from that dastardly Tommy Chong.

Labels: internet, litigation, obscenity

 
Antigua Roars Again
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:51 PM

In the WTO internet gambling case that seems to go on and on and on, Antigua and Barbuda is threatening to start ignoring US copyrights and patents by the end of the month if the US does not make some movement towards settling Antigua's WTO-validated complaint. US movies, music, and computer software would likely be copied and sold, at least until Antigua earns the $21 million it has coming in damages. The WTO would have to approve Antigua's self-help maneuver, but might have little grounds for withholding approval. The movie folks are concerned.

Vice Squad has let pass unmentioned the last couple iterations in the US-Antigua dispute. Our most recent relevant (to this topic, that is) post was last August; ironically, the US largely won the case with Antigua at the WTO, but has been stonewalling for years to avoid a reckoning on the small portion in which Antigua prevailed. The WTO is unimpressed, and likely will remain so.

Labels: Antigua, gambling, internet, WTO

 
Newish Habits in the New York Times
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:54 PM

Today's Sunday Style section contains two front page articles on forming bad relationships. One is about forming a bad relationship with both food and alcohol; the second is about forming a bad relationship with the wired and wireless world.

The bad relationship with food and alcohol is too little of one and too much of the other: an eating disorder co-existing with large alcohol consumption. These two disorders can be complementary: "Many bulimics who drink use alcohol to vomit, experts on eating disorders say, because liquid is easier to purge. They also tend to vomit because they often drink on empty stomachs." And while abstinence can be an effective strategy for overcoming substance abuse, it is of no avail in combating an eating disorder.

A weekly day (more or less) of abstinence is the approach taken by the author of the second article, in dealing with his fixation on connectivity. It took a while, but he came to embrace his "secular Sabbath": "It’s been more than six months, and while I’m hardly a new man — no one has yet called me mellow — this achievement is unlike any other in my life. And nothing bad has happened while I’ve been offline; the e-mail and phone messages, RSS feeds, are all there waiting for me when I return to them."

For addictions as "bad relationships," see Peter McWilliams's Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do.

Labels: addiction, alcohol, internet

 
Internet Porn Stats
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:36 PM

Top Ten Reviews hosts a webpage that is chock full of statistics relating to pornography generally and internet pornography specifically. For instance, it seems that China is the largest market (in value terms) for pornography, though in per capita value terms, South Korea is dominant: porn "revenues" in South Korea exceed $500 per-capita per year, versus less than $50 in the US of A. (Revenues for porn may well be falling in the US.) Search engine requests for "sex" are most prevalent (in per capita terms?) in Pakistan, whereas South Africa is top of the table for "porn" searches. Among US cities, one stands out for naughty internet searching, leading the country in the "sex", "porn", and "xxx" categories. I am sure that by now you have guessed that this hotbed of perversion is, er, Elmhurst, Illinois.

Do you think that Elmhurst (located in the Northern District of Illinois) leads in those searches because some Elmhurst residents are trolling for potentially obscene material to pass along to the Feds? Or maybe there is one very active fellow who lives in Elmhurst?

Incidentally, I am uncertain about the provenance of many of the numbers reported on the Top Ten webpage, so I would take them with a grain of salt. (I am pretty confident about the "Elmhurst factor," however.)

Update: Please drop what you are doing right now and go watch Michael Pollan (of, among other things, The Omnivore's Dilemma) give a TED talk. Just in case you are new to this, TED talks are the best things on the web; while there, check out Freakonomics guru and general good fellow Steve Levitt. [I almost forgot: Pollan has been mentioned on Vice Squad before (surely his greatest honor) in part for the following quote: "As a result of the war against cannabis, Americans are demonstrably less free today." Levitt, too, has had his days in the Vice Squad sun.]

Labels: Illinois, internet, obscenity, pornography

 
Pushing Poker Skills
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:55 PM

In part because many anti-gambling laws refer to "games of chance," devotees of poker often try to convince the world that theirs is a game of skill. (Though I favor legal gambling, I am not sure I am convinced of this claim as a legal argument.) At any rate, poker surely involves decisionmaking under uncertainty, and it might even be an effective vehicle for teaching such skills or for acquiring them in a form that can translate into other domains. For instance, the idea that often the best thing to do is to exit a hand early, that sunk costs are sunk, and that playing hunches as opposed to probabilities is not a surefire way to riches, all could come in useful in a broad array of situations -- and then there is the whole problem of what appears to me to be widespread misunderstanding of probabilistic reasoning.

Recently a Harvard law professor of some renown has been instrumental in establishing the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. You can watch the first meeting of the Harvard Law School chapter here. The editor of Reason magazine is as pro legal vice as is Vice Squad (probably even more so), but he is dismayed that the bid for poker legality is couched in its status as a game of skill, that somehow the argument has to be made with respect to poker's virtues.

Meanwhile, a famous poker player, Annie Duke, has joined the board of the Decision Education Foundation. Who could be better? After all, "The mission of the Decision Education Foundation is to improve the lives of young people by teaching them how to make better decisions." Poker is awash in favorable publicity, it seems -- well, except for that embarrassing cheating scandal at a Costa Rica-based internet poker site.

Labels: gambling, internet, poker

 
British Bingo Update!
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:19 PM

The loyal Vice Squad reader keeps asking, hey, have there been any more developments concerning the harm to the British Bingo industry from the implementation of the smoking ban? Good news: the South Wales Echo has stepped up, reporting that bingo halls have seen a revenue decline of 15 to 20 percent. The article notes that the problem isn't just that bingo playing smokers are staying home, though some are (and perhaps engaging in internet gambling); rather, it is that those who still come to the Bingo parlour don't take part in the related on-site gambling during the fifteen minute break between Bingo sessions. Fears (both for Bingo parlours and for pubs more broadly) are that the situation could worsen in the winter, when people are less willing to step outside for a smoke.

One alcohol-serving club, according to the article, has responded to the smoking ban both by installing an outdoor smoking area, and by reducing the price of beer.

Speaking of gambling in Britain, September marks the completion of the implementation of the new gambling regulations. Among other things, internet gambling providers that meet the regulatory standards can now be licensed and legally advertise on television. One Telegraph columnist, noting how major British gambling providers have not licensed their internet operations in Britain, is unimpressed:

The point of the British licence is to encourage the world's casino websites to base themselves here, where they can be diligently regulated night and day by 50 compliance managers newly recruited for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. But of the thousands of online casino operators worldwide, only a handful - 14 the last time I looked - have applied for one.

Why? Because Brown decided to tax all British-based betting and casino sites at 15 per cent of gross profits. Not surprisingly, they have chosen to be based in much lower-taxed places, eg Malta, which taxes at a very acceptable 2.5 per cent.

Ladbrokes has not signed up for a British licence, nor has William Hill, which used to be based in Curacao, but now has moved to Malta. Oh - and since Malta is in the European Economic Association, it will be allowed to advertise on television.

Labels: bingo, Britain, gambling, internet, licensing, smoking ban

 
US-Antigua WTO Dispute in the Times
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:39 PM

Dani Rodrik points us to an article in today's New York Times on the WTO case between Antigua and Barbuda and the United States. One point that the article does not make clear -- indeed, it sort of suggests the opposite -- is that for the most part, the US won the case. But it does note the stonewalling tactics of the US on that portion of the dispute, primarily concerning internet betting on horse races, in which Antigua prevailed.

Existing domestic vice controls, for all of their faults, represent a sort of evolved equilibrium that in part tries to deal with the social costs of vice. Allowing these controls to be trumped by trade treaties is dangerous, as Vice Squad continues to proclaim. Undoubtedly it would be possible to imagine a world in which a nation's chosen approaches towards vice could be made consistent with trade non-discrimination principles. But allowing those principles to overturn the existing equilibrium, before the first-best system of rules is worked out, puts a country at risk of a difficult transition that might involve much higher social costs of vice. And this dynamic in turn will put trade openness at risk. Dani seems to agree:

To me, this is another example of how existing WTO practices are leading to the narrowing of policy space to the detriment of legitimacy (and economic logic). When the system serves to enforce new restrictions on domestic policy autonomy that would be wildly unpopular at home, it is time to rethink the system.

Dani couches his reaction by invoking the "residual rights of control" approach to ownership. This is not an approach I have ever found to be particularly compelling, though I imagine that I am missing something obvious. Imagine that there is an asset over which there are two payoff-relevant dimensions of use, say, intensity and duration. We write a contract that says that I get to choose intensity and you get to choose everything else. Then by the "residual rights" approach, you are the owner. Now imagine the (equivalent, by stipulation) contract that gives you the right to choose duration, and I can choose everything else; handy dandy, I'm the owner?

Labels: Antigua, gambling, internet, Rodrik, WTO

 
British Internet Gambling Advertising Partial Ban
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:02 AM

The new UK gambling regulations are going into effect and they include efforts to ensure that internet gambling providers are held to high standards. One such effort is to permit (as of September 1) the advertising of web-gambling sites only if they are located in a geographical location that provides a high level of regulatory oversight. This approaching regulation is both inducing some internet gambling providers to relocate, and some cyberbetting havens to upgrade their oversight.

Labels: Britain, gambling, internet, marketing

 
Porn Again
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:18 PM

XXX.Church.com is in the news (2-page pdf of New York Times story) again. (Again, you ask? But surely you remember the Vice Squad post of November 2, 2004?) XXXChurch is the anti-porn ministry, but one that spreads its message in a relaxed way, and directly to porn stars, among others. They have lots of ongoing events, including church breakfasts around the country ("Porn and Pancakes") and a debate series featuring one of the pastors along with porn star Ron Jeremy. (I am slated to be out of town, alas, during the August 6 Chicago debate.) Then there is National PornSunday, scheduled for October 7, 2007, though I suspect that this isn't one of those national commemorations that gets a sound byte mention from the president. This is in addition to lots of other dimensions to XXXChurch.com's work, including two elements we mentioned in the 2004 post: accountability software (X3watch) that sends a list of your suspected internet porn wanderings to your designated partner, and the "God kills a kitten every time you masturbate" campaign, now featuring an Operation Save the Kittens video. XXXChurch is John Stuart Mill's kind of anti-porn lobbyist: they are not about passing laws to shut down the porn industry, or coercing people to avoid porn. They employ entreaty, not command, and thus earn Vice Squad (somewhat short of national) commendation.

Labels: internet, Mill, pornography, sex

 
Swedish Internet Poker
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:40 PM

While the US does what it can to keep its citizens from gambling on the internet, other nations have taken a different approach. In March, 2006, Sweden's state-owned lottery, sports betting, and casino company, Svenska Spel, opened an internet poker facility, available only to Swedish adults. The story of its founding and first year or so of operation is recounted in an article in the April 2007 Gaming Law Review.

To help realize its goal of promoting responsible gaming, the Swedish internet poker game makes generous use of partial and full self-exclusion options. From Svenska Spel's English-language webpage comes this description:

To minimize the risks for gaming addiction each poker player at svenskaspel.se has to set individual limits per session, per day, per week, per month as well as maximum duration of the day, week or month. Furthermore the player may exclude himself.

That is, the imposition of limits is not voluntary: if you want to gamble at the Swedish poker site, you must specify a series of time and value betting limits. You can set them as high as you like, but you must set them, and you cannot raise the ceilings before the end of a waiting period. (Alteration rules are asymmetric: you can lower your gambling limits at any time.) The site itself enforces an overall limit on the size of a bet in a single poker hand, but it is huge by most people's standards, over $10,000.

The article in the Gaming Law Review also discusses another Vice Squad obsession, the possibility that Swedish laws providing legal gambling monopolies (besides Svenska Spel, there is another one for horse racing) might conflict with European Union requirements. For a while it looked as if the Swedish government was going to end the gambling monopolies, but the situation is currently in flux.

Labels: EU, free trade, gambling, internet, poker, self-exclusion, Sweden

 
Porn Past Peak?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:25 AM

In Book I, Chapter 10, part 1 of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith noted that in advanced states of society, hunting and fishing become recreations, and that people "pursue for pleasure what they once followed from necessity." As a result, it is hard for a person to make a good living as a professional hunter or fisher: "they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime."

The Smithian logic seems to have been brought to bear upon the pornography industry. The New York Times on Saturday noted that in dollar terms, sales and rentals of porn movies fell some 15 percent between 2005 and 2006. The internet, which provided a great boost to the porn marketplace by easing home consumption, has progressed to the point where it has also simplified the amateur production and distribution of porn -- and many people are now pursuing porn supply as a pastime:

“People are making movies in their houses and dragging and dropping them” onto free Web sites, said Harvey Kaplan, a former maker of pornographic movies and now chief executive of GoGoBill.com, which processes payments for pornographic Web sites. “It’s killing the marketplace.”

The 'traditional' porn producers are responding, according to the Times article, both by focusing on quality and by sophisticated marketing to lure consumers. Recall also the New York Times Magazine article from a month and a half ago that suggested that niche production was another method for earning money via internet porn.

Of course, the decline of barriers to entry into the porn business might be bad for the profits of traditional professional porn suppliers, but it is good for porn consumers, who have a wide variety of free and low-cost porn products available over the web.

Labels: internet, pornography, Smith

 
A Virtual Horse Racing Tragedy
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:53 AM

A superb thoroughbred racehorse is an extremely valuable asset, given the potential earnings from race purses and stud fees. If your extraordinary horse is killed via the negligence of someone else, you might be able to sue for significant damages. (The opposing attorney might try to point out the speculative nature of your damages claim, but courts have mandated awards that include lost stud fees, for instance.) This seems straightforward enough.

But what if your special racehorse is not exactly real? To be specific, what if your horse is part of a virtual world, a horse racing simulation? And what if your horse is not killed by negligence, but is purposely 'deactivated' by the operators of the simulator? Do you have a valid claim for damages -- and would your claim depend on whether the explicit rules of the racing simulation allowed the operators to make any changes (presumably including deactivations) that they pleased, or if the game encouraged the use of real-world money to purchase virtual property?

As it turns out, the deactivation of an extraordinary horse did take place, on Horseracingpark. The owner was paid an undisclosed amount of compensation. A captivating article by Jason A. Archinaco in the February, 2007 issue of Gaming Law Review tells the story, and offers a legal analysis of the damages issue. Archinaco asks (page 27), "Are such situations as the 'deactivation' of [the virtual horse], despite the statements in the license agreement, more akin to an intentional act such as murder than a simple 'permissible modification' to the game world rule set?"

Labels: gambling, internet, litigation

 
Two From Wednesday's Trib
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:28 AM

It's now Thursday, so you will probably have to sign up for the free registration if you want to read online the two vice articles that appeared in the Metro section of Wednesday's Chicago Tribune. The first concerns a 'racy' billboard outside suburban Glenview:

The 10-foot-by-36-foot sign along Willow Road near Patriot Boulevard depicts a model lying on the beach with lines pointing to "problem" areas on her body, such as facial lines and wrinkles, and corresponding "solutions," including Botox.

By Tuesday, more than 300 people had signed petitions asking the owners of the salon and medical spa to replace the billboard, Thibeau said.

The owner of the salon is a native Parisian -- which seems to be part of his defense -- and the billboard does bring back memories to me of my six-month Paris sojourn last year. (Not much else in the Glenview area has the same effect.) He isn't backing down to the pressure -- either out of principle, I suppose, or because the previously mailed ad featuring the same photo proved to be great for business.

Trib vice article number two was on the very next page in the print edition, in a boon to vice-interested readers throughout the Chicagoland area. This story concerns how librarians are standing up for free speech by opposing proposed Illinois state legislation that would, you guessed it, require internet filters to annoy vice researchers (oh, and for the children). Librarians continue to be my anti-authoritarian heroes, despite that unfortunate reputation for shussing you. And while they may be anti-authoritarian, they can be pretty authoritative themselves. How would a librarian handle some n'er do well using an internet connection inappropriately? With a federal or state law? Noooooo. From the end of the Trib story:

Jane Schulten, director of the Crete Public Library, said filters are labor intensive. She said her small staff might not be able to closely monitor each computer or turn software on and off each time a patron makes such a request.

She said she's only had two incidents in eight years in which a patron looked at something deemed inappropriate. In both cases, a "tap-on-the-shoulder" approach seemed to work, Schulten said.

Labels: Chicago, internet, obscenity

 
A Filtering Irony
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:47 AM

Last night I posted about the initiative in Monroe County, New York, to make it difficult for library patrons to access "pornographic" websites on the internet. The post was motivated by this (not work safe) article in Adult Video News. The AVN article quoted Bill Smith, a Monroe County legislator. I didn't mention the quote in the blog post, but I e-mailed Mr. Smith last night concerning his quote. I wouldn't have mentioned the e-note on Vice Squad at all, except that my e-mail to Mr. Smith was not received because it was filtered out, according to the automatic reply I received last night. This is not the first time this has happened to me -- because vice policy-related e-mails often contain words which alarm e-mail filters, they occasionally are screened out by over-inclusive filters. Yes, filters are both under- and over-inclusive. In Buffalo, soon-to-be required filters will be screening out internet content at public libraries. I suppose that it might be hard for legislators to imagine that there might be "legitimate" reasons to access "pornographic" websites, but as a vice policy researcher who both frequently uses library internet connections and who visits sites such as AVN.com, I can assure them that it is so. I take these filters somewhat personally, as I am more likely than most people to be inconvenienced by them. Anyway, as I cannot successfully transmit my e-mail to Mr. Smith directly, I will append the text of it below. I was pointing out the difference between a library collection decision and the filtering mandate, using Justice Souter's words. (I misspelled Justice Souter's name in the original email but correct it below; I also omit the url of the avn.com article in my reproduction of the email.) Hello, I just read a story by Jed Nottingham, "Rochester Library Will Censor Web Viewing," which included a quote from you. (The article is at avn.com, a website that could easily fall afoul of internet filters; the article's precise url is [omitted here -- see above].) The paragraph including your quote is... "If adopting the recommendation is censorship, then this library is already in big trouble," said Bill Smith, the Republican majority leader of the county legislature and a county library board liaison, "[The] act of choosing books is censorship and [you] have a collection policy that implies and, in fact, results in rejection of material all the time." I just wanted to point put that there is what I take to be a significant difference between a collection policy and the internet filtering. I'll let Justice Souter make the point, from his dissent in US et al. v. American Library Association, Inc., et al., 539 U.S. 194 (2003): ...In the instance of the Internet, what the library acquires is electronic access, and the choice to block is a choice to limit access that has already been acquired. Thus, deciding against buying a book means there is no book (unless a loan can be obtained), but blocking the Internet is merely blocking access purchased in its entirety and subject to unblocking if the librarian agrees. The proper analogy therefore is not to passing up a book that might have been bought; it is either to buying a book and then keeping it from adults lacking an acceptable “purpose,” or to buying an encyclopedia and then cutting out pages with anything thought to be unsuitable for all adults. All the best. Regards, Jim Leitzel Update! Blocked again! I emailed Monroe County to provide the url of this post, and once again, could not get my e-mail through. That's quite an efficient email filter they have there. I'll try another message from my yahoo account. Further update: it looks as if the yahoo e-note made it past the vigilant Monroe County filter.

Labels: internet, pornography, Supreme Court

 
Library Internet Censoring in Rochester
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:57 PM

Thanks to CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) and its Supreme Court blessing, many public libraries throughout our land already have filters aimed at blocking smut placed on all of their internet-connected computers. Monroe County, New York, intends to go CIPA one better, according to this (not work safe) AVN.com article about the new library smut policy:

The policy, which is expected to extend to all libraries in the county, calls for use of the library's Internet-filtering system to block all pornographic sites unless — after a written request — an administrator deems a site appropriate for a patron to view. While the county library board adopted the policy, there was no clear sense of how to implement it.

They also finessed the matter of what exactly constitutes a pornographic website.

Despite the CIPA precedent, I believe that there is a chance that the Monroe County policy could be found to violate the First Amendment. CIPA survived a per se challenge, but Justice Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion specifically for the purpose, it seems, of pointing out that CIPA might later be challenged not on its face, but as applied, if the method of disabling the filter for an adult patron proved onerous: "If some libraries do not have the capacity to unblock specific Web sites or to disable the filter or if it is shown that an adult user's election to view constitutionally protected Internet material is burdened in some other substantial way, that would be the subject for an as-applied challenge, not the facial challenge made in this case." Sounds to me like having to ask permission from an administrator in writing, and possibly even being turned down, burdens an adult's choice to view constitutionally protected material in a substantial way.

Labels: CIPA, internet, pornography, Supreme Court

 
It's Official: Antigua Defeats US
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:46 PM

The wheels of World Trade Organization justice turn rather slowly. After some four years and myriad reversals and dramatic double reversals, the WTO has adopted its March ruling that US rules on internet betting on horse racing are illegal. Recall (see the Vice Squad post from May 4, 2007) that the US response to the pre-official ruling was to unilaterally 'renegotiate' its trade obligations, claiming that the renegotiated version represented its intentions all along. So it needn't even provide compensation to its trading partners who are harmed by the altered treaty terms, the US argues. Sure, WTO rules require compensation when a country alters its obligations, but the US, you see, never really agreed to those silly old obligations anyway, so now that we've cleared that up we can all just forget about this little WTO ruling, OK?

"Brazil and India on Tuesday both said the United States was obliged by law to compensate Antigua if it wants to now redefine its services obligations." Antigua's WTO-endorsed threat, should it not receive satisfaction, includes disregarding US trademarks and copyrights.

Labels: Antigua, gambling, internet, WTO

 
Another "Soft" (?) Addiction: The Internet
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:59 PM

Two days ago Vice Squad mentioned Nora Ephron's addiction to a form of Scrabble -- an online form of Scrabble. Via Andrew Sullivan, we learn of the writer Stephen Elliott's experiment with being internet-free for one month -- and more importantly, of the observations and suggestions sparked by Mr. Elliott's experiment. He notes that it took him awhile to break a habit taught by the internet, that of being in throe to "continual bursts of small information," but that eventually, his ability to sustain attention upon a single task or book grew. After the month-long hiatus, Elliott implemented some rules to manage his internet usage: he abandoned his blog, stopped going online from home or on weekends, and limited his internet at work to 1 to 5 PM. Sounds like there's some wisdom in the Elliott approach, but giving up a blog -- well, that is taking things just a bit too far (June 6, 2005), no?

Labels: addiction, internet

 
Scrabble Addiction
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:45 PM

Nora Ephron has an op-ed in Sunday's New York Times that details her addiction to a form of on-line Scrabble. Here's the start:

About three years ago, I stumbled onto something called Scrabble Blitz. It was a four-minute version of Scrabble solitaire, on a Web site called Games.com, and I began playing it without a clue that within 24 hours — I am not exaggerating — it would fry my brain.

And slightly later in the article:

My brain turned to cheese. I could feel it happening. It was clear that I was becoming more and more scattered, more distracted, more unfocused; I was exhibiting all the symptoms of terminal attention deficit disorder; I was turning into a teenage boy.

I think that the fact that the game can be completed within four minutes is an important part of its reinforcing nature -- playing just one more game is no big deal. And it is amazing how large a role easy access plays in these sorts of addictions -- if the Scrabble site goes down, an addict for whom access has become impossible might not even feel cravings, might be almost instantly "cured."

So-called soft addictions have been receiving a fair amount of publicity of late. (The term 'soft addiction' apparently was coined by Judith Wright, author of this book.) The list of common soft addictions includes much of, well, life: excessive procrastination, work, television, and coffee, for instance. Here's a quiz devised by Ms. Wright to help determine if you suffer from a soft addiction; I am addicted to quizzes.

Labels: addiction, internet

 
Rewriting History to Avoid a WTO Ruling
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:49 PM

The US mostly won the internet gambling case that was brought against it by Antigua and Barbuda. (Here's a Vice Squad post on the matter from April 9, 2005 -- somehow the permalinks only bring you to the proper month, however, so there's some scrolling down to get to April 9.) But in the relatively small matter of betting on horse races, Antigua prevailed. The problem is that the US allows some internet betting on horse racing, but does not extend the required 'national treatment' -- a level-playing field between domestic and foreign suppliers -- to offshore internet gambling purveyors. The US has been dragging its heels (as per this February 7, 2007 post) in making the adjustments to its laws that are necessary to bring them into compliance with its WTO non-discrimination commitments.

The latest US dodge is to deny that it ever made such a commitment with respect to gambling. There was an error, you see, when the US failed to explicitly exclude gambling, as was its intention, when it signed on to liberalized trade in recreational services some 14 years ago. Apparently no one noticed the oversight until just now; conveniently enough, amending the agreement to the original intention will also nullify the force of the adverse WTO ruling. Glad we got that misunderstaning cleared up.

This sort of thing could catch on -- surely Russia did not really intend to sell Alaska to the US?

Labels: Antigua, gambling, internet, WTO

 
Internet Gambling Updates
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:28 PM

Representative Barney Frank hopes to override the October, 2006 legislation that (eventually -- see this January 18, 2007 post --) rendered it considerably more difficult to Americans to take part in gambling over the internet. The Frank bill would set up a licensing system similar to what Britain intends to introduce, so that operators who abide by rules designed to preclude access by kids, aid compulsive gamblers, and protect the interests of consumers, would be allowed to offer web-gambling services. Individual US states and Native American reservations that choose to make internet gambling illegal for bettors within their borders would be allowed to opt out of the system -- many states already have adopted the appropriate (inappropriate?) bans. College and professional sports leagues that would like to prevent legal internet gambling on their contests also could opt out. This opt-out provision is not enough to satisfy the NFL and other sports organizations, however -- even if sports betting remains illegal, some of them oppose the Frank bill. Could it be that they see internet gambling as a competitor within the entertainment marketplace?

Meanwhile, internet giant Yahoo is setting up its own poker room in which players risk real money -- though US residents, for the nonce, will be excluded.

Labels: gambling, internet