WTO Ruling: Both Sides Are Claiming Victory!

Published: Thursday, April 07, 2005 Online-Casinos.com

Another view on the WTO ruling - Associated Press says both sides are claiming victory!!

Antigua, U.S. Both Claim Win Over Whether Washington Should Drop Prohibitions on Online Gambling

GENEVA (AP) -- Antigua and Barbuda and the United States both claimed victory Thursday in a trade dispute over whether Washington should drop prohibitions on Americans placing bets in online casinos.

Antigua said a World Trade Organization ruling means the United States must drop restrictions on online gambling. But U.S. trade officials said the WTO ruling supported their argument and that the limitations could remain in place.

Mark Mendel, legal counsel for Antigua in the case, said the WTO ruling means U.S. authorities would have to treat Antiguan online casinos in the same way as traditional gambling outlets.

"At the end of the day, Antigua continues to win," Mendel told The Associated Press. "It is clear cut. We won on all the major points."

But a U.S. trade official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the ruling meant Washington does not have to lift restrictions on Internet betting.

"This is effectively a win for the United States, as it seems to say that if we tighten U.S. Internet gambling restrictions, we'll be fine," the trade official said.

The WTO ruling has yet to be made public.

Antigua filed the case before the WTO in 2003, contending that U.S. restrictions on Internet gambling violated trade commitments the United States made as a member of the 148-nation WTO.

U.S. trade officials disagreed, saying that negotiators involved in the Uruguay Round of global trade talks, which created the WTO in 1995, clearly intended to exclude gambling.

Antiguan authorities also argued that restrictions that barred U.S. residents from betting at offshore casinos were harming their country's efforts to diversify its economy. Antigua has been promoting electronic commerce as a way to end the twin-island nation's reliance on tourism, a sector hurt by a series of hurricanes in the late 1990s.

Antiguan officials estimate that online casinos employ some 3,000 of the 67,000 residents of Antigua.

The current legal status of Internet gambling in the United States is in dispute. In many states, gambling is banned or permitted with restrictions.

Some site operators have been prosecuted under the 1961 Wire Communications Act, which was written to cover sports betting by telephone.

The U.S. General Accounting Office has estimated there are 1,800 Internet gambling operations. Virtually all of them are based outside of the United States, posing an enforcement problem for U.S. authorities.

Associated Press
Antigua, U.S. Claim Online Gambling Win
Thursday April 7, 10:18 am ET
By Sam Cage, Associated Press Writer