Internet Gambling and the Destabilization of National and International Economies: Time for a Comprehensive Ban on Gambling Over the World Wide Web
Last updated: July 24, 2008
Authors
Published by Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ACDIS Occasional Paper series
September 2007
Full text [PDF]Summary
As the Internet rapidly gained popularity in the late 1990s, gambling Web sites began to take root, causing numerous social, financial, and political costs. These costs—including the creation of new gambling addicts, bankruptcies, and crime—directly resulted from the widespread proliferation and accessibility of gambling sites on the Internet. Policy-makers worldwide generally failed to identify the large socio-economic costs associated with Internet gambling, as well as the ability of Internet gambling and other forms of cyberspace gambling to destabilize local, national, and even international economies by disrupting financial institutions.The authors examine the impacts of Internet gambling on social, financial, and political systems, and analyze efforts to regulate the Internet gambling industry in the United States and internationally.