Telegraph reaction (British right wing newspaper)

[The Bride]

[ QUOTE ]
There has seldom been a day like it. In one fell swoop a single piece of US legislation has wiped off about £3.5bn from the value of a clutch of London-listed companies. It's hard to feel sympathy for the online gambling fraternity. Investors knew all along that the business they were buying into was illegal in America.


They chose to ignore the health warnings when the likes of PartyGaming floated. When the founders and management of these companies bailed out, they stayed in. When people started getting arrested they doubled their bets. Now American legislators reckon they have found a way of shutting down online gambling. The move by the US Congress will only encourage other countries squeamish about internet betting to crack down.


For many, online gambling has been one of the worst bets in stockmarket history. But the weekend's events are also one of the worst examples of protectionism seen in this new century. Many American states may be oddball and straight-laced. The country is full of moral contradictions, but this legislation is not the product of some national fear about what online gambling might do to its young people.


If it was worried about the immoral effects of the internet it would apply the same act passed on Friday to the porn industry. This act is about protecting the interests of the US horse race betting industry and the health of its state lotteries. It's also about protecting the interests of the Las Vegas gambling giants.


While online gambling by US citizens has been languishing in a legal off-limits zone, established American gaming companies have avoided it like the plague. However, the online industry is huge, worth about $12bn a year, with about half of that coming from American punters.


But the industry is dominated by UK companies. With this move, Congress has destroyed the existing edifice of American online gambling, however creaky its British foundations. Given the demand in the States, the next move, I suspect, will be for American legislators to rebuild the industry based on a new set of regulations creating an online business dominated by American gaming companies. And these people are supposed to be our friends?

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This was in the British Telegraph newspaper today, a newspaper traditionally pro-American.