Back in 2006, the US Congress passed an eleventh-hour update to the Wire Act aimed at preventing United States citizens from gambling online. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) has caused the US no small amount of trouble on the international stage due WTO rulings. UIGEA bans citizens from betting online if the games are hosted in a foreign nation; US-based financial institutions are also prohibited from processing international gambling-related transactions.

In a statement on Thursday, the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank vowed to seek the repeal of UIGEA as part of a package of US financial reforms. It's unclear if the act ever actually succeeded at retargeting scurrilous online gamblers back towards resorts or riverboats. It did, however, succeed at costing a number of foreign websites quite a bit of money; a fact that angered a number of countries.

The sat particularly badly with the island nation of Antigua, which complained to the WTO over what it saw as discriminatory trade practices. The WTO agreed and ruled against the United States back in April of 2007—a fact the US has more-or-less ignored. Gambling laws have always been a patchwork of contradictions; the federal government prohibits gambling across state lines but allows states to set their own laws when it comes to intra-state betting. Many states have laws that favor particular types of gaming over others; Kentucky has gone so far as to try to seize control of online gambling sites and makes no secret of its stance on horse racing. Taken as a whole, the US policy of simultaneously condemning and supporting gambling is uglier than the hypothetical love child of Janet Reno and Alan Greenspan.

The Bush Administration settled the initial Antigua complaint by offering the country concessions in other trade-related areas, but multiple European countries remain angry; the UK-based Remote Gambling Association has claimed that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has discriminantly targeted certain websites while ignoring the operations of others. The European Commission reportedly plans to file its own complaint with the WTO. In the face of international bad feeling and an uncertain positive impact at home, it may be time for the UIGEA to fold its hand.

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