(words)

There's a really interesting article on Slate about the island of Antigua, the WTO, and the United States online gambling ban.

Basically, the WTO states that any member cannot ban goods or services from other countries if said goods or services are sold within their own country. The only way to ban goods from another country for WTO members is to exercise the morals clause, which states that nobody provides it in your country because you think it is immoral. For this reason, we cannot ban selling chocolate from Britain. We CAN ban selling, say, child prostitutes, because child prostitution is illegal in this country and we find it immoral.

Antigua wants in on online gambling. The US has blocked foreign companies from doing this in the US. The problem? Gambling, even online gambling, isn't illegal in the US. Even the newest law, the one that shut down all the poker sites, doesn't ban all forms of online gambling. It, specifically, allows for gambling where money does not cross state lines. Therefore, we cannot argue we have outlawed it because we find it immoral.

The WTO has heard Antiguas complaints and agreed with them, giving us a full year to comply (that year ended in the spring). The US has just kind of ignored it.

Of the list of venues for recourse, most (for instance, retaliatory tariffs) would be worthless to Antigua. One recourse, however, allows the complaining country to ignore the intellectual property of the country in violation. In other words, Antigua could legally start manufacturing Snow White DVDs and Windows Vista CDs and sell them to US citizens. The WTO has allowed this before in similar cases.

I think Microsoft would be unhappy about that.

http://www.slate.com/id/2153352/?nav=tap3

11/16/2006 10:15:30 AM

Please let me get ahold of Vista for cheap.

11/16/2006 10:40:31 AM

so you're saying antiguans are going to start selling child prostitutes?

11/16/2006 1:24:39 PM

We can only hope.

11/16/2006 1:25:39 PM

this is what they get for shutting down allofmp3.com

11/16/2006 1:29:32 PM

This could be awesome!

11/16/2006 2:18:44 PM

Antigua can sell those items without recourse on their end, but American citizens cannot legally buy those products.

11/16/2006 3:49:07 PM

Even if we buy them in Antigua?

11/16/2006 3:51:34 PM

Better hope you don't buy it in America

11/16/2006 3:57:11 PM

Look, it doesn't matter. This WTO ruling will force America to re-address the online gambling ban and hopefully the Democrats will take the oportunity to eliminate it entirely.

Not to mention, Antigua is not the only nation on the planet with an online gambling industry (think Britain and Ireland). If the WTO rules on the side of Antigua unambiguously, hopefully other nations will jump on the bandwagon.

11/16/2006 4:06:46 PM

Quote :

"this is what they get for shutting down allofmp3.com"

uh what?

definitely still there.

11/16/2006 8:29:12 PM

yeah but the riaa pressured visa into no longer allowing transactions with allofmp3.com.

so unless you have a mastercard, you're screwed and i'm sure the riaa is putting the screws to mastercard even as we speak.

11/17/2006 8:21:32 AM