Quote:
Originally Posted by crockett
Yea it's not a big deal to set up business off shore and so on. But that does little to help the fact that the worlds largest customer pool has been effectively taken out of the market in regards to online gambling.
It's the customer base that stuff like this will hurt. Sure they can't go after off shore companies unless they can tie you to the US somehow but what difference does that make if they cut your customers by 80%.
BTW in regards to porn I think it would be a bit harder, because porn isn't illegal but gambling is.
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Sure.. this is a biggish lump of client base when the US market is not accessible or not permitted to engage in online gaming - and it has had a dramatic effect already in some companies, especially those who targetted the US market in particular.
The flipside is gaming is legal in most other jurisdictions (and licenses granted) and many gaming operations are doing fine. Mentioned on another thread, one was hit badly on it's US biz, but their offices are still open in central and south America, the EU and Asia (where the latter is doing very strong business).
Some stuff apparently going on in the background now may bring more headlines on the gaming issue shortly, and, hard to say, but could end up having a backlash effect and raising this issue in higher levels of government (outside the US). That, added to the pending WTO judgement is prob going to raise a fuss and widen the goalposts to much more than gaming laws.
Either way, the US is clearly entitled to implement whatever laws it wishes within US territory - and remains to be seen what the net effect would be in relationships globally.
Agree.. porn is "easier", tho the same excuses on gaming could be applied to the adult industry.. ie protection of minors etc. It's easy to throw up excuses for laws based on some moral concerns (and that can exist in almost all nations). Bottom line... it's prob safer to operate in jurisdictions where there is little problem - and these can be other industrialized countries or offshore.