How Americans Gamble at Online Casino Sites

With the U.S. government currently opposed to online casino gambling, how is it that so many Americans still manage to sign onto online gambling sites and play casino games in the comfort of their own home? After all, isn’t it illegal not only for Americans to gamble online, but also for online casinos to advertise their wares for the public at large in the U.S.? The answers provide us with the much needed-to-be-seen-to-be-understood loopholes and idiosyncracies of online casino gambling’s status in the United States. You see, online casino gambling is only, according to federal law, technically illegal.

The 1961 Wire Act is interpreted to apply to online gambling, but it regulated or banned certain forms of sports gambling over phone lines. In an era when more and more people connect to the internet through means other than those utilizing phone connections, the Wire Act just doesn’t really apply. And so, by that view, online casinos are targeted for the ire of Washington, but Washington itself has yet to take any decisive action that could spell doom for the online gambling industry’s U.S. casino operations.

Now, individual states might have laws which do specifically target online casino gamblers or operators, but the number of states having passed such laws is relatively few at the moment. Thus, if you’re living in those states and gambling online, you might have a problem but elsewhere in the U.S. is a lot less of a problem than you might have originally thought. If one day the U.S. Congress decides to seriously take up the issue of online casino gambling and pass a law either for or against, then that will be a time to discuss the positives and the negatives. For now, it should be enough to say that those who want to gamble online in the U.S. already do, to a large degree.