Joe Salkowski
Attention, Internet service providers: Your draft card is in the mail.
Like it or not, ISPs both large and small will be enlisted as foot soldiers in the federal government’s impending war on Internet gambling. While the job won’t be as difficult as some service providers complain, the plan still sets a bad precedent for content restrictions on the ‘Net.
The Senate Judiciary Committee recently passed a bill proposed by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., that would make it a crime to operate an Internet casino. While similar measures have stalled in the past, this one benefits from a federal study group’s report on gambling that essentially endorses Kyl’s course of action.
On a scale of national problems, Internet gambling rates no higher than cold cheese on ballpark nachos.
If our elected leaders want to outlaw behavior that has been met with either indifference or enthusiasm by most Americans, that’s certainly their right. But Congress ought to at least ask the government to do its own dirty work.
Instead, Kyl’s bill places the burden of policing the ‘Net’s travelling craps games on the shoulders of Internet service providers, some of whom say the job is all but impossible.
It assumes ISPs will magically have the ability to selectively block gambling sites, which is utter nonsense, said Dave McClure, executive director of the Association of Online Professionals, which represents Bell Atlantic and other Internet service providers. The bill simply cannot be enforced.
Well, not easily, anyway. Because most online casinos are based outside the United States, their owners would likely evade the fines and prison time Kyl’s bill would impose on operators. But the bill also empowers state and federal law enforcement agencies to compel ISPs to block access to casino sites.
How difficult will that be? Kyl and his staff say it can be done without too much trouble. They also note that the bill allows ISPs to protest to a federal judge if law enforcement requests impose an unreasonable burden on their business.
But by the time you’ve haggled with the Department of Justice and hired an attorney, I’d say you’ve already borne an unreasonable burden. (I suspect that opinion would be shared by my employer, which operates as an Internet service provider as well as a newspaper.) Meanwhile, McClure says that merely complying with the bill could prove costly.
Perhaps. If the feds went around asking individual ISPs to block specific sites, as McClure fears, the bills would add up rather quickly. But Kyl predicts that prosecutors will try to cut off gambling at choke points where international Internet traffic crosses into the United States.
In some cases, that might involve literally pulling the plug on the service to a particular ISP, he said. In other cases, it isn’t that easy.
The hard part would be figuring out which sites are violating the law. It’s safe to assume online casinos will do everything in their power to avoid detection, including changing their numerical Web address on a daily basis. They also might negotiate agreements to hide in the data stream sent to the States by a popular overseas backbone provider.
All this maneuvering will ensure that at least some gambling sites reach domestic ‘Net users.
But a best-effort list of gambling domains could be compiled, and the United States’ top backbone providers could set their equipment to block every address on that list. They’ll howl that this is impossible, but many ISPs already point their machines to a similar black hole list to block e-mail from known spammers.
The real question is this: Who compiles the list? If the feds do it, the plan seems reasonable enough even though they’d be better off trying to solve crimes with actual victims. But I’m worried that service providers will be asked to keep up with the ever-changing collection of gambling sites, then hauled into court if they fail.
Either way, Congress shouldn’t be asking service providers or any private citizen, for that matter to enforce its self-righteous schemes. If ISPs’ customers are clamoring for an end to online gambling, the company should be able to offer a blocking service.
But for now, the only ones complaining are Kyl, his cronies and their hired stooges on the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which recommended banning online gambling in a report issued June 18.
The next thing you know, Congress will demand that service providers start enforcing other content restrictions. After all, if they can block gambling sites, why can’t they block obscene material? Or hate speech? Or the text of Huck Finn and “Catcher in the Rye”?
That’s when the costs both financial and social will really start adding up.
Perhaps you think our elected leaders wouldn’t consider such drastic measures. But given the congressional track record on Internet issues, I wouldn’t bet against it.
To contact syndicated columnist Joe Salkowski, you can e-mail him at [email protected] or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services. Inc., 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1400, Chicago, IL 60611.
