I’ve got a new article in the latest issue of Gaming Law Review and Economics, about the Wire Act:
For a Camelot-era piece of legislation, the Wire Act has a long and unintended shadow. Used haltingly in the 1960s, when the Wire Act failed to deliver the death blow to organized crime, 1970’s Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) became a far better weapon against the mob. Yet starting in the 1990s, the Wire Act enjoyed a second life, when the Justice Department used to it prosecute operators on online betting websites that, headquartered in jurisdictions where such businesses were legal, took bets from American citizens. The legislative history and early applications of the Wire Act, however, suggest that it was intended for much more selective application, and the uses of the Act to penalize those who provide cross-border betting services to Americans, while perhaps faithful to the broad letter of the Act, are a departure from its spirit.
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. – Gaming Law Review and Economics – 147:533.
If you don’t have access to the journal online (i.e., you’re logging in from a school that subscribes), you’ll only be able to read the first page. For the whole story, either subscribe or check out my book-length discussion of the Wire Act, Cutting the Wire.