PRESS RELEASE

SOURCE: Interactive Gaming Council

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The United Kingdom, as part of a major reform of its regulation of gaming, is moving steadily toward the licensing and regulation of interactive gaming. The Interactive Gaming Council, the industry's main trade group, salutes the British approach, and calls on members of the U.S. Congress to take note.

"British leaders understand the importance and the value of regulating this relatively new means of gaming," said Rick Smith, executive director of the IGC. "I only wish the U.S. government would take such an enlightened approach, instead of futilely attempting to block a form of entertainment that millions of its citizens enjoy."

Peter Dean, chairman of the Gaming Board for Great Britain, addressed members of the IGC at their meeting in London last month. He indicated that a package of gaming regulation reforms - including the full legalization and regulation of interactive gaming - should be enacted next year, with implementation in 2005.

Plans call for Britain to license online gaming operators who locate their servers there. The process will include a thorough investigation of the operators' backgrounds and testing of their hardware and software. Gaming Web sites will be strictly monitored to protect players, prevent money laundering and prohibit minors from gambling at the sites.

In the U.S. Congress, by contrast, Rep. Jim Leach has re-introduced legislation to prohibit the use of credit cards, checks and other financial instruments of U.S. banks in online gaming transactions.

"Forgetting the lessons of Prohibition, Rep. Leach hopes to banish online gaming from the U.S.," Smith said. "Rep. Leach says he's concerned about money laundering, but an unintended consequence of his bill may be the creation of anonymous e-cash, which will potentially allow for money laundering via e-commerce channels without detection or traditional auditing controls. Entrepreneurs will devise other means of exchanging funds, but nothing could be as easily traceable as a credit card transaction."

The IGC looks forward to the re-introduction of a bill from last session by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, which would establish a commission to study the possibility of federal and state regulation of online gaming.

Frank Catania, a regulatory consultant to the IGC, and a former Assistant Attorney General and Director of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, said, "Legislators, regulators, and policymakers are struggling with the challenges of new technologies; and, Internet gaming is one component of Internet commerce that has drawn a lot of attention. In that regard, the proposal to create an Internet Gambling Study Commission is not only insightful, it is timely."

At the state level, a bill sponsored by Assemblymen Gary Guear and Anthony Impreveduto that would do just that has already cleared a committee of the New Jersey Assembly. Assemblymen Impreveduto in testimony before the New Jersey Assembly Tourism and Gaming Committee in early January said, "Internet gambling is not coming, it's here." According to his testimony, the sponsors of the legislation want to make sure that citizens are protected by proper regulation of this activity, and that avenues of potential tax revenue are explored.

In Indiana, meanwhile, the state Senate passed a bill in late January that would make it a felony to operate a gaming Web site that is accessible to residents of the state. The bill's sponsor, Sen. David Ford, said, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal, "All of this (Internet gambling) is unregulated. We can't tax it. We can't control it."

"This business is unregulated only where governments refuse to act," Smith said. "It can be taxed and it can be controlled. Britain will prove that."