Internet Gambling History

Internet gambling Introduction

Internet gambling started in 1990’s decade and since then it has become a multi billion dollar industry and still growing up with no doubt millions of people associated with it. Many successful software developing companies are taking part in preparing online gambling software with state-of-art encrypting technologies and fabulous graphics and musical support.

Year 1994 was a historic one when government of the Caribbean island, Antigua Barbuda established the Free Trade and Processing Zone and permitted the online casinos to be operated from their territories.

Famous Online Gaming Software Company

The famous online gaming software company, Cryptologic, formed by two real brothers Andrew and Mark Rivkin, had the credit in providing the software solution for safe handling of financial transaction with latest encryption designs similarly two other companies Microgaming and Starnet Communication also started taking part in providing online gaming services.

Another great achievement was made in Canada by the formation of the Kahnawake gaming Commission to regulate online casinos and establishing gaming fairness standards. Cryptologic played a leading role both in providing latest encryption technology designs and eCash Depositing capabilities / real money management system through different software packages.

Despite the increasing popularity of online gambling, there were some actions taken against it such as Royal Police of Canada’s action against Starnet (Vancouver) based on the charges of illegal betting activities which were violation of Canadian Criminal Code. But till 1998, online gambling had the turn over around $835 million and government officials seriously started thinking about legislation for this industry. John Kyl, a Republican Senator from Arizona, presented a series of bills against selling of betting services on internet but they were not passed by the House. Australia issued the license to Lasseters by Northern territory government followed by other territories government as well but in year 2000 Australian government passed legislation, named as Moratorium Act, prohibiting any online casino to be established after May 2000 in Australian territory.

700 Online Casinos Operation

So far, about 700 online casinos are in Operation. Some prominent names are Microgaming, Cryptologic, Playtech and Boss Media. Microgaming has the services of Price Waterhouse Coopers to audit its gaming software in order to ensure standard and fair payout to its players. Microgaming also has intention to releases another three more progressive gambling games named as Super Jax video poker, Wow Pot and Fruit Fiesta online slot machines.  Cryptologic has been listed in NASDAQ and umber of its users have exceeded around 680,000 and likely to increase more than 8 millions.

In the USA, we have seen two major anti-online gambling bills, one of these bills is infamous Wire Act, and the other bill prohibits credit card companies to facilitate transactions made at internet casinos. Under the pressure of anti-gambling lobbyists, the Congress also perused the U.S. based search engines such as Google and Yahoo to stop advertising for on-line gambling casinos. Against it, Casino City countered a lawsuit against the US government and claimed it the violation of right to freedom of speech but they were failed to prove it. But State of Nevada has permitted online casinos to be operated from the State, allowing Nevada residents to gamble on the Internet. In contrary to USA, in England, several legislations have been made to legalize online betting and in 2001, the British Channel Islands passed a bill to legalize online betting alongside the licensing issues and transactions mode.

Future Of Online Gambling

The future of online gambling seems to be very bright, productive and more technical growths are expected with time. Although in a large part of the World, this has not yet been in existence but it is expected that due to a large involvement of billion of dollar, many countries will think to seek some appropriate legislation to get their due share in large stake of online gambling.

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