Congressman Seeks to Overturn Online Gambling Ban - 04-13-07
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April 13 - There may be good news on the horizon for US-based online gamblers
after US Congressman, Barney Frank (Democrat) yesterday publicly declared that
in the next few weeks he intends to introduce a bill to overturn the US online
gambling ban.
A senior lawmaker and chairperson of the House of Representatives financial
services committee, Frank described the online gambling bill passed by Congress
at the end of last year as 'one of the stupidest things he'd ever seen'.
Frank was addressing a group of journalists while on a trip to Brussels,
Belgium when he went on to say that he was planning to file legislation to 'undo'
the online gambling bill.
He said, 'I will make a substantial effort to revise the ban as long as the
storm of unhappiness is strong enough amongst online gamblers in the United
States.'
Up until the online gambling ban, US-based online gamblers contributed 80 per
cent of the total $12 billion in revenues generated by the online gambling
industry as a whole.
In March this year, a World Trade Organisation (WTO) panel ordered the United States to
open up the multi-billion dollar cross-border online gambling industry after it
failed to comply with a previous WTO ruling.