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Rich Muny: Thanks Kurt, appreciate you having me.
Kurt Wallace: We have this war brewing. The war on online gambling backed by billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Now, he vowed to to everything he could — he’s willing to spend whatever it takes to stop online gambling.
You, as an advocate for poker freedom, may have a few things to say about this effort to shut down online gambling?
Rich Muny: Well, I definitely have a few things to say about it. The main thing is that we are (outside the philosophical stuff) we are organized to fight for our rights, for exactly this type of thing. That’s why we all banded together as players and we are pushing back here. Lobbying in congress and definitely in the grassroots working through the community and the entire community has been terrific about pushing back on this — exposing this what would typically be a behind the scenes push in lame duck to shed the light of day on it.
What we like to think of as disinfecting light of day. Now, this main push is above board, we all see what he is doing. But in terms of the machinations in the Congress, some of that has not been especially about trying to get something in the lame duck and hearings at his time. He certainly hasn’t been public with that.
Many lawmakers are kind of surprised to hear about it. So, we’re really proud of what we’ve been able to do just as individual players. Taking advantage of the tools available to us through social media and just by acting together for our liberties.
Kurt Wallace: Let’s talk about the crony capitalism aspect of this. This is never good in any situation with any business. A lot of people think that capitalism is bad but it’s not bad. It’s when corporations collude with government of you have outside influences making those determinations for the rest of us. Which violate our individual right to live the way we want to. Where does the PPA stand on issues of this importance?
Rich Muny: Obviously, on this specific issue, we oppose it. Because this is the type of crony capitalism when issues presented to someone you would expect that the person who wants to ban online poker and online casino style gaming there’d be someone who hates gaming not someone who loves gaming. He’s made his livelihood out of it.
Just only from there, going forward, it becomes fairly obvious that we’re not looking at what we think we would be looking at typically, certainly not. We’re looking at someone who, if he did enter the online space, would not be a top tier player maybe a middle tier and people like Sheldon Adelson don’t want to be in the middle of the pack. Either they’re leading or they’re not going to do it. And I suspect a lot of what he’s doing came from that original starting point. Now, I’m not saying he’s not sincere at this point.
But, I think there’s a lot of confirmation in some of the positions he’s espoused since he decided he wasn’t going to go forward with this on his own to a certain degree. You listeners might be interested that he did go forward on some online gaming. He had online sports betting — his website proudly announce that you could bet on sports from anywhere in Nevada on the Venetian Facebook page or on one of his mobile apps that have Andy Abboud, their vice president of government relations likes to wave around at all the congressional hearings. And in fact that was exposed at their most recent hearing before the house.
So, we definitely have very strong feelings on that. Another big and strong help for us is the fact that congress would be usurping the rights of the states to authorize the game. Three states have licensed and regulated this game already, Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey. To Congress to actually force them to shut this down has been something we’ve been communicating to everyone who’s ever claimed to have a fidelity to the 10th Amendment and to states rights in general over matters such as this. To impress upon them that if you believe it is a principle you oppose this. If you just espouse it as a talking point if you happen to support a specific measure than we want to expose that as well.
Kurt Wallace: So, those who would support marijuana legislation and being that the states have actually resisted the federal laws — could that also come into play with states that have internet gambling? Could they have a stronghold and say “look federal government, we nullify your attempt to do this” especially backed by one man who’s the decider of 320 million people and specifically the states that have legalized it?
Rich Muny: I suspect some states might try to push back. But, it’s a little tricky area once you get into the internet telecommunications. It’s one thing to allow somebody to open a store and sell medical marijuana or even recreational like in Colorado and spreading out to a couple of other states.
I think we’d be hard pressed if Congress passed this law. We want to push hard against it and not leave it in the hands of individual governors hoping they’re willing to push back against the federal government on this matter. I don’t think we’d be in a good position if this law passes. So, we want to do our part right here to ensure that congress hears from us. And, not just from one man who they’ve seen just buys legislation.
Kurt Wallace: Where is the specific contradiction with Sheldon Adelson? Obviously he’s making a fortune off of gambling. Why not join the online gambling world in full force rather than opposing it?
Rich Muny: When they first started moving with this in the early 2000’s he did have — Las Vegas Sands Corporation did have a license for offshore betting and they were looking at what they were going to be doing. Somewhat to his credit no shying away from it they just said they’ve had a chance to really research it and think it through and came up and decided against it.
His position is that is just the talking points of the people who wish to ban his bricks and mortar facilities for the most part. But he tends to suggest things that just aren’t true, like you can’t confine it to a geographic location. Although, all of the sites have been very successful. We haven’t had a single report of anyone playing outside of one of these geographically authorized areas. They’re using best technology.
He’s also making a case that children could play. But, again the technology has been very good about identifying the players. So, he’s dropped down to the point where the only way underage player could play like a parent creates an account and just lets his child play which is a pretty weak argument. Because it comes down to parental responsibility. And at the same time you just criminalize that aspect as well as a state would see fit. They can have their laws and they can take care of this. The idea that a federal government prohibition would just trump what the states can do on this matter is somewhat ludicrous.
Additionally, as far as underage players, we haven’t had a single report again of an underage player on any of these three sites. Which would certainly come up during divorce preceding’s or child custody hearings, truancy — nothings come out. However, reports of underage players getting into the Venetian, Sheldon Adelson’s casinos and playing have been numerous. He’s been fined for this. He’s been fined in a sense facilitating money laundering because they didn’t check their high rollers. They’ve had several accusations of the very things he claims online sites could do.
Maybe in that sense it makes him an expert from the times he had to defend himself against so many charges that have come against him and so many fines being levied for his operations in Nevada. But it’s fairly ludicrous to be admitting guilt on these things and then calling the kettle black suggesting that this is something that might possibly happen if you’re just trying to sit around in a dark room and come up with some theoretical.
Kurt Wallace: Let’s talk about the criminal aspect of regulating online gambling and how that is really an issue for everyone those not involved in gambling and those involved in gambling. With the war on online gambling being parallel to the war on drugs where it creates a criminal cartel an organized unit and maybe even funding terrorism?
Rich Muny: Well, that’s just a red herring that they’re running from our opposition. The site that were running just up until what we like to call Black Friday which hit on April 15th of 2011 were still above board sites. What happens is every time you shut down a site you have the one that comes in is going to be a little less reputable. Because they’re going to still be willing to operate in the space.
And, you could end up, we haven’t seen it yet, you could end up with a similar problem for what we had in prohibition where you take out all the decent suppliers and you finally get down to the underworld operating it. We’re not there yet in the online poker space but we don’t have trustworthy sites for the players at this point. There might be a couple, but they’re hard to weed out between what’s good and what’s bad.
The good thing about instead of trying to oppose the will of the people and trying to counteract the market forces and demand for this game with a prohibition — instead of that if you authorize the games and have them accountable to the players — what happens is the players prefer to play those sites. And they actually — the market demand actually forces out the unlicensed sites. They have nothing to offer in a state that already provides a good game that has the consumer protections.
And, if you have a dispute with a site you can take it up with somebody. One tenet of libertarianism is that for it to work you have to depend on being able to enforce contracts and to force them bi-lateral or multilaterally depending on if there are more than two stake holders or signatories to the contract real or implied.
What happens if you play an offshore site is that site can unilaterally impose is terms of the contract on the player but the player has no recourse in the other direction. And, that’s actually something that we’ve seen to be a big problem in many cases. If you have a site that’s accountable either located in the US or having an office in the US and accountability is a much better environment for the players. The players realize that that’s where they’ll elect to play and again the market forces are actually kind to enforcement — they enforce it because that’s the natural order of things unlike the prohibition.
Kurt Wallace: In terms of a type of legislation like this. Wouldn’t that give government more overreach. There are concerns about the NSA spying on people at this point. But, would this give the government another ability to monitor those who aren’t even gambling?
Rich Muny: You mean actually passing the regulated authorized poker?
Kurt Wallace: To stop it. Make it illegal. Would it give the government the ability to monitor to make sure people aren’t playing. To enforce these laws to be able to fine people and fund government even more.
Rich Muny: It could. When the legislation to ban the game was first weighed back in 1997 before it even existed. I guess there was an attempt to just nip it in the bud. It involved internet service providers being forced to block access to the sites. Player penalties to go to jail. ISP’s literally not just blocking you but seeing if you’re trying to access it and report on you.
It was something that cooler heads prevailed to a degree and by the time legislation passed it didn’t include any kind of internet monitoring. We’ve seen other states like Minnesota, they had a proposal back in 2009 very similar to want ISP’s to block access to these site on Minnesotans and they wanted to force this on any internet service provider operating in the state. We prevailed and had came through the governors office — I’m sorry that came from the executive branch but not his office. There’s an office holder who made a proposal and we were able to prevail on the governor Tim Pawlenty and the time that this was some real foolishness.
So, these proposals have come up in terms of how you can stop it. Now, the current legislation does not propose to run a ban in that fashion. And, in fact, Adelson doesn’t seem quite as concerned about that. He seems mostly concerned about shutting out the licensed, legal competition that could come up mainly being offered from his competitors Caesars and MGM much more so than trying to see what he can do about an offshore site.
Kurt Wallace: Rich Muny of Poker Players Alliance, thanks for being with us today on Rare.
Rich Muny: Thanks Kurt! I appreciate you having me.