Paul Blustein of the Washington Post has a good article on the Gambling dispute (you might have to register with the Post's site to read it). In it, he discusses Jay Cohen, whose arrest by the U.S. for running an internet gambling site from Antigua and Barbuda triggered the case. I like the part about how the WTO case originated:
Out of the blue, not long before Cohen entered prison in Nevada, a strange letter arrived. He has since lost it. The writer suggested that the U.S. government's position left it vulnerable to a trade complaint.
"Is there anything to this?" he asked a lawyer friend.
In other news of the case, somebody did a brief interview with Mark Mendel, one of Antigua's lawyers on the case. In answer to the question, what happens to the U.S. if they don't comply, Mendel answers:
We believe that unless the US makes a decision to ditch the WTO altogether at this time and forget about globalization, the US will ultimately move towards some kind of compliance. We will be relatively patient yet watchful and protective of our rights by keeping pressure on the US throughout a period of what we expect to be as much delay as they can get out of the WTO system. We are hopeful that Antigua and the US will at the end of the day reach some kind of accommodation, but Antigua will reserve the right to levy trade sanctions against the US in the future to further encourage the US towards compliance. Hopefully, it will not come to that.
Incidentally, it looks like Antigua's legal team has set up this site which provides a great deal of documentation on the case.
UPDATE FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE: They are discussing internet gambling, although not the WTO case, over at the Becker-Posner blog. Becker states the following in relation to the House Bill cracking down on internet gambling that recently passed:
Supporters of this bill argue that easy access to online gambling is dangerous because it encourages and strengthens gambling addictions. The fact is, however, that gambling is even less addict[ive] than drinking, and is not nearly as addict[ive] as smoking. Moreover, gambling addicts can already find many ways to gamble. The vast majority of online gamblers bet modest sums for pleasure, such as the estimated 23 million Americans who now play online poker (the Pokers Players Alliance, which claims more than 25,000 members, opposed the bill).
Other supporters of a ban on online gambling claim that it is used to launder money obtained from drugs and other illegal activities. The laundering argument against gambling is largely irrelevant, given the many other ways to launder money.
Posner's comments on the issue of internet gambling are here.
FURTHER UPDATE:
Mark Mendel did another interview subsequent to the BetOnSports arrests, in which he notes that the arrests
strengthen our argument that the US laws are protectionist, as the DOJ once again goes after an offshore operator rather than the horseracing sites such as YouBet.com and others that the DOJ claims are illegal.
