Tough Rules Seen for Net gambling

MONTREAL, Canada -- As reported by the Globe and Mail: "The burgeoning U.S. on-line gambling industry must stop resorting to tactics aimed at evading government regulation, and prepare for a future in which it will have no choice but to deal with it, says a cyberspace legal expert.

"'My argument is that it's a mistake to bet the industry on the capacity to escape the government's ability to regulate,' Stanford University law professor and author Lawrence Lessig said Tuesday in the keynote speech at the Global Interactive Gaming Summit & Expo.

"New technologies being developed by Microsoft Corp. and other software giants will soon make it possible to authenticate the identity of a computer user anywhere in the world, said Mr. Lessig, the author of two books about Internet regulation.

"That ID technology will, in turn, allow governments around the world to co-operate on a global approach to cyberspace regulation, including gambling, he said..."