I've read through the bill and can say that I like it. I find the bill is very well written.
Contrary to Russ's comments, I find that there are numerous protections for players (protecting player funds, cheating, fraud, privacy, appealing site actions, bots, etc.) spelled out in the bill and that there is a good balance between players interests, site interests and government revenues. There are also provisions which specifically allow multi-tabling and allow combined player pools for liquidity. The bill authors obviously have an intimate and accurate understanding of player concerns.
My comments on a few specifics:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Russ Fox
13. No business dealings are allowed with any businesses that now, or in the past, have offered Internet gambling within the US unless they were specifically authorized to do so under US law.
Actually, the bill specifies no such dealings with any business that offered unauthorized Internet gambling in the US
after December 31, 2006, i.e. two and a half months after the UIGEA was signed into law. The bill provisions also prohibit any licensee from using any brand trademarks, customer information, etc. from any such business. But, considering the Dec 31, 2006 date, this leaves the door open for companies that stopped operating in the US after UIGEA, like PartyPoker, to be suppliers to the CA licensed sites.
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The definitions of
gambling and
game in the bill are circular:
Quote:
(i) “Gambling” means to deal, operate, carry on, conduct,
maintain, or expose for play any game for money.
(j) “Game” means any gambling game.
It seems like the bill will outlaw games like WOW, scrabble, chess, etc. when played online for money.
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Don't know why this provision is necessary:
Quote:
(i) No interest shall be paid by a licensee with respect to registered player accounts.
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Yay:
Quote:
A licensee shall establish a toll-free telephone customer service hotline that shall be available to registered players 24 hours per day, 365 days a year. All employees shall be physically present in the state while in contact with registered players.
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The $1M to $5M license application fee is to cover actual expenses of application processing only. Any overage is refunded to the applicant.
The $30M advance payment by licensed sites is applied to the first three years of site revenue taxes. It doesn't say what happens if the taxes are less than $30M for the three years, but that means the state gets to keep it.
There will also be a regulatory fee on the sites (yearly, I assume, although not specified) which is to cover department operational costs for regulating the sites. The amount of the fee will be determined according to costs.
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Until January 1, 2016 (or longer if extended by the legislature), a finding of suitability of a licensee or supplier by any US state gaming agency can be accepted provisionally by CA, and later issued a permanent okay. In other words, any company currently licensed or found suitable by any US state gaming agency can be provisionally allowed to operate in CA immediately. So, once regulations are in place, sites can go operational immediately instead of having to wait for the CA agency to complete processing of their applications.
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Of course, I don't like the fact that the bill makes playing on an unlicensed site a misdemeanor, but at least this bill doesn't have the severe penalties and property seizure provisions like the last bill by Correa.
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Personally, I support this bill in its current form. It has almost everything I look for in a state bill:
Player protections.
Reasonable site taxes, based on revenues.
Open market competition.
Inter-jurisdictional player pools.
Last edited by PokerXanadu; 02-25-2012 at 02:27 PM.