This is a guest contribution by Martin Owens. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

In one sense it’s inevitable that gaming and gambling law should lag behind the technology. After all, there were no laws or regulations for automobile traffic until the automobile came along. But in the United States especially, gambling law has been allowed to stay fixed in the past. Faced with the accelerating changes of the digital age- social media, virtual goods, new formats and platforms-American gambling law threatens to become not merely outdated, but irrelevant and even un-Constitutional.

Comparing the Elements

Of the three elements that go to make up gambling- consideration, prize, and chance, chance is by far the most controversial. Merely labeling a given activity a “game of chance” is to condemn it altogether under the laws of many US states, and cast suspicion on its legitimacy in most of the rest. Yet chance is the most nebulous and least clearly defined of all these legal elements.