Vices of the law-abiding

In this blog's short existence, the number-one driver of traffic to this site has been Google searches for "Tradesports legality," so I feel obliged to give back to my readership by linking to this Conglomerate post on the subject (answer: no one, apparently including the DOJ, really knows).

Conglomerate poses the question of why the "de-criminalization" of gambling has been relatively rapid compared with that of other "morality" offenses like prostitution.  I don't really have the answer, but I do find it fascinating how many of the same people who are most scrupulously rule-following in general are also the most eager to exploit the many legal gray areas created by the Internet.  To illustrate how rampant such opportunities have become, I note that today's NYT contains not only the celebrity gaming endorsement story, but also - in a totally different section of the paper - an article about people swapping antidepressants on message boards.  And with opportunities come elaborate legal justifications. It was from another judicial clerk that I first heard a rather ingenious, if not entirely convincing, argument downloading broadcast TV is merely time-shifting and hence does not violate copyright laws.

Taken to its extreme, the attempt to spin justifications for such activities sometimes seems disturbingly reminiscent of, say, the legal urban legends of the tax-protester crowd.  But there do seem to be genuine fuzzy areas, and offshore gambling is probably one of them.  Certainly there are enough movable parts to the question to generate some interesting law-review-type hypos (what if my celebrity endorsement induces someone to access Tradesports on their cell phone while they're standing in an Indian casino in California?  You get the idea).

As to whether I have any quasi-legal vices of my own - like, say, downloading a missed Gilmore Girls episode now and then - I'll just leave that to reader imagination for now.