iGB North America magazine IGBNA Aug/Sep | Page 42

Feature

“Beckwith’s statements are there to protect convenience stores
from losing footfall as online gaming and lottery begins to
flourish. Sadly, if he had just looked over the pond to the UK,
he would have found a very different answer to his concerns.”

demonstrate their point. Interestingly Steptoe
& Johnson is the former Sands (Adelson’s
casino group) lobbying firm that helped draft
RAWA. According to TheHill.com, “Steptoe
& Johnson partner Douglas Kantor has been
making the rounds on Capitol Hill screening
a video that supposedly shows a person
in Virginia using a virtual private network
(VPN) to unlawfully access the Georgia
online lottery. This tactic is straight out of
the Adelson ‘scare them with half-truths’
playbook.”
What is important is that while some
lotteries may have not adopted the critical
technology at the outset, the technology
does exist and has been effectively deployed
in Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey.
Increasingly, these lotteries now better
understand this and now seem firmly set on
the right path.
Beckwith begins his op-ed by highlighting
that as Congress ponders over the
Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA)
the ability for states to regulate their own

To back up this statement, Beckwith
attempts to discredit the existing geolocation
technology, pointing to a simple Google
search he conducted for “how to fake your
IP address”, which yields multiple solutions
for altering the location of a player. He even
goes so far as to actually cite a theoretical
example of someone “of any age” being able
to buy a lottery ticket from any state while
being located in Hawaii (where any gambling
is illegal). He concludes his op-ed with an
erroneous conclusion that by allowing one
state to offer online lottery ticket sales, it will
ignite a race to the bottom, concluding that
anyone using basic IP-spoofing software,
such as HidemyAss, will be able to purchase a
ticket from any other state.
Simply, wrong.
Firstly, it is clear that by drawing
conclusions based on a simple Google search
of ‘how to hide my IP address’, he is trying to
make a point rather than proving facts. Of
course, it is possible to spoof an IP address.
Actually, there several solutions available for

“Over the past two years there have been only
three cases where anyone has been able to break
the geolocation technology in place today.”
gaming activity hinges on their capability to
effectively monitor and enforce the activity
within their own borders. As he states:
“Central to that issue is the delineation
between interstate and intrastate gambling
activities. So it’s time someone pointed out
intrastate Internet gambling is an oxymoron.”

those who want to see what Google displays
in New Jersey when physically located
within, for example, the UK. In a response
to Beckwith’s article, Anna Sainsbury, CEO
of GeoComply, cites a reported 50 million
Netflix users who fake their IP to access
content not available to them in their region.

42 | iGamingBusiness North America | Issue 20 | August/September 2015

However, when it comes to online gaming
in the United States, the stakes are much
higher and gaming commissions, legislators
and gaming operators are now acutely
aware of that. It is a federal offense to violate
UIGEA and the Wire Act. Stakeholders have
implemented painstaking precautions to
ensure they stay within the confines of the
law. In the three states already offering online
gaming, basic IP spoofing is just one of many
techniques that has already been eliminated
as a potential threat.
In fact, as Sainsbury points out, “these
regulators literally ran thousands and
thousands of tests outside of their own states’
boundaries, attempting to use all the spoofing
techniques alluded to by Beckwith (and many
more) in order to ensure the location results
we provide are the correct ones and that
their neighbors’ sovereignty over gaming was
respected. Indeed, the regulators sent letters
to their colleagues in neighboring states
setting out the measures to ensure proper
geo-location and inviting them to audit for
themselves the sufficiency of the safeguards.
Moreover, three leading independent gaming
test laboratories (GLI, BMM and NMi) all
were retained to conduct their own tests of
our solution to ensure compliance and safety.”
So why hypothesize rather than use the
facts? Beckwith’s statements are there to
protect convenience stores from losing
footfall as online gaming and lottery begins
to flourish. Sadly, if he just looked over the
pond to the UK, he would find a very different
response to his concerns regarding potential
cannibalization. In fact, UK lottery provider
Camelot has long touted that the increased