January 22nd, New York Times, Business Section
“Gambling Subpoenas on Wall St.”

The crackdown by the Justice Department on four prominent Wall Street firms for underwriting the Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) of internet gambling sites outside the United States has recently sparked debate. The main relevance of this article to discussions on global media is that with forms of widely accessible international media like the internet, that transcend geographical borders, it is becoming harder to enforce laws specific to certain regions, and harder to pinpoint responsibility for media that the government of a certain country disapproves of. In this case, gambling online is illegal within the United States but these sites are legal in places like Costa Rica and Antigua where they operate from. This discrepancy in the legality of certain sites is an issue because even though the government can crack down on a few sites, and target a few firms, ultimately controlling the internet is a mammoth task and defining who is responsible for such violations is the main problem. Are the banks at fault for orchestrating these IPOs outside the United States? I don’t believe so: they are ultimately not engaging in online gambling, nor are they increasing access of Americans to these sites.

Such forms of technology (the internet, which makes online gambling possible) and the act by the Justice Department bring up certain interesting ideas. Firstly, the economic effect here is that even though these firms are legal and licensed within the place where they operate, if American investors are not allowed to engage with them, their revenue will decline greatly. This could imply that with legal controls on the internet, a crackdown in one country could affect the economic outlook of another country very easily, without any physical measures like tariffs or sanctions even required. This could be used as a power tool in international relations in the present and future. Secondly, this act raises the question of social control. Gambling is perhaps socially discouraged in the United States, but it is becoming hard with the internet to restrict exposure of US residents to this act. This issue of social control definitely exists with other websites as well as television – for example American TV shows often project a value system very different from countries in Asia but are still widely accessible to citizens there and can influence them greatly, resulting in them growing up to be more Westernized.

Since I’ve been born and brought up in Asia (India), such an act by the Justice department does not surprise me at all. Even though media control is much stricter in China than in India, we do have our fair share of crackdowns. What is most striking is that in such situations the government is usually confused about whom to blame and whom to fine. For example, recently a video was sold on Baazi.com (The Indian version of eBay) that was deemed inappropriate. The person who was prosecuted was the CEO of Baazi, and this raised questions in India about whether it really was his fault – he hadn’t personally encouraged the video, or taken it himself. The video was taken using a cell phone, and was sent across the country in a matter of minutes, so people raised questions about whether the cell phone services should be prosecuted as well. Or should it be the person who took the video? The entire country was confused and since the CEO involved was an American citizen the United States was involved in the matter as well and ultimately negotiated for his release. These issues of identifying responsibility for certain actions and enforcing legal restrictions within physical borders in the age of global media, where the number of players are infinite, and material so easily transcends geography, are definitely going to need dealing with.