One of the most explosive, and controversial, of Internet services has been on-line gambling. Hundreds, if not thousands, of sites have gone up in the last few years catering to the home gambler, and few topics have engendered such controversy, or such vacillation and half-measures, on the part of world governments. The 4th edition of the Internet Gambling Report is a collection of essays edited and partially written by Anthony Cabot.
One topic that this reviewer knows even more thoroughly than gambling issues is Internet service architectures. The Internet information provided in Internet Gambling Report is pretty solid. Some of it isn't correct on every detail, but even where it isn't correct to the letter it's unlikely to mislead the reader, so I give the book reasonably high marks in this respect. I'd like to have seen some more thorough explanations and details in places, but of folks who read the book, I'm probably in the minority on that.
One inevitable downside of a book like this concerns the currency of the gambling information. The state of government regulation of on-line gambling is highly volatile and unforgiving of conventional publication schedules. The information contained in the Internet Gambling Report looks to have been quite accurate and thorough at the time it was written, but just in the few months between final edit and the time I wrote this review, the status of the proposed Kyl bill, the regulatory climate in Australia, and potential regulation in Nevada have changed the playing field substantially. It would seem that the opportunity to promote a newsletter, or at least having a web site that listed updates, would be a no-brainer, but I found no evidence that Cabot and his associates provide such a service.
As with any book, the big question is, "Should I buy and read it?" For Internet Gambling Report, I find this to be a tough question to answer simply. Instead, I'll list a couple of prospective readership groups and analyze how this book will or won't help them.
As a collection of essays, the book is occasionally meandering and repetitive, but not much more so than is inevitable in a volume like this. Internet Gambling Report manages to provide a lot of well-researched information, but it's not the sort of thing a lot of people will want to read. Still, if understanding the business climate of on-line gambling is interesting to you, this book fits the bill.
I would expect that not a lot of people would find the 4th edition of the Internet Gambling Report to be scintillating reading, but those who want to come up to speed on the state of regulation and the business climate of on-line gambling will find what they're looking for in this volume. Be warned, though, that this is a rapidly changing environment that traditional publication schedules can never truly keep pace with. Folks not interested in on-line gambling regulation and business cases can afford to pass on reading this large tome.
Note: I received a review copy of this book from the publishers. I have no other interest, financial or otherwise, in the success of this book.
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