Since the emergence of the internet in the 1990s, an increasing number of gambling services have come available on-line or through other new remote communications technologies. The rapid technological advancements, commercial initiatives, and market penetration of such commerce have made this sector of the gambling services industries extremely dynamic and potentially transformative in the years ahead. Demand for gambling services in the early 21 century and for the past half-century in the European Union – as well as in most other parts of the world – has been and is expanding rapidly, for a number of reasons. The commercial and government owned gaming industries of the European Union are organized under a wide variety of ownership regimes and market structures. Ownership and market structures are affected by numerous factors, including Member State laws and regulations; restrictions on product types, characteristics, points of sale, availability, and marketing effort; economies of scale; network effects; and impacts of new technologies. The overall gambling market in Europe is growing, both land-based and online. Lotteries and gambling machines remain the biggest sectors in the overall gambling market. While not all EU Member States have a legal definition of the concepts of “games of chance” and of “gambling”, in most jurisdictions a game of chance is defined as a game that offers an opportunity to compete for prizes, where success depends completely or predominantly on coincidence or an unknown future result and cannot be influenced by the player. At least one of the players loses his or her stake. The first important element characterising a game of chance is that of stake money or monetary value. The second essential characteristic of a game of chance is the element of chance. Success or loss must depend completely or predominantly on coincidence and not on abilities and knowledge. Success is considered to depend in any case on coincidence, if the relevant aspect is the occurrence of an uncertain event. The section Gambling in Europe includes several independent adaptations of the corresponding European Commission works, free to use and freely available via the EU website with © European Union, and translation of the European Commission works with © Nico9lae Sfetcu, the author of this book. Most of the work are published by the European Union during 2004 - 2008, so it is possible to be outdated.

Lotteries, Art Markets, and Visual Culture examines lotteries as devices for distributing images and art objects, and constructing their value in the former Low Countries. Alongside the fairs and before specialist auction sales were established, they were an atypical but popular and large-scale form of the art trade. As part of a growing entrepreneurial sensibility based on speculation and a sense of risk, they lay behind many innovations. This study looks at their actors, networks and strategies. It considers the objects at stake, their value, and the forms of visual communication intended to boost an appetite for ownership. Ultimately, it contemplates how the lottery culture impacted notions of Fortune and Vanitas in the visual arts.

The book offers new insights into the lottery paradox, and thereby into how categorical and graded beliefs are formally connected.

In November 2005 Tilburg University hosted for the first time an international Colloquium on the European and National Perspectives of the Regulation of Gambling. The results of this exciting day are reflected in this book which brings together a wide range of perspectives from the contemporary debate surrounding the regulation of gambling markets within the context of the European Union. Not only does the book encompass both ends of the spectrum of the current discussion; it also brings together the perspectives of academics, lawyers and operators. The debate on the regulation of gambling has been gathering pace following a series of judgments of the ECJ. In 2006 gambling was excluded from the proposed Services Directive, and the European Commission commenced infringement proceedings against a handful of Member States regarding restrictions on the supply of sports betting services. Given these developments and being one of the very few publications concerned with this topic, this book will serve as a timely and valuable contribution for all those interested in this emerging and at times decisive debate.

The book charts an extraordinary period in Danish history: the "Press Freedom Period" of 1770-73, in which King Christian 7's physician J.F. Struensee introduced a series of radical enlightenment reforms beginning with the total abolishment of censorship. The book investigates the sudden avalanche of pamphlets and debates, initiating the modern public sphere of Denmark-Norway. Publications show a surprising variety, from serious political, economic, and philosophical treatises over criticism, polemics, ridicule, entertainment, and to spin campaigns, obscenities, libel, threats. A successful coup against Struensee led to his subsequent public execution in Copenhagen, and the latter half of the period saw the gradual smothering of the new public sphere as well as an international pamphlet storm over what was happening in Denmark. Readers all over Europe proved curious to learn about the radical experiment with enlightened absolutism in Denmark; interest was heightened by the involvement of the Danish Queen, the English princess Caroline Matilda to whom Struensee had an intimate relation. The book is a detailed portrayal of a seminal event in the development of the public sphere in Europe.

A comparitive history of gambling in Britain and the USA