U.S. News & World Report, August 1, 2003 pNA 
More Markets for Mayhem. (Web Exclusive)(terror market) James M. Pethokoukis. 

The Policy Analysis Market was a bad bet for John Poindexter. He's the 
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency official who's taking the fall for 
the roundly criticized terror market, where traders could have bet on events 
like coups and assassination--a ``futures market in death,'' as Sen. Hillary 
Rodham Clinton delicately termed the proposal. But similar markets are 
already taking bets. Poindexter's own fate was the subject of wagers at 
TradeSports.Com, a Dublin-based online betting site where speculators can 
bet on current events--including terrorism--as well as sports and other 
traditional wager material. The betting on the site correctly placed good 
odds that Poindexter would resign. 

TradeSports allows members to trade directly with each other, charging a 
4-cent transaction fee per bet. Other current-event bets include whether 
Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden will be ``captured or neutralized'' by the 
end of December (about a 65 percent chance that time will run out for Saddam 
and a 25 percent chance for bin Laden, according to the betting). The 
chances of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq by the end of 
September? Again, about 25 percent. 

Should you take any of these odds seriously? A Stanford University study 
http://mutex.gmu.edu:2838/zitzewitz/Research/iraq.pdf of the site found that 
bets about the chances of an Iraq war closely tracked spot oil prices, 
considered a pretty good indicator of the chances for conflict in the Middle 
East. 

I asked Tom Bell http://www.tomwbell.com/, an Internet law professor at the 
Chapman University School of Law in Orange, Calif., whether it's legal for 
Americans to join the fun. His take: ``It is probably illegal for residents 
of the U.S. to use the Internet to use TradeSports to bet on pure sporting 
events. I take it that TS has no U.S. licenses to engage in that form of 
commerce, after all.'' But Bell adds that some of TradeSports' less 
conventional bets--such as those on current events--may well escape the 
definition of gambling under U.S. law, because it could be argued that skill 
and knowledge, not just random chance, determine how well you do. ``In that 
event, TS would represent, at worst, unlicensed futures trading and, at 
best, just a game of skill, '' he says. 

There are other betting options. Another site with a good reputation for 
accuracy is the Foresight Exchange www.ideosphere.com, where bets can be 
made on pretty much anything, including the 2004 U.S. presidential election 
and whether Apple Computer will go belly up by 2005. One big difference from 
TradeSports? Only pretend money is used.