Internet Gambling Ban to be Lifted?

From MarketWatch:

Gaming Americans would be able to place bets over the Internet under a bill introduced by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank on Thursday.

Frank's bill would roll back a ban on online gambling and enable companies to be licensed to accept bets and wagers online from individuals in the U.S.

The bill would exempt the operators from current restrictions on online gambling and would require licensed companies to have protections in place against underage and compulsive gambling, money laundering and fraud.

Not sure that this bill has much of a chance of passing, but we are in favor of it, as we are in favor of anything that would lessen government regulation, (some would say censorship) especially when it comes to the Internet. In our opinion, Congress is woefully unprepared and unqualified to deal with progressive issues such as this.

The real issue isn't whether or not gambling is bad, it's that the government can't tax it and get it's cut. This bill would allow for increased regulation and, obviously, increased taxation. However, since the vast majority of these companies are offshore, not sure how domestic taxation will apply. Also, not sure how you can develop a foolproof way of verifying age, location, etc.

Internet gambling has always been technically illegal in the US, that's why the companies operated in other countries, mostly the Caribbean. The way companies and gamblers circumvented this was by moving money through a middleman, so credit card companies and banks weren't directly funding gambling. However, due to legislation passed in 2006, it made it illegal for banks to deal with this middlemen, effectively cutting off the flow of cash.

The SAFE Port Act, at least as far as it applies to Internet gambling, is an affront to personal freedoms, along with being hypocritical. Gambling is legal in some form in almost every state, with 2 Casinos within 10 minutes of where I now sit, and off-track betting at countless bars in between. While this wouldn't cause us to gamble online much, if at all, we should have the freedom to do so if we choose.

The House Committee is scheduled to discuss this in June.

Rep. Frank's bill would roll back Net-gambling ban