Online Gambling Ban Hearing for December 3rd

And the fight is on!!! Barney Frank is scheduled to go before the Financial Services Committee on December the 3^rd.There will be testimony to repeal the UIGEA and to stop the regulations from going into effect on Dec. 1^st. Frank is the Chairman and will lead the hearing.

Frank is for licensing and regulating online gambling. Both sides will be heard but no vote is expected at the hearing.

The CAP newswire had this to say:

November 25, 2009 (CAP Newswire) — More mainstream media attention is being focused on the online gambling industry in the United States. On Newsweek’s online site, Jeremy Herb has written a lengthy argument against the UIGEA, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, the 2006 law that basically makes online gambling illegal in the U.S.

Citing the vagueness and the difficulty in enforcing the UIGEA, an argument made by many other online gambling advocates, Herb goes down the list of events negative to the online gambling industry that rose from the law’s implementation. Though that list, including PartyGaming’s prosecution and the difficulties imposed on the banking industry, are familiar to many in the Internet gambling industry, most average Americans aren’t aware of these problems. So, exposure in a high-profile publication such as Newsweek — one of America’s most read news sources — is important for getting the word out.

Herb does present some interesting information on the conflict between the industry and the Wire Act, the older law that Internet gambling is sometimes prosecuted under. “The Justice Department believes all Internet gambling is illegal based on the 1960s Wire Act, which was designed to stop bookies from using telephones and passed long before the Internet as we know it existed,” he writes.

“The gambling industry disputes this, arguing the Wire Act only applies to sports-betting, not games like poker or roulette. In 2002, the Fifth Circuit Court ruled the Wire Act only applied to sports-betting, but that didn’t sway any opinions at Justice. Several offshore executives of online casinos and “e-wallet” payment processors have been arrested in the past few years. In June, the Justice Department froze $33 million in payments to American players from four online casinos.”

You can read the full article on Newsweek here.

Author: GamesAndCasino