It May Not Be The End Of Online Gambling

The US did pass the Safe Port Act, which intends to limit online gambling, making it all the more difficult for gamers in the US to paddle away at online poker, but it didn't bring forth the end of the world.

Yet, Lawrence Walters, an attorney who specializes in online gaming laws says the addendum to the Act doesn't clarify the online gambling situation, but rather brings about an obscurity.

"The version of the legislation that finally passed is an arbitrary, poorly-drafted, vague set of prohibitions that only serve to further complicate the muddled mess that is online gaming regulation in the US," Walters said.

"As a result, the remaining provisions of the legislation are contradictory, and attempt to incorporate provisions of existing state or federal law in order to define what activity constitutes unlawful Internet gambling."

The critics of online gambling prohibition are the banks, which would not only be required to track all financial transactions to ensure that they aren't related to online gambling, but stop the ones that are as well. Banks would of course lose out the most because of the transactions related to online gambling. And, although their revenues will continue to be transmitted, it will be a major blow with the US market out. As Independent Community Bank lobbyist Steve Verdier said, "It's very tempting to think the banking industry can stop this kind of stuff because people pay for it through banks, but the fact is the system just wasn't really designed to do it."