Industry giants press lawmakers to find a way to cash in; opponents say offshore sites are risky.
Anti-gambling bills
# One measure, sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., would expand the 1961 Wire Act, which focused on outlawing sports bookmaking by phone or telegraph.
# The other bill, sponsored by Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, prohibits credit-card companies and banks from processing payments by U.S. customers to gambling sites. Major credit card firms have instituted their own policies to block such payments.
# Congressional aides were trying to combine the two bills, as a single piece of legislation would have a better chance of passage by the House this month and by the Senate in the fall.
# Conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats have supported the bills.
Millions of Americans do it regularly, even though the Justice Department says they're supporting an illegal enterprise.
Major corporations are looking at ways to make a profit from it, even though Congress is eyeing tougher restrictions.
The subject is Internet wagering, a $12 billion-a-year industry in which politics, morals, profits, individual rights and world trade issues merge and sometimes collide head-on.
The House of Representatives is likely to vote soon on legislation aimed at countering Americans' ability to place sports bets, play poker and otherwise risk money in games of chance on their personal computers. Similar proposals have passed one or the other chamber of Congress over the past decade, but never both.
Meanwhile, the American Gaming Association is urging Congress to study the online-gambling issue to see if technology has provided a trustworthy way to legalize, regulate and tax online wagering, as Britain is in the process of doing. Industry giants such as MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment Inc. see online players as perhaps their best new opportunity for revenue growth.
Despite its illegality, an estimated 4 million to 7 million Americans are Internet gamblers, with poker driving the latest surge. The state of Washington made wagering over the Internet a felony starting June 7, but officials there have indicated they will not be enforcing the law aggressively.
A gambling association survey has shown that online participants are younger, more affluent and better educated than their counterparts who enter actual buildings containing card tables, roulette wheels and slot machines.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
