Poker Sites
Regulation
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In the closing hours prior to adjourning until after the 2006 mid-term elections,
the United States Senate and House of Representatives passed the Safe Port Act (read the text of the
Safe Port Act here).
The rest of the Safe Port Act deals with security of United States ports, but the Republican Senate leadership,
primarily Majority Leader Bill Frist of Kentucky, decided to attach an entirely unrelated "Unlawful Internet
Gambling Enforcement Act" to the end of the ports bill. The gambling aspect of the bill was never voted on by the
Senate in any form. A similar bill was approved by the House of Representatives several months prior, and thus was
tacked onto the Safe Port Act as the result of a conference committee report. Congressional conference committees
are common practice when the House and Senate both approve similar, but not exactly the same, bills. In this case
though the Senate never debated the gambling aspects of the bill.
Both the Senate and House of Representatives were simply presented the Safe Port Act with the gambling wording added,
and were essentially forced to vote in favor of the bill since the ports aspect of the bill was considered
"must pass" legislation (a must pass bill is usually a non-controversial bill necessary for the actual
functioning of the government) and it was literally the evening of the last day of the session before Congress recessed.
While the United States is no stranger to childish antics from its government, the Safe Port Act is something of a
new low of absurdity. It was passed in an attempt to placate the religious right element of the Republican Party,
even though there was never much of a demand from religious conservatives for this bill. Failing to deliver any of
the important agenda items to religious conservatives (abortion, school prayer or same-sex marriage constitutional
amendments), online gambling was served up on a platter.
But the act did not even do anything to criminalize gambling online by US citizens. Instead it made it a crime for
banks or other financial processors to transfer funds to websites offering online gambling. The principal upshot of
the passage of the bill is that the publicly traded companies either in the business of offering online gaming or in
the business of being a financial processor have gotten out of the business of taking transactions from Americans,
while non-public companies legally operating in other jurisdictions have stated (more or less) that US law does not
apply to their companies, so their business mostly continues as usual. |
