Internet gambling law

Since the early days of the World Wide Web, the Internet boomed with all kind of gambling sites that provided possibilities to bet on everything, from electronic black jack to the winner of the American Idol competition. Besides the United States based gambling sites, many such sites appeared with very shady backgrounds all over the world. Some legitimate sites that seem to have been approved by local authorities were almost impossible to find and gambling enthusiasts simply took the biggest gamble by picking the site.
The many abuses resulted in many laws being passed regulating the gambling activities on the Net; one of the primary sources for such legislation is the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act from 2006. This Act prohibits interstate online gambling of any kind, transfer of money for gambling purposes, gambling on offshore gambling web sites and many other prohibitions, rendering the online gambling basically illegal. Nevertheless, local laws are not affected by this federal ruling, which means that online gambling within the state where it is not prohibited to gamble is permitted, furthermore Nevada, Indian tribal lands and some other places are excluded, by the local law exclusion, only the interstate money transfers are deemed illegal, which does not regulate credit cards and banks that have branches in the state where gambling takes place. This will not outlaw internet gambling, it just outlaws the sites to be located within the US and bars anybody who wants to bet online from within the US to participate. To express this in plain English, all online gambling leaves the US.
The problem is that the US does not filter outgoing traffic, so every single gambling site owner or employee is a criminal, according to this act, and once he or she enters the United States, he or she may be arrested and charged with a felony, for not barring the US citizen from gambling online. This will have as a result that the US will be banned from participating in such betting enterprises, bet in such ventures and even access such sites, servers or networks. As if not enough has been done to alienate the US from the rest of the world! One of the biggest losers will be Poker. Online betting on Poker tournaments was a big revenue magnet for Internet betting businesses, it is estimated that up to 80% of such revenue will in future go elsewhere, outside the US.
The overall hope is that this Internet gambling law never passes and the whole problem goes away. But American history is full of such government missteps, just think of the prohibition in the thirties, and the future does not look bright for online gamblers.