Michael Hiltzik, writing for the Los Angeles Times, put up a piece on Monday blasting the federal Internet gambling ban and any attempt to regulate payment transfers through banks. Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize winner and was awarded the Gerald Loeb Award in 2004 for his contributions to financial journalism.

I have to wonder if the recent advertising campaign has succeeded in catching the eye of the right people. The article is well written and covers several important points. Press like this will always be beneficial to the online gambling community. Excerpts below.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) have both introduced bills in Congress to lift a federal ban on much online play and clarify the law, which is even murkier than it is for physical casinos, if that's possible. Their goals include taking a piece of the action for the U.S. Treasury, on the political principle that sins always seem less deadly when there's money to be squeezed from them. The consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated in 2007 that legalization could yield as much as $43 billion in tax revenue over 10 years if it includes sports betting, $34 billion even if it doesn't.

[...]

That federal law, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, has numerous flaws. It saddles financial institutions with the duty of enforcement by barring them from "knowingly accepting payments" derived from "unlawful Internet gambling." But it doesn't define what is unlawful.

It exempts fantasy sports and "skill" games, for example. But where does that leave the most popular online game, poker? The new regulations seem to outlaw the game, although its aficionados contend that it's a game of skill pitting player against player. They contend it's been swept into the gambling ban by lax regulation-drafting.

The whole article is well worth a read.

The man in the photo is playing poker, you can too, at Full Tilt Poker