Senator Rockefeller for online gambling regulations

For the past five years, millions of online gamblers have been subjected to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. While the law does not specifically criminalize playing poker online, it does make it illegal for financial institutions to process payments to and from online gaming sites.

Of the 1.29 trillion, Rockefeller believes that over US$40 billion of that savings would come from regulated Internet gambling. The senator did not go into detail on whether he would like to authorize all online gambling, or simply online poker.

In the past few months, the Department of Justice has issued several indictments against online poker operators. Most notably, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have been indicted, with the latter losing their operating licenses in Europe. The indictments of these two online giants have left a gaping hole in the US online poker industry.

Since those indictments, US online poker players have been flooding the telephone lines of lawmakers around the country. With no place to play, the poker enthusiasts have been demanding that the legislators change the current laws. Representatives have started to respond to the cries for help, most notably Rep. Joe Barton.

The fact that a Conservative has authored a bill to change the online gambling laws is significant, because it was a largely Republican Congress that passed the UIGEA back in 2006. Barton has plenty of support on both sides of the aisle when it comes to his latest piece of legislation.

Rep. Barton's bill is specific to only allowing poker. That is different from the law in Washington D.C., where full scale online casinos are set to become a reality in the next couple of months. The law in DC is being challenged by several different groups and various lawmakers.