You can relax Chicken Little, contrary to reports, the sky isn’t falling.

When news broke that the United States had made an addendum to the Safe Port Act that would limit online gambling, no doubt, poker players considered running to the hills. It would only be a matter of time before playing their hobby online would be deemed illegal and they feared that the Anti-Poker Gestapo would be kicking down their doors. But a closer examination of all that has transpired might have you seeing a little ray of sunshine amidst a sky full of ominous storm clouds.

It might seem like the fat lady has sung, but as Lawrence Walters, an Attorney who specializes in online gaming law, said, “This time, however, her tune was a bit off key.”

Yes Congress attached anti-gambling language to the Safe Port Act; yes it will be harder to play poker online and yes the banks will be asked to monitor transactions, but it isn’t the end of the world as punters know it.

As clear as mud

Walters says the addendum to the Act doesn’t clarify the online gambling situation, in fact it does quite the opposite.

“The version of the legislation that finally passed is an arbitrary, poorly-drafted, vague set of prohibitions that only serve to further complicate the muddled mess that is online gaming regulation in the [U.S.],” said Walters.

“In order to reach a compromise allowing passage in the Senate, provisions that had been included in previous versions of the bill, seeking to expand the Wire Act to include online casino games of chance, were eliminated,” he explained.

“As a result, the remaining provisions of the legislation are contradictory, and attempt to incorporate provisions of existing state or federal law in order to define what activity constitutes ‘unlawful Internet gambling.”

Among the opponents of internet gambling prohibition are the banks, which would not only be required to track all financial transactions to ensure that they aren’t related to online gambling, but stop the ones that are as well.

Banks have a lot of business to go through in a day and determining what transactions are related to online gambling amongst the millions of other transactions would probably be like looking for that proverbial needle in the haystack. And the cost of setting up detection systems would most likely be costly.

As Independent Community Bank lobbyist Steve Verdier was quoted as saying, “It's very tempting to think the banking industry can stop this kind of stuff because people pay for it through banks, but the fact is the system just wasn't really designed to do it.”

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