Internet Poker and the Law

The legality of Internet gambling in general, and by default Internet poker as well, is still murky in the year 2004. I hope that it will change for the better, instead for the worst. Unfortunately, the outlook does not look well. There are many legislative and judicial moves afoot to cause all sorts of problems for the American public and the American consumer, moves made by self-righteous legislators and self anointed pursuers of Law who appear to be exercising their Law enforcement authority even though there are currently no such laws enacted anywhere in the United States that would provide for them such enforcement authority. The main problem with all of this is that law enforcement agencies, and legislators, are unable to understand the reality of the world in the 21st-century, and are trying to enforce something that is not only not illegal, but that currently has no law enacted to make it illegal. Unfortunately, these agencies, such as the US Department of Justice in particular, are nonetheless trying to enforce it by brutal and threatening tactics. At the same time, some misguided legislators in Congress are now trying to legislate to make Internet poker entirely illegal.

There are many problems associated with the legality of Internet poker, the chief of which is the lumping of Internet poker together with something called “Internet gambling”. The most significant problem with all of this is that both the legislators and the US Department of Justice equally fail to recognize that poker is not gambling, but is in reality a game of skill based upon knowledge. These self-appointed “do-gooders” in the United States legislature and US Justice Department are trying to create legislation and laws that would make the application of all knowledge through skill illegal. In this same manner, they would make carpentry illegal because the exercise of knowledge as applied to the making of something resulting in a profitable outcome would therefore become illegal everywhere. A carpenter who spends a great deal of his life learning how to be a good carpenter by acquiring great knowledge of carpentry, and then the skills to translate that knowledge into his ability to be able to through his own skills practice the knowledge of carpentry by actually doing it, would now be considered by such legislators and misguided Law enforcement officials to have committed an illegal act. A poker player who spends a great deal of his time and his life learning how to be a good poker player by acquiring great knowledge of poker, and then the skills to translate that knowledge into his ability to be able to through his own skills practice the knowledge of poker by actually doing it, would now be considered by such legislators and misguided Law enforcement officials to have also committed an illegal act. The problem is that with any such legislation, and such misguided Law enforcement efforts by the current representatives of the US Justice Department and other various federal and local agencies, would make any practice of skill based upon knowledge illegal, no matter what it was. Under such idiotic legislation and Law enforcement practices, not only poker would be considered illegal, and not only carpentry, but also surgery, science, all public works projects, environmental projects, preservation of endangered species projects, and indeed any and all human activity based upon some exercise of knowledge through skill. If our legislature and Law enforcement agencies are allowed to so prevail with these idiotic ideas and practices, we can thereafter forgo every human advancement in the annals of intelligence throughout human history, and once again relegate ourselves to thousands of years of “dark ages” where no exercise of intelligence or practice of skill through knowledge will be permitted.

There are currently no laws enacted anywhere in the United States, on the federal level as well as on state-level, that in any way, shape, manner, or form, prohibit Internet gambling -- and that’s a fact! Furthermore, there is absolutely no law, nor any legislation, that makes your act of playing online poker -- as an individual person practicing constitutionally guaranteed freedoms -- in any way illegal. Contrary to the opinions that are often being expressed in many texts and columns, and sometimes shown and discussed in Internet poker forums, there are no such laws currently in effect, or enacted, in the United States of America on a federal level, or in any state of the Union. What laws there are, are those that were designed to combat Mafia style RICO statute crimes on the federal level, and various state efforts whose local legislators have tried to concoct a whole slew and variety of various laws intended to suppress online gambling, which by the strange default also includes the skill based game of poker. The problem with state legislators has been that they have produced legislation that makes one act illegal in one state, while the very same act is perfectly legal in the neighboring state. This adds to the general confusion about the legality of online gambling, and by default online poker.

On the federal level, there are currently several moves afoot to try to create some form of legislation that would ban online gambling altogether. This all began back in the 1990s, and specifically with the introduction of The Internet Gambling Prohibition Act of 1999. This incredible legislative stupidity was initiated by U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte and Senator Jon Kyl to specifically deal with online gambling. No wonder that the general population of the United States, and the world at large, considers the United States legislators to be amongst the most intellectually feeble among all peoples of the world everywhere, when they try to initiate and pass legislation as stupidly moronic as this. Fortunately, these two misguided fools were eventually thwarted, because the bill died. Unfortunately though, it did not die permanently, nor did the legislative movement that initially sponsored it.

In 2003, Rep. Spencer Bachus (Republican -- Alabama) introduced the House Bill H.R. 2143, which is called the Unlawful Internet Gambling Funding Prohibition Act, supposedly designed to “ban the use of credit cards, wire transfers, e-Cash, and other forms of payment for funding Internet gambling activities”. Not only is this bill insidiously stupid, but what is most dangerous about it is the fact that Rep. Spencer Bachus and his cronies are trying to attach this bill to the 911 terrorist legislation mandated by the 2002 Law that created a commission to study the intelligence and Law enforcement failures that made the US susceptible to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. By attaching this Internet funding gambling prohibition act to this terrorist bill, Rep. Spencer Bachus -- and in particular Rep. Michael Oxley (Republican -- Ohio) who is the current chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services and a longtime advocate of the prohibition of Internet gambling -- and their equally deluded supporters are trying to convince the legislature, and the rest of us, that by prohibiting the transference of money to Internet gambling sites, and Internet poker rooms, that is somehow necessary to protect us from terrorist attacks. This kind of thinking, and these kinds of attempts, are not only idiotic, but downright traitorous. Instead of focusing on the real problems of this country, and the world at large through the resurgence of terrorists and religious maniacs, Rep. Spencer Bachus, Rep. Michael Oxley, and their supporters, are instead trying to piggyback their silly efforts to curtail Internet gambling onto this terrorist bill. By so doing, they will open the Pandora’s box of political opportunism to even greater political lows than the pits to which our legislators so deluded have sunk to before.

Fortunately, it appears as if sanity prevails, and that the more intelligent members of the United States Congress will recognize the futility and stupidity of these attempts and quickly put a stop to it. Equally fortunately, the current executive leadership of the United States of America has recognized that if they allow Rep. Michael Oxley and/or his supporters to succeed in attaching their gambling funding prohibition act to the 911 terrorist bill, that will not only open the door to everybody else who wants to attach any kind of special interest bill to any other, but that such an act will also dilute the impact and value of the terrorism bill and delay it in Congress likely for ever. This bill is currently scheduled to go before the final congressional vote on September 29, 2004. Although I am writing this before this date, it appears from all legislative actions up to this moment that such an attachment will not be allowed. The statement that will most likely prevail is that offered by the executive branch of the United States government, who insist that “the leadership wants the 911 bill focused”, and as such does not want it diluted by extra added baggage that has absolutely nothing to do with it. (This was in fact the case, as this attachement died. At least for now, as of early 2005).

While these zealous legislators are trying to waste the money we are paying them as public servants by creating such foolish and foolhardy legislations, and then are equally sneakily trying to attach them to other very significantly important bills, there are other, even more insidiously stupid and frightening acts being committed by various officials of the United States Department of Justice, and some other so-called law enforcement agencies. Most recently, the United States Justice Department sent warning letters to publishers, radio stations, and Internet sites that sell advertising around the country, telling them that excepting advertising from online gambling sites including online poker sites, would be a crime, subjecting them to possible prosecution and fines. Although legal experts everywhere have concluded that the Justice Department’s position rests on no fact, no Law, and on absolutely nothing other than the pure and blustering threats made by them against lawfully abiding companies and citizens, and persons the world over, including those residing in countries outside of the United States, nevertheless these threats have had the direct effect of forcing otherwise legal companies and the persons who patronize them, as well as other businesses, the stop their activities. Online banking company Pay Pal was entirely forced out of the Internet banking business altogether, as that applies to the transference of money between Internet poker sites, and Internet gambling sites, and famed search engines such as Yahoo and Google have been forced to stop excepting advertising from online poker sites, and online casinos, and to stop their search engines from directing people to them.

However, the most insidiously scary of all of these acts by the United States Justice Department was the recent seizure of $3 million paid by PartyPoker.com to the Discovery Channel in payment for promotional and publicity materials surrounding the PartyPoker.com Millions WPT poker tournament. The United States Justice Department said that “the money was for advertising to promote an illegal purpose”. What illegal purpose? The PartyPoker.com server on which the poker is played is located significantly outside of the United States of America. The PartyPoker.com Millions WPT poker tour event is held on a cruise ship several hundred miles outside of the shore limits. So, if in accordance with the Justice Department statement the money paid by PartyPoker.com to the Discovery Channel was for advertising to “promote an illegal purpose”, what exactly was this “illegal purpose”, and where exactly did this take place? Herein, of course, lies the greatest problem with any such legislation, and that is precisely the fact that none of this Internet gambling or Internet poker playing, or even the poker cruise, takes place anywhere in the United States. Playing poker on an Internet poker sites means that you are playing a poker game located outside of the United States. Playing poker on the PartyPoker Millions WPT Championships takes place on a cruise ship significantly outside of the sphere of legality and influence of the United States of America, and in particular the Justice Department. None of this is any kind of “illegal activity”. What makes this kind of act the most dangerous is not only because the United States Department of Justice has taken it upon themselves to exercise these Gestapo and Nazi techniques, but more so because they have done this without there ever being any kind of a Law, or any kind of legislation anywhere in the federal statutes that would authorize them to do so.

Nevertheless, as justification for these enforcement activities, the US Justice Department, and other such misguided law enforcement agencies, are using the existing state and federal laws in the United States that address the transportation of wagering information over telephone lines and wires, which were legislated in the pre-Internet era , such as the Interstate Wire Act, the Travel Act, the Crime Control Act, and the Interstate Transportation of Wagering Paraphernalia Act. Many experts contend they are outdated, and that their drafters could not have foreseen the advent of the Internet. In other words, their applicability to online gambling is strongly questioned, especially in the case of offshore gambling operations since these laws provide exceptions to gambling activities between two states or countries that permit gambling.

You see, what we have here is not only a misunderstanding of existing laws, which specifically allow exceptions for gambling activities between two states or countries that permit gambling, but more specifically and more dangerously, the complete misinterpretation of such existing laws without any modernizing legislation empowering that clarification to a point where the United States Department of Justice, or any law enforcement agency, can justifiably commit such atrocities in their name. All of the current federal and state legislations specifically permit gambling between states and nations who permit gambling. Therefore, since the United States permits gambling, even though it is limited to specified areas under various individual legislations, the fact remains that Internet gambling is perfectly legal in those other countries, and therefore as a direct result of existing laws, neither the United States Department of Justice nor any other law enforcement agency is empowered to in any way seize any property, or stop any commercial activity such as advertising, publicity, or the acts of financial transfers between such institutions and their customers. If this is not plainly stated, and if it is still misunderstood by either the law enforcement agencies, the United States Department of Justice, or the United States legislature, or the legislatures of various United States states, then the United States of America is in considerably more trouble than from merely economic problems or world unrest.

The trouble that the United States of America will be in, if these activities are permitted to continue, and the United States Department of Justice and the various other law enforcement agencies that act accordingly to its directives, are not curtailed and stopped from targeting online gambling, and specifically Internet poker, then the United States of America will no longer be the land of the free and law abiding. It will no longer be a land of the law abiding because even the chief law enforcement agencies such as the United States Department of Justice are acting directly against what is currently legal, and are doing so only because they can and because they command the strength of the federal government, and by so using it instill fear in everyone whom they target. Adolf Hitler did this in Nazi Germany, every dictator throughout history has done so in their own nations, and more recently the United States of America has gone to war in Iraq precisely because Saddam Hussein was doing this very same thing to his people. If American soldiers are forced to die in Iraq in order to free the Iraqi people from the oppression of Saddam Hussein, then who will go to war for the American people to help them from being exploited by the misguided acts of the United States Department of Justice?

Let us make no mistake here, and let us fully understand that as things currently stand in the year 2004, the month of September, although no act of Internet poker is currently prohibited by any enacted laws or legislation in the United States of America, nevertheless it is perceived to be illegal by some very powerful people in the United States government, who apparently don’t think that the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are important. Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his inaugural speech in 1932 that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. In 2004, we have a lot more to fear than fear itself. Not only do we have to fear the religious and political unrest in the rest of the world, where misguided zealots would want to turn the world of progress into the dark ages of meaningless worship of idols, and who wish to attack us and destroy our world and our lives simply because they wish to die as quickly as possible and take as many of us with them, but we now have to fear our very own government whose misguided legislators and law enforcement officials are apparently trying to advance their own personal and private prejudices through agendas designed to curtail the most basic of our freedoms.

We the people are free and self-reliant not because our government permits it, but because we the people are the government. Those elected officials in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our government, as well as all government employees and appointees who are paid with public money, are all public servants -- and that means that they work for us, we the people, and not the other way around. It is therefore prudent to perhaps remind all legislators and all Justice officials that they work for us, we the people, and that we the people do not work for them. In the United States of America, that particular brand of individual and collective freedom that we all enjoy, and are now trying to export to Iraq and to other places around the world, means that we should never be subject either to stupid legislation by misguided and foolhardy legislators who have somehow duped their constituents into electing them, nor have to be forced to live in fear of the United States Department of Justice who suddenly decided to wield heavy hands and administer arbitrary Justice through selective prosecution and selective persecution, even though there exists no law to so authorize them to do it. We the people should not have to live in fear of either such legislative incompetence, or such judicial and law enforcement heavy-handidness.

Finally, in the interest of fairness and to hopefully keep myself from being targeted for my personal and private opinions, let me state in no uncertain terms that I have personal interest in the legality of Internet gambling, and Internet poker. As author of poker books, and books on casino gambling, including Internet gambling and Internet poker, I have an economic and intellectual and personal interest in the legality and continuation of this form of adult entertainment. Furthermore, let me also categorically state that I in no manner, shape, or form, in any way condone, nor foster, nor promote, nor sanction, any activity that is illegal, now, in the past, or that may in the future become illegal. My opinions about the status of legislation and law enforcement as it pertains to Internet gambling and Internet poker, or in any related activities, are purely and only my own personal opinions and stated through the exercise of my freedom of expression, freedom of association under the Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

I have some very strong personal opinions about these issues. They are my opinions, and mine only, and not those of my publisher, nor any person who will distribute, publicize, or in any way commercially transact or transport this article. These opinions are mine and are communicated through this medium of the printed word to you, my reader, in the same manner as the famous pamphlets of Thomas Jefferson were so distributed to other people who wished to read them for their own purposes.

I hope that this is a sufficient disclaimer to make sure that everybody understands that I have only the best interests of the poker players and the world community at large, and the citizens and residents of the United States of America, at heart. I love poker, and I love playing Internet poker. I don’t want to see this great medium of the world community lost to the world because of the shortsightedness of some misguided and ill-informed persons mired in the distant past.