By Adam Nagel
After years of uncertainty regarding the status of Internet gambling, the U.S. Congress passed legislation Sept. 30 that would make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites. Horse racing sites, fantasy sports leagues and state lottery sites are exempt from this law. The consequences for breaking the law are to be determined by the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. Congress gave them 270 days after the bill has been signed to determine penalties.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) attached the Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act to the Safe Port Act, a bill that provides funding for port security.
Frist, who said last month that online gambling threatened the quality of life of millions of Americans and brought an addictive behavior into a family’s living room, had tried to attach the act to a Defense Department appropriations bill prior to the vote.
A legislature measure attached to an unrelated bill is known as a rider.
“It is not new at all,” Mark Landis, chairman of the political science department, said.
“That’s been going on for 150 to 200 years in Congress. An amendment to a bill is voted on and if it passes it will be included.”
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) complained that he did not know of any other senator who had read the poker legislation.
“That I can assure you is very common in the political process that, whether they are Democrat or Republican, the losing side will claim that no one had actually read the legislation and that this is an undemocratic process,” Richard Himelfarb, an associate professor of political science, said. “There are as many as 10,000 bills introduced to Congress each year and about 400 or so will be passed. It is implausible to expect that every Congressman will have read, let alone mastered, every bill that is brought for them.”
“Gambling is a serious addiction that undermines the family, dashes dreams and frays the future of society,” Frist said in a statement following the Senate vote. “The bottom line is simple: Internet gambling is illegal. Although we can’t monitor every online gambler or regulate offshore gambling, we can police the financial institutions that disregard our laws.”
University student Chance Hamlin said the bill represents another attempt by the federal government to legislate American values.
“It seems that, time after time, the people calling for a smaller government and states’ rights are the same people telling us what we shouldn’t look at, what we can’t buy, who we can’t marry and just how dirty and wrong everything in the world is,” Hamlin, a senior drama and creative writing dual major, said.
Social conservative groups fervently supported the bill and had sought to make Internet gambling illegal for years as conservatives in Congress introduced bills to outlaw it since 1997. One such group, Focus on the Family, asked its members to thank Frist, as well as others, for his effort to put Internet gambling on the Senate’s fall agenda. President Bush has declared his intention to sign the bill.
The bill is unnecessary because it is not the government’s duty to protect people from online poker despite the possibility of addiction, according to Hamlin.
“What’s next,” Hamlin said. “Closing the casinos? The government shouldn’t be responsible for protecting people from their own stupidity.”
“Where have our freedoms gone?” Mike Fox, a senior business major, said. “If we want to gamble our money away, we should be able to without the government getting their cut.”
The new law will not end Internet gambling, only hide it, Hamlin said.
“The hardcore people will find a way,” he said. “What’s to stop someone from creating an off-shore bank account far outside the jurisdiction of this legislation?”
Those students who use the University’s network to gamble are violating the University’s terms of service agreement, according to Laurie Harvey, director of Computing Services and Help Desk.
“If you read the terms of service, you will see that it says that the network is there for academic purposes only,” Harvey said. “You can’t break the law on it.”
Harvey continued to say that although gambling sites may not be blocked from the network now that Internet gambling is on its way to be outlawed, students must follow the terms of service and federal law.
“Hofstra University doesn’t scan the network,” Harvey said. “We would never do that. Other groups do scan it and students have to take it upon themselves to comply to the law.”
Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), the main sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives, warned in a statement issued following its passage that Internet gambling has grown beyond social and moral concerns.
“Internet gambling is a national security concern because it can be used to launder money, evade taxes and finance criminal and terrorist activities,” Leach said. “If Congress had not acted, gamblers would soon be able to place bets not just from home computers, but from their cell phones while they drive home from work or their Blackberries as they wait in line at the movies.”