Bill would pull plug on online gambling

Players who favor their laptops to blackjack tables won’t enjoy what Congress is doing.
Nowadays, the House plans to vote on a bill that would forbid credit cards for making payment online wagers and could padlock gambling Portals.
The legislation would clarify existing law to spell out that it is unlawful to gamble online.
To implement that forbid, the bill would ban credit cards and other payment forms, such as electronic transfers, from being used to settle online bets. It also would give law enforcement officials the authority to work with Internet supporters to block access to gambling Portals.
Some opponents of the legislation say policing the Internet is not possible, that it would be better to normalize the $12 billion business and gather taxes from it. The online gambling business is situated almost completely outside the United States, though about half its clients live in the United States.
Other critics protest that the bill doesn’t cover all forms of gambling. They inform on exemptions they say would permit online lotteries and Internet wagering on horse racing to grow while cracking down on other sorts of sports wagering, casino games and card games like poker.
John Kindt, a business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has studied the issue, calls the Internet “the crack cocaine” of gambling.
“There are no needle marks. There’s no alcohol on the breath. You just click the mouse and lose your house,” he stated.