I actually just saw this, great article on I Nelson Roses web site, the full blog is at
http://www.gamblingandthelaw.com/bl...ies-and-poker-are-legal-december-24-2011.html.
A Present from the DoJ: Internet Lotteries (and Poker?) Are Legal. 12/24/2011
December 24, 2011
The United States Department of Justice (“DoJ”) has given the online gaming community a big, big present, made public two days before Christmas. President Barack Obama’s administration has just declared, perhaps unintentionally, that almost every form of intra-state Internet gambling is legal under federal law, and so may be games played interstate and even internationally.
Technically, the only question being decided was, “Whether proposals by Illinois and New York to use the Internet and out-of-state transaction processors to sell lottery tickets to in-state adults violate the Wire Act.” But the conclusion by the DoJ that the Wire Act’s “prohibitions relate solely to sport-related gambling activities in interstate and foreign commerce,” eliminates almost every federal anti-gambling law that could apply to gaming that is legal under state laws.
If the Wire Act is limited to bets on sports events and races, what other federal anti-gambling statutes are left? There are prohibitions on interstate lotteries, but Powerball and the other multi-state lotteries show how easily these can be gotten around, even before Congress passed an express exemption for state lotteries. And poker is not a lottery under federal law.
So, all that are left are the federal laws designed to go after organized crime. These all require that there first be a violation of another law, like the Wire Act, the federal anti-lottery statutes, or a state anti-gambling law. If a state has expressly legalized intra-state games like poker, as Nevada and the District of Columbia have done, there is simply no federal law that could apply.
If the bettors and operator are all in the same state, and the gambling does not involve a sports event or race, the Wire Act cannot be used against the operator, even if phone wires happen to cross into another state. And if the state legislature has made the online game legal, it does not violate any other federal anti-gambling law.
I suppose it is possible that the DoJ could argue that poker is a “sporting event or contest.” But the language of the Wire Act prohibits “information assisting in the placing of bets or wagers ON any sporting event or contest.” If poker is a contest, it is one where players bet IN the contest, not on it. Anyway, the DoJ held that the Wire Act was designed to go after bookies taking bets on horse races and football games, etc., not other forms of gambling. And even the DoJ would not argue that a game like blackjack is a sporting event or contest.
In a footnote, the DoJ expressed no opinion about the provision in the Wire Act that allows prosecutors to shut down phone lines where true interstate or foreign gambling is taking place. But, since the DoJ has now concluded that every other section of the Wire Act applies only to races and sports events, it would be truly bizarre to believe that Congress intended only this one section to apply to other forms of gambling.
This means there may be nothing preventing states from making compacts with other states, and even foreign nations, once they have legalized an online game, like poker. If Nevada and the District of Columbia want to take Internet poker players from each other, what federal law would they be violating? And, if they agreed that their residents could bet with licensed poker operators in, say, Antigua and England, while residents of those nations could bet with poker operators in Nevada and Washington, we know they would not be violating the Wire Act, or the anti-lottery laws, or any of the federal prohibitions which require that the gambling be illegal under a state’s laws.
rest of blog
http://www.gamblingandthelaw.com/bl...ies-and-poker-are-legal-december-24-2011.html