Monday, October 02, 2006

Nowhere in the language of a bill passed late Friday night to curb internet
gambling is there any mention of gamblers being prosecuted for placing bets
or playing poker online. In fact, the new bill does not apply to gamblers
at all other than to make it a little more difficult to fund online betting
and poker accounts. Online gambling transactions will be the focus of a
Thursday meeting in London among third party payment processors. "The
passage of this legislation has had me working non-stop to get geared up for
this battle," said one attorney who represents a major payment processor
catering to the online gambling community. "Hopefully the collective legal
minds at the meeting in London, as well as counsel for other interested
parties, can launch a attack and/or approach to adaptation to the
regulations."
One Republican politician we spoke to Saturday had this to say: "The bill
affects Visa/Mastercard transactions and it is getting impossible to use
these cards anyway (for online gambling transactions. "The bill is very
'watered down' in terms of language which gives ISPs plenty of wiggle room
if they did not know they were enabling consumers to reach gaming sites. It
is not a big deal." The banking sector has already stated it will be close
to impossible to monitor electronic checks, fast becoming the payment option
of choice for today's web surfers. It's not just online gambling government
is trying to regulate over the world wide web.....now they are going after
internet dating services. Yikes. Several states are cracking down on the
online dating industry, proposing new laws that would, among other things,
mandate criminal background checks on all those looking for love on the
Internet.

To date, New York is the only state that has a law regulating online dating
sites, but six other states have introduced similar legislation mainly in
the last year. They are California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and
Texas.

Lawmakers seeking to regulate the online dating scene claim that the
industry isn't doing enough to police itself, and consequently, is putting
vulnerable people at risk of meeting up with predators.

Proposed legislation has varied from state to state, with some states
wanting to make criminal background checks mandatory, and others wanting
online companies to alert surfers upfront that background checks on
potential dates have not been done.

Another bill sneaked its way through Congress recently that would hold
online networking site MySpace.com liable for any harm that comes as a
result of unmonitored predators utilizing the popular website. Ouch!