You never met my wife…
I think you’re completely wrong. Can you point to a law that says it is illegal for someone to play poker on the Internet in a state where playing poker in a card room is legal? Because the government hasn’t had much luck making this case – they’ve had to focus on the laws surrounding how money is transferred to and from these sites in order to restrict online poker.
If online poker was inherently illegal, it would have been a very simple matter to prevent any U.S. players from playing a single hand, at least from a U.S. IP address. This hasn’t happened, because it’s not clear that it’s illegal even in states where brick and mortar poker is illegal (since the site you’re playing on is located in a place where poker is legal), and certainly not in states where poker is allowed.
Jesus, I was hoping this was a zombie thread from the idiocy a couple of years ago where online poker was outlawed in the US. So, new idiocy in online poker in the US, eh?
Procrustus - exactly. I have no idea why there wasn’t a huge outcry in the US when your right to play poker online was taken away. I thought you guys valued your freedoms. 
Your right being a player of online poker isn’t illegal, its just illegal to run the site or to use US banks to transfer the money. The people in question seemed to have been arrested for breaking the last part, they used US banks to transfer their proceeds.
You’re almost there. It’s not illegal to run the site, it’s illegal to run it in the U.S.
So now we’re left with the retarded law restricting how U.S. banks can transfer money to poker sites (which was designed to try to stop online poker without actually criminalizing it). The sites in question may have broken that law, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a legal way to transfer money to poker sites from the U.S., e.g. from U.S. banks to non-U.S. banks, then from there to the poker site.
Does that justify the Fed’s seizure of the sites U.S. domains? I’d argue no. If Goldman Sachs is found to have possibly violated SEC laws governing how they trade derivatives, the Feds don’t freeze all customer accounts and padlock the doors to the building while they resolve it.
The whole thing is a pointless shell game because the government can’t or won’t outlaw online poker directly. The only effect is to annoy a bunch of people who aren’t doing anything wrong.
Only two gambling puns in the press release? I expect better from my civil servants.
It isn’t new idiocy, it is the DOJ enforcing the stupid law that was made in 2006, which effectively outlawed online poker in the US. That law barred the transfer of funds to online gambling sites from any US financial institution (including banks, Visa, Mastercard, Netteller, etc.). The offshore poker companies named in this indictment flaunted that law and allowed US players to continue to deposit money, using third party banks or online money transfer companies.
Ah, enforcement of the old idiocy. Gotcha. 
The whole idea of online gambling seems crazy to me. How can you trust them? It seems like it would be really easy to alter cards dealt, dice rolls etc to give an advantage to the house or a player colluding with the house, or to give a player info about what cards other players are holding.
Do that too often and people will stop using your site. If you get caught, you’ll probably (I assume) find yourself in all kinds of trouble. Do online poker sites report to any kind of gaming commission that makes sure they’re on the level?
It seems to me you’re fear is no different then playing video poker. Of course, I assume most video poker machines are checked for fairness by a gaming commission to make sure the owner/operator isn’t cheating.
Exactly. The lesson here is that the people running these sites thought they could pull one over on the US government, and induced banks to engage in criminal activity. You think they are going to treat Joe Schmoe fairly?
Every machine in every place where gambling is legal is regulated and monitored. Random web sites? Not at all.
My sister lost her house because her now ex husband gambled it all away on Internet poker. Fuck on-line poker sites. Fuck them right in the ear.
Well, people are going to jail for breaking the law. So some people are obviously more then annoyed, and while I disagree with the law, I don’t think I’d say that the people that broke it (or the banks that knowingly aided them) weren’t doing anything wrong.
But I think the best course is to try and change the law rather then get snipey about the wording of DoJ press releases when they do their job and enforce that law. Barney Frank has tried to pass a law legalizing online gambling every year (as well as regulate it, so that it isn’t prone to the abuses thirdname fears) for the past several years. So call your congress-critter and ask them to support that bill.
I’m still shaking my head over WoW being full of degenerate losers…
That’s what I thought, but I get the feeling that at least in some libertarian circles, they either don’t want the DOJ to be enforcing (what they think are) immoral and unconstitutional laws (or perhaps rather, “going after the REAL criminals and not wasting their time investigating online poker”), and/or they think that the non-gambling charges are trumped up so that they can shut the sites down.
I agree with you for everything but poker – playing online slots for example strikes me as about as smart as stuffing money down a storm drain. With poker, the house has far less incentive to play anything but a straight game. The house makes the same money regardless of who wins or loses a hand, and poker players are notorious for harvesting and rigorously analyzing statistics. Even the faintest whiff of impropriety will cost the sites more than they could possibly gain by trying to squeeze a few extra bucks out of the rake.
It was due to the power of casinos. The congressmen just work for them. But casino owners did not want the competition.
The online poker is not regulated and has had some serious cheating going on.
[cough]Absolute Poker[/cough]
Someone has a firefox add-on to redirect to new domains from the ICE-seized ones. I suspect this would work for the poker domain seizures if they have new names.
No, fuck your ex-brother-in-law.
Hey, what a coincidence! I won a house playing on-line poker! Yay for online poker!