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 Few month ago no one was wondering about the online poker legality or about the future of online gambling industry. The calm and sunny days of online poker were disrupted by the “Black Friday” events. On April 15th, 2011, in the day that entered the history as the Black Friday, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted the owners of three major poker rooms on charges such as fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling.
As the charges were made public the Poker Stars and Full Tilt international sites were blocked and so were the player accounts for all US players. Basically US players with accounts at the major poker rooms found themselves with their money blocked in inaccessible accounts. Eventually the domains were unblocked as the poker rooms made a deal with DOJ to return all the money to the US players as soon as possible.
This unprecedented situation raised a big question in all players’ minds: is online poke legal? In US as in many other countries the online poker is not illegal. The DOJ indictment is based on the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 which regulates the money transactions between players and poker sites, so the poker players did nothing wrong. There are just few countries worldwide where online poker is illegal or under special regulations, but in most cases the online gambling and therefore online poker is totally legal. The recent actions in the US had a strong impact on the local gambling market but also put a lot of pressure on speeding up the process of legalizing and regulating the online gambling industry. This responsibility belong to the Congress which is expected to make the next step towards regulating this recent developed industry. Online poker is one of the largest and most dynamic parts of the online gambling industry so the sooner it comes the legal part the better. |
