UIGEA REVISITED

12 January 2007

Two questions on legislating against online behavior: Can we do it? Should we do it?

Web security expert Dan Nadir, vice president of product strategy for ScanSafe Inc. of California had some interesting things to say about the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act this week in an interview with GCN. ScanSafe is a Web security firm that monitors 6 billion page requests for its customers each month.

"The two biggest questions we face in trying to legislate online behaviour: The first is, can we do it? The second is, should we do it?" Nadir says.

“We can’t expect any positive results from the anti-Internet gambling law too quickly. It gives the Federal Reserve until July to come up with rules for blocking payments. Trouble is, it does not say how those rules are supposed to work. The legislation specifies only that there should be “policies and procedures” to identify and block the prohibited transactions. How is that supposed to work?

Nadir goes on to opine that it would be simple enough for a bank to block a credit card payment to Joe’s House of Illegal Gambling. But a really savvy operator is unlikely to be that helpful. Known gaming operations and their agents can be identified and cut off, but it is hard to see how offshore accounts with third parties and middlemen who handle payments to gambling sites can be effectively blocked, he says.

Can enforcement be effective? Nadir uses the much derided Can-Spam Act as an example: "The Can-Spam Act has not stopped spamming, of course. By various estimates, spam now accounts for from 70 percent to 90 percent of e-mail traffic. But that flawed law at least provided a tool for the prosecution of bad guys once they have been identified. In the end, the problem of spam will be solved—if it can be solved—by a combination of technology and education.

"The [new] gambling law does not really address an online problem, but instead targets a type of behaviour that legislators have deemed unacceptable. These behaviours, whether they involve dirty pictures or gambling, are not likely to be controlled either by technology or legislation."

Nadir concludes that there are real Internet issues that need to be addressed, including a transition to IPv6, providing adequate security so that the Internet can effectively contribute to a participatory democracy, and the burning question of net neutrality.

"Given the amount of work yet to be done on these and other issues, setting your bank to be a nanny overseeing your online behaviour hardly seems like a productive use of either the banks’ resources or Congress’ time," he says.

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa

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