I wonder who paid who? I'm not talking about brown envelopes necessarily, but a lot of people must have been promised a lot of things.
I don't believe the DOJ would change their tack just like that because they felt bad for online gamblers. The legal opinion could have been sought years ago.....in fact, what's to say they didn't and just sat on it until the major offshore operators were dealt with.
Maybe they were told to think again by an increasing number of states wanting to press ahead with online lottery sales. This of course could have unintended consequenses as by now saying that non sports wagering via the "wire" is not illegal under the wire act, states with no specific laws against online gambling are again open to all types of non sports wagering, and since this would no longer be "illegal gambling", the UIGEA would no longer prohibit the transactions. It seems additional laws will be needed so that the "carve outs" can be defined as legal, whilst at the same time the offshore offerings can be defined as illegal at a federal level.
Without such new laws, the states may argue that their lotteries are now legal online because they are not sports related, and there is no law saying they are illegal. There don't seem to be laws that specifically protect the carve-out operations from the rest, the "war" has relied heavily on interpreting current laws in favour of the carve out operations.
Now of course, what about horse racing. This clarification could have the opposite effect, strengthening the view that horse race bets online and by phone are illegal as they are sports related. There would need to be a law specifically saying that horse race betting within states over the internet or phone is legal, whilst it is illegal across borders. I think at present they rely on the fact that because it is done intra state, it is not covered by the wire act, however geolocation is imprecise, so they cannot be 100% certain they are only taking intrastate bets. It is not as precise as taking the caller's number from CLI and mapping it to an address to determine that the bet is intrastate.
Maybe this has backed the US into a corner, and they will have to start regulation, and specifically approve individual operations to take bets from US players. I am sure state lotteries and horse race tracks will be first, followed by the big casino operators and online poker run within the US. The banks may say "screw this", and stop trying to determine which gambling transactions to block, and which to let through, and wait for new and more precise instructions on how to implement filters.