Experts on the Internet gambling industry are claiming that Washington’s threats to clamp down on online gambling businesses are basically just a bunch of hot air due to the unresolved legal questions regarding the online gambling industry. PartyGaming, the world’s largest online poker company, mentions the legal uncertainty issue regarding online gambling in the United States in its prospectus released earlier this month, but many industry experts believe that U.S. law enforcements agencies are unlikely to pursue the company in spite of threats to arrest and prosecute its owners. According to Joseph Kelly, a business law professor at the University of Buffalo, the chances of law enforcement agencies actually going after PartGaming or any other owners of online gambling companies are “so remote that the chances approach those of being hit by lightening”. Kelly has helped other countries draft online gambling rules.

The United States Department of Justice, however, contends that Internet gambling is in violation of several laws that prohibit interstate gambling and vows to prosecute violators. In fact, one approach that has been taken by the Department of Justice in order to prevent Internet gambling sites from successfully operating within the United States is to pressure credit card services like VISA and PayPal into blocking payments to gambling sites. Additionally, media outlets such as Yahoo have declined to run advertisements for online gambling sites. Still, law enforcement agencies have been reluctant to pursue individual Internet bettors and the measures taken so far by the Department of Justice have not stopped millions of United States citizens from placing wagers over the Internet on offshore Web sites like PartyGamings’s poker web site, PartyPoker.com. PartyPoker.com is based in Gibraltar.

Efforts to pass anti gambling laws that apply specifically to the Internet have not ceased, though, in spite of the fact that such legislation has been introduced to the Congress several times before and failed. In fact, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl is expected to introduce another anti-gambling bill this summer. A spokesman for Kyle said that the new bill would be updated to “reflect the explosive growth of the industry”.

Frank Catania, a former gambling regulator for the state of New Jersey who now works as a consultant to the industry, also thinks that the United States doesn’t really have a legal leg to stand on in its fight against the online gaming industry. “I think the Department of Justice is just sending out all these messages to avoid a confrontation where they might have to prove it in a court of law”, Catania said.