I’ve been spending a lot of time tracking down and reviewing the bill today. I think there is not nearly as much to worry about as people think. Even the really extreme cases are not necessarily that bad for portal webmasters. Below is one of my posts on the GPWA website that summarizes some of my thoughts.
I’ve found a copy of the port bill as passed. It can be found at the following URL http://saveonlinegaming.com/hr49543.pdf. The portion of the bill relating to online gambling begins on page 213, and runs from there to the end of the bill on page 244 – so it totals 32 pages in length.
A very important aspect of the bill is that it does nothing to criminalize playing at an online gaming site. It remains completely legal for an individual player to play online in the absence of state laws to the contrary.
There is reference to banking regulations being developed within 270 days of passage on page 231. No timeframe is mandated for implementation and enforcement of those regulations.
In terms of financial transactions, the bill is focused on payments to online gaming sites. There is nothing in the bill to allow interference with payments from online gaming sites to affiliate programs. And, in my personal opinion, the industry has already done a pretty good job of dealing with the player payment methods easily attacked under the bill. And the bankers will fight very hard to prevent regulations from being implemented that require them to do any more work.
There are provisions for disabling links to online gaming sites, but I think those provisions will be easy to circumvent via redirection services. In fact, depending on what happens, the requirements here could actually benefit portal sites with affiliate programs.
Imagine if the actual URLs for gambling sites did not work, but that every affiliate program had a way to identify and direct players to online gaming sites using a database of updated ip addresses that changed frequently enough that ISPs could not block them effectively. Suddenly the easy way to get to online gaming sites would be through portal sites, and those sites cannot be blocked under the provisions of the law.
I sincerely hope that does not happen, but I give it as an example of how a bad outcome for the industry as a whole could actually work to the benefit of portal webmasters.
Personally, I’m now going to sleep very well tonight now that I have had a chance to review the actual provisions of the bill.
Michael
If you want to see the rest of my posts on the topic, they are available on the thread http://www.gpwa.net/forum/showthread.php?t=168130