Bill HR 6663

US Republican Congressman Pete Sessions, has introduced Bill HR 6663, which intends to bring clarity to the UIGEA and the current state of US online gambling laws.
UIGEA (a.k.a. Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006) is the Title VIII of the The Security and Accountability For Every Port Act of 2006.
The Act was passed at midnight on the day Congress adjourned before the 2006 congressional elections. Though a bill with the gambling wording was previously debated and passed by the House of Representatives, the SAFE Port Act (H.R. 4954) as passed by the House on May 4 (by a vote of 421-2) and the U.S. Senate on September 14th (98-0), bore no traces of the Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act that was included in the SAFE Port Act signed into law by George W. Bush on October 13th, 2006.
The UIGEA was added in Conference Report 109-711, which was passed by the House by a vote of 409-2 and by the Senate by unanimous consent on September 30 2006. Due to H. Res. 1064, the reading of this conference report was waived.
The UIGEA title explicitly prohibits the transfer of funds from a financial institution to an Internet gambling site, with the notable exceptions of fantasy sports, online lotteries, and horse/harness racing.

Below you can read some of the reactions to this Act coming from the Blog community:

"I'm willing to bet (pun intended) that some crafty, innovative people out there in the online world will find ways to get around this ban. Sadly, however, a lot of people will probably have to go completely 'underground' to do it. And we shouldn't be surprised if a shady element enters the scene to try to get a cut of this business."
--The Technology Liberation Front

"Rather, I want to highlight that there are millions of ordinary Americans just like me who didn't ask for this ban, oppose it, and will be harmed by it. The industry invited regulation and taxation, and yet poker players are now facing an outright ban. Congress completely sold us out -- if you care about this issue, head over to the Poker Players Alliance site."
--A Copyfighter's Musings

"While all the big online gambling sites have said stuff about stopping bets from folks in the US, it's unlikely they'll really be able (or all that willing) to do so. People will still be online. At the same time, the WTO has already pointed out that the US's attitude towards online gambling is in violation of various agreements -- but it's not like the US is going to bother listening to an organization like the WTO."
--Techdirt

In April 2007, U.S. Congressman Barney Frank introduced a bill to overturn the gambling aspects of the Act, saying "The existing legislation is an inappropriate interference on the personal freedom of Americans and this interference should be undone." Additionally the bill sets up the framework for taxing and regulating online gambling by individuals within the United States.

The new Bill proposed by Sessions would also grant companies who willingly left the US market an amnesty, and opens the possibility of allowing them to re-enter the US market.

The current language of the UIGEA states that banks must stop allowing transactions to illegal Internet gambling sites. However, it does not define what illegal Internet gambling is and therefore makes it impossible for the banks to implement the UIGEA's stipulations.

Sessions' new Bill also attempts to clear up those ambiguous definitions by defining illegal online gambling as only related to sports betting.

The language also makes it clear that the ambiguity of the UIGEA has caused legitimate publicly traded UK companies to voluntarily exit the market, thus seriously damaging the companies' stature, while allowing non-complying companies who remained in the US market to thrive.

The stated purpose of Bill HR 6663 is outlined below:

SEC. 2. CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS AND PURPOSE.

(a) Findings- Congress finds the following:

(1) Prior to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (hereafter in this section referred to as the 'UIGEA'), Public Law 109-347, on October 13, 2006, Federal law was both vague and outdated regarding Internet gambling activities, as Federal criminal gambling statutes were passed decades before the commercial use of the Internet.

(2) To date, all Federal Internet gambling prosecutions have involved sports betting, creating a lack of authoritative court decisions on the applicability of other federal criminal statutes to Internet poker and casino-style gambling.

(3) Sports betting, which is illegal in 49 of the 50 States, is viewed as particularly harmful because its potential adverse impact on the integrity of professional and amateur sports, and is the one form of gambling where there is settled Federal case law clarifying it as illegal on the Internet.

(4) Many European Internet gambling companies offering services not including sports betting to persons in the United States were fully listed on the London Stock Exchange, and thereby subject to high standards of transparency and scrutiny, but upon receiving clarification of United States law regarding Internet gaming through the enactment of the UIGEA, these companies closed their sites to persons in the United States.

(5) Continued legal jeopardy for companies that made a good faith effort to comply voluntarily with clarified United States law following the passage of the UIGEA punishes behavior that the law intended to foster and inadvertently rewards continued noncompliance by other foreign entities.

(6) In light of the foregoing and in deference to long-standing constitutional requirements of fair notice and transparency in the criminal law, the Congress finds it necessary to clarify that criminal statutes applicable to gambling do not apply to any person who offered Internet gambling services that did not include sports betting prior to October 13, 2006, and who ceased offering Internet gambling services to persons in the United States upon passage of the UIGEA.

(7) To effect the purposes and intent of the UIGEA, it is the sense of the Congress that the Attorney General should focus any prosecutorial efforts on those persons who--

(A) offer Internet sports betting in the United States; or

(B) process payments for illegal Internet sports betting in the United States.