For all my poker peeps out there, read Cringely’s take on the anti-fun nanny-state horseshit from our elected representatives:

This is ridiculous, not just because it is an unwarranted invasion of privacy, not just because we as consumers will ultimately have to pay for the cost of snitching on ourselves, but because the system of regulation ultimately won’t work. With an Internet gambling market approaching $20 billion per year, there is a huge incentive for new enterprises to spring into being specifically to get around this law. Frankly, it ought to be easy.

Just off the top of my head I can think of several possible approaches to subverting this new law. Working within the banking system it might be possible to aggregate payments to make their individual origins less obvious, especially if the aggregation involves some non-gambling money. Remember, these restrictions are being placed on the U.S. banks, not their foreign counterparts, so any bank in the Caymans or on the Isle of Man ought to be able to chug through such aggregated payments without violating any local laws. Another option, since intrastate gambling is authorized, is to make interstate and international gambling debts effectively local by creating thousands of local virtual bookies. All of these are old school ideas that don’t even need technology to implement. What if we bring to bear the capabilities of Web 2.0 and create payment mashups by the dozen Ð little PayPals that rise and set like the Sun?

Any random group of 535 nerds is smarter than the 535 members of the U.S. Congress and able to circumvent ANY regulation if there is enough profit incentive to do so. Well the U.S. Congress has just created such an incentive where there was none before. And once these various payment schemes start appearing, what’s to say some of them can’t be equally used to finance terrorism? Of course they can be used for that purpose. Thanks a lot Senator Frist.

Seriously, it’s not as bad as you think. Oh, it might be tough for a while, but online poker-playing will come through just fine, with guys like Bill Rini and Hank the Cowdog behind the scenes doing the code-fu.