|
|
 |
Cal Assembly Passes Internet Gaming "Crime" Bill
By John Hill
By a vote of 61-2 the California Assembly passed AB1229, a bill to outlaw Internet gaming and make it a crime for a citizen of the state to gamble on the Internet. The measure still has to be passed by the Senate and signed by the Governor before it becomes law.
Introduced by Assemblyman Dario Frommer, (Democrat, Los Angeles), the bill provides for stiff penalties and jail terms for gambling site operators directing marketing to Californians, in addition to making it a crime for Californians to gamble on the Internet, whether or not the sites are legally entitled to operate in their respective jurisdictions. The bill also provides that anyone "aiding or abetting" Internet gambling is guilty of a crime. This mean that anyone promoting or even "suggesting" that you exercise your free will in gambling on the Internet is subject to criminal prosecution. What have we come to? Magazines such as Gambling Times who survive on the advertising from gambling interests, both land based and on the web, will be forced, in order to avoid prosecution, to issue disclaimers, and worse yet to provide the Attorney General of the State and "any other enforcement body," full particulars on its advertisers with an eye to prosecution; an invasion of privacy hitherto unknown in the annals of American jurisprudence.
Should this incredibly ill-advised bill pass the Senate and be signed by Governor Gray Davis, it will become law, and once again prohibition will be in full force and effect: a prohibition so far reaching in its implications that the rights of citizens will not only be abrogated, but privacy and personal responsibility will become things of the past. Make no mistake about it. This is another "first step" in removing the rights we are all guaranteed in our Constitution.
If you would like your views known on the pending legislation, direct your comments to the following web sites. www.sen.ca.gov/~newsen/
senators/senators.htm and www.governor.ca.gov/state/
govsite/gov_homepage.jsp.
|
