The end of internet gambling?

According to recent news articles, the US government is now trying to put an end to internet gambling for Americans.

Link to recent story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020618/pl_nm/tech_gambling_dc_2

They can't shut the sites down, because they're all based outside the US, but the law now being proposed will ban US credit card companies from dealing with internet casinos, and apparently even ban US companies like Yahoo from having banner ads linking to internet gambling sites.

Will this mean the end of internet gambling for Americans? What percentage of the income of the 1500 or so internet casinos comes from americans? I wonder if the majority of them will go out of business if this law goes into effect.

Will there be a way around the law? I guess players could mail off a check to the foreign based company, but this would be such a hassle that few would do it.

In order to stop it the government would have to totally ban private international commerce - it ain't gonna happen.

All the casinos have to do is create offshore companies to act as middlemen, so that the credit card companies cannot easily identify transactions as casino-related. The credit card companies cannot be expected to do a lengthy investigation of every single offshore transaction.

Existing offshore banks could even handle the transactions.

If politicians had any sense, they would realize that they simply do not have the technology to ban internet gambling, and should instead concentrate on getting a piece of the action via licensing, taxing, etc.

That's if they had any sense . . .

The casino's do not have the resources nor the expertise but there are plenty of legitimate companies doing this for them (paypal, neteller, firepay, clearchex,etc), and have done so for years. I don't know a single person who uses a credit card for online gambling anymore.