A Poker Players Alliance executive reveals a split in the Republican Party over online casino, with the growing libertarian forces opposed to the online casino prohibition. An article published on conservative website biggovernment.com says the legislative battle over online casino and online poker may hold the future of the Grand Old Party. Rich Muny of the Poker Players Alliance writes that social conservatives are growing alarmed at the emerging libertarian focus of the anti-big government movement, and may make the online casino ban a point on which to draw a desperate stand.

Rich Muny cites written opinions expressed by a number of influential Republicans opposing the prohibition of online casino, from the PPA's own Alfonse D'Amato to Dick Armey, George Will, and Ron Paul. Rich Muny also added that the social conservatives controlling such groups as the infamous Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council are feeling their strength sap away.

"In this environment, perhaps it is not surprising that some Republican lawmakers feel that going after online poker could shore up the support of the dwindling ranks of social issue statistics, It is up to conservatives to tell their lawmakers that they demand fidelity to conservative principles. If we do not want them wasting political capital on online poker bans, and if we do not want them fighting for smaller government fifty percent of the time and for larger government the remaining fifty percent, we need to tell them." writes PPA's Rich Muny.

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Australia - As our beloved internet and technology becomes more advanced, increasing questions are being asked about such matters in Australia such as when is a gambling device not a gambling device, but just a computer, and vice versa... you get the idea punters.

Australian authorities confiscate a rental computer because it could be used to access online casinos, making it a potential gambling device in their eyes. A service providing computers with Internet access in Australian pubs and hotels is charged with operating an illegal gambling device. VenueNet is a marketing company whose computer kiosks are facing charges by Tabcorp that they violate exclusive gaming licenses and are real online casino.

Tabcorp pays for licensing in locations in the Australian province of Victoria, but customers using VenueNet's computer Internet connections can access online casino and sports betting sites and other competitors shopping their bets and gambling while avoiding Tabcorp. After hearing complaints, officials from the Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation impounded the computer located at the Rising Sun Hotel in Melbourne.

VenueNet executives are demanding the return of their computer. They say the device is the same as those installed at airports, malls, and other locations, and is no more a gambling device than computers in the courtroom or anywhere else.

While the machines do permit users to access sports betting site including Sportsbet and online casino, it does not emphasize that connection any more than the millions of other possible websites. The computer does not accept or register bets.

VenueNet says it has damages coming from the state for impeding its business. It plans to install 200 more computer kiosks in Victoria, and says it will expand to other provinces once the Victoria case is settled.

The Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation lodged an appeal with the Victorian Supreme Court to stop Sportsbet being heard in the magistrates court, as a third party in the case, on legal issues relating to the seizure warrant. The wagering licence, including exclusive retail rights in pubs, is held by Aussie gaming giant Tabcorp, which complained about the machine in question to authorities last year. The new wagering licence is expected to come into play in 2012.

A new study by UK gaming analysts shows as many as 32,000 jobs could be created by US regulation of online casino. A pair of high-profile reports were revealed in recent days that urge governments to legalize and regulate online casino in order to stimulate the economy.

In the U.S. Political website The Hill reports that “legalizing online gambling could create tens of thousands of new jobs over five years,” writes Kevin Bogardus, citing a new research report from H2 Gambling Capital, U.K.- based market analysis firm. In addition to the 32,000 new jobs the report cites, legalized online gambling would also yield “$57.5 billion in new tax revenue over five years. It could also lead to $94 billion in new economic activity, the firm estimates.”

“This study should provide further incentive for the Obama administration and Congress to act quickly to regulate Internet gambling,” Simon Holliday, a director at H2, said in a statement published in The Hill article.

The report also argues that the UIGEA and other anti-online gambling laws are throwing away billions of dollars "and leaving tens of thousands of U.S. players without any onshore regulatory protection" - the kind of protection that may prevent certain money launderers from manipulating an online gambling industry that's short in legal payment solutions.

In Australia, a similar study states that the online casino is experiencing an incredible popularity surge, and what is now a $790 million industry will likely double by 2012. Which accumulating $790 may seem like a somewhat paltry number compared to the billions cited above for the American market, but it seems less so when one considers that Australia’s population is about 1/12th of the U.S.

Simon Holliday remarked that this and past studies have shown that by trying to ban online casino rather than regulate it,US lawmakers are spending billions rather than collecting billions, all while failing to protect US consumers from unsavory elements in the gambling industry. Barney Frank is promising to soon push to advance his proposal to regulate online casino. A deadline of June 1st looms, as that is the implementation date for UIGEA rules against online gambling payment transactions (See VISA Blocks Online Casino Transactions In Canada).

Regulation of online casino seems to be a growing cause in Congress, as bipartisan legislators have called for the suspension of the UIGEA as well as submitted bills using funding from online casino taxes to pay for tax reform and foster care, among other causes.

Anti-gambling crusader and a professor in university of Illinois, John Kindt continued to repeat falsehoods about online gambling on a radical religious website, hoping the readers would accept his declarations without fact-checking. John Kindt Friday as reasserting his statements about the mischief of online gambling. He supposedly versed in scientific objectivity and proper research methods, continued his personal criticism against gambling in general and online casinos in particular, despite evidence that he is obviously wrong.

"Online gambling is the crack cocaine of creating new addicted gamblers," says Kindt, a statement he repeats around the country on speaking tours, ignoring the accumulated data and researchers' conclusions that he is dead wrong.

According to R&D magazine has published an article in which John Kindt claims online gambling regulation could cause an economic crisis as bad as the sub-prime mortgage fall down. Professor John Kindt criticizes Barney Frank for attempting to tighten controls on Wall Street while laughing out of court him for trying to wipe off the restriction on the free market that constitutes the online gambling ban. In addition, John Kindt said that regulating online casinos would cause an enormous hazardous that burst on online gambling operators that would overflow, causing an even bad economic downturn.

However, Sociologist Joel Best has said an incorrect statistic is "harder to kill than a vampire." Armed with that knowledge, Kindt seems determined to continue uttering falsehoods in the belief that hearing them repeated will convince the general public of their truth.

But objective studies, confirmed by peer review, have found that online gambling is actually much less addicthive than land-based casino gambling. As Dr. Howard Shaffer admitted his two-year study at Harvard Medical School expected to find a high level of problem gambling among online players, but the actual evidence confirmed the opposite: online gambling is safer than other forms of betting.

But Professor John Kindt state under oath that his supposedly factual purpose is that online gambling is as bad as crack. John Kindt was one a few speakers trotted forth by the far right church group as a supposed scholar, is equally biased. He notes conclusions drawn by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission of 1999, a body composed of political rather than scientific appointees whose conclusions have been debunked by thousands of peer-reviewed studies in the decade since.