Although President Bush signed a bill to stop online gambling in October of this year, those who wish to continue throwing digital dice can find solace through legal loopholes.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, passed under the Safe Port Act, restricts transactions of online gambling Web sites in the United States.

Louis Liebovich, professor of journalism and media studies at the University, said 20 percent of male college students in the U.S. gamble online. Despite the new regulations, many students at the University have found ways to circumvent the law.

Peter Wielocha, junior in Business, said the new legislation has had little influence on his gambling habits.

“The (Safe Port) Act does nothing, basically,” Wielocha said while he explains how to bet on NFL games. “It’s not really a ban. It just makes it more difficult for players to deposit and withdraw money.”

When the Safe Port Act passed, Jim Perkins, a finance attorney from Santa Monica, Calif., created an online petition against the legislation that currently has over 12,000 signatures.

Perkins created the petition, which he plans to send to his congressional representative in January, because he thinks the government should allow and regulate online gambling.

He gambled online frequently before the ban on Web sites like PartyPoker.com. Now, though, he has to cut back.

Perkins said part of the reason the ban passed is because legislators think online gambling is immoral and that the government should not be trying to control morality.

“If this current Democratic congress were sitting before the current election, this bill never would have passed,” Perkins said. “However, I don’t know how they will be able to make it a priority to overturn it.”

“It’s something that people really want to do, so they’re going to find a way to do it,” Perkins said.

On average, Wielocha plays poker on PokerStars.com for one to two hours every day and makes $5,000 per month.

The bill has had little effect on his habit because some internet payment services have continued depositing U.S. citizens’ money in online gambling sites and many gambling sites continue to operate.

Wielocha transferred money to PokerStars through FirePay.com, an online payment service, until the ban led them to stop accepting gambling deposits from U.S. customers.

When the ban passed, Wielocha withdrew his money and stopped gambling for a few weeks.

Because some of his friends continued gambling and did not experience problems, Wielocha began to play again and now deposits money through Neteller.com, another online payment service.

Many gambling Web sites continue to permit U.S. customers to use their services.

Wielocha said the ban led publicly traded sites, like PartyPoker, to stop accepting U.S. customers while privately owned sites, like PokerStars, have remained open.

Liebovich said the ban raises the question of who controls privately owned Web sites operating outside the country.

“The problem right now at this very moment is that this is all very new,” Liebovich said.

It will take time for the U.S. government to figure out how to control the ban, he said. In the meantime, gamblers can continue to play on sites based outside the U.S.

“(PokerStars) operates offshore so that the U.S. government or any other government has no influence on what they can or cannot do,” Wielocha said.

If the government wants to ban online gambling, they may have to create new legislation to do so.

“That ban that they have, it doesn’t affect PokerStars,” Wielocha said. “It doesn’t say it’s illegal for you to play poker online … it says it’s illegal for banks to cash your money.”

Wielocha said that when online gamblers deposit money in their banks, the banks do not know where the money came from.

The check does not say PokerStars, and banks would have to update their software to track the routing numbers.

Wielocha said it is not profitable for banks to do this. He said he thinks the banks would only update their software if the government either funded or required it.

Some of the debates surrounding the legislation involve the issue of money laundering and the threat that terrorists will transfer money through online gaming sites.

“If someone owes you money, you can give them the money through PokerStars,” Wielocha said.

He does not think the amount of money transferred on PokerStars is great enough to fund a terrorist organization.

Perkins said the ban is the wrong way for the government to trying to prevent the transfer of money to terrorist organizations.

“The more that they drive this underground, the more that they make it vulnerable to the kinds of dangerous transferring that they’re trying to prevent,” Perkins said.

He encourages online gamblers to send handwritten mail and forward the petition link to their state representatives, in addition to signing the petition. The petition can be found at http://www.petitiononline.com/LOGNOW/.