Many states, Illinois and New York included, are still going strong with plans to offer lotteries on the Internet. All this thanks to the question both states had about doing so even before Christmas 2010. At that time, both states were moving forward with Internet lottery plans, and so asked the Justice Department for clarification. The answer from the Federal authorities was: the 1961 Wire Act, long considered a provision prohibiting all Internet gambling, only prohibits betting on sports. Lottery numbers

“What that means is states are now free to do just about anything they want,” says gambling analyst and Whittier law professor I. Nelson Rose. “There’s more than 44 lotteries in this country. They are all looking at ‘Let’s go online immediately if we can.’ They are all looking at their state statutes,” Rose says. US lottery

But why is this so exciting for some people?

Basically, it all started in 1961 then the Interstate Wire Wager Act of 1961 banned bets over telecommunications systems that cross state lines or national borders.

By 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 curbed a boom in online gambling by prohibiting businesses from accepting payments from a bet or wager involving the internet. The, the online gambling sites are driven underground.

Then, in 2010, officials in New York and Illinois press the Department of Justice on whether existing laws might prevent them from selling lottery tickets online or not; and that’s how we got to 2011. Is it then that the Department of Justice issues a lenient interpretation of the Wire Act of 1961, which states that the prohibitions on betting via telecommunications systems apply only to “sport-related gambling activities.” Effectively, this means states can authorize online gambling as they see fit.

So now, Illinois Lottery director Michael Jones says people in Illinois should be able to buy tickets online for the Lotto and Mega Millions games by early spring and for Powerball in the near future.

“The issue here is very simple. All the state Legislature wanted to do was to have the lottery mirror people’s buying habits with the kind of retail channel everybody uses to buy plane tickets, books and concert tickets,” Jones says.

University of Illinois professor John Kindt is against such expansion and calls the Justice Department opinion outrageous. For him, gambling online will take away money from the consumer economy and it’s a problem that will create bankruptcies, crime and new addicted gamblers, he says.

“This will put gambling in every living room, at every work desk and at every school desk,” Kindt says. “People will literally be able to click their mouse, lose their house.”

But Frank Fahrenkopf, CEO of the American Gaming Association, says protections can be put in place where Internet gambling is allowed.

“We’ve been able to see, with the regulatory reforms that they have put in, that it can be provided in a very safe way to protect underage kids from getting online and gambling, and you can provide, by tracking, great assistance for those who can gamble responsibly,” Fahrenkopf says.

For Farenkopf says it’s no longer a question of if there will be Internet gaming in the U.S. but, how and when will there will be online gaming in the U.S.