• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, February 24, 2009

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) plans to introduce a bill to legalize Web gambling, his spokesperson confirmed Monday.

The new measure, which the lawmaker expects to unveil next month, will likely be similar to a bill that he unsuccessfully introduced in 2007, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act. "A licensing and regulatory regime for Internet gambling in the United States is needed to provide appropriate protections against underage gambling, compulsive gambling, money laundering, and fraud for those citizens who choose to gamble online," it stated.

Currently, a 2006 law, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, prohibits banks and credit card companies from sending money to online gambling sites. While that law regulates financial companies, it doesn't criminalize consumers who place online bets. The act has spurred complaints in Europe, where gambling sites say the law has cost them billions of dollars.

In the U.S., several states are struggling to determine how gambling laws apply to the Web. An appellate court in Washington just ruled that the site Betcha.com did not violate laws against Web gambling because users could back out of any losing bets.

In Kentucky, state authorities recently attempted to seize 141 domain names of offshore gambling sites on the theory that such sites posed a threat to the state's horse racing industry. A state appellate court ultimately rejected that request on a technicality: The court ruled that the state's gambling forfeiture statute only applied to devices, such as roulette wheels, and not domain names.