But, I’m only moved to comment now that I disagree.

I guess the major bone of my contention is, did you seriously accuse the optimists in this debate of being unrealistic (“whistling past the graveyard”) in the same post as suggesting (apparently without irony) the possibilty of Them coming after you, micro-limit player and poker blogger, to throw you in jail?

There’s many attorneys and many very smart people of all stripes coming down on the gloom-and-doom side, and likewise on the everything-is-fine side. No one really knows how it’s gonna play out.

But if we start accusing the other side of being unrealistic, then we better make sure our own projections are rooted in evidence rather than philosophy. Nothing in the wording of this law nor in the Fristian rhetoric surrounding it by its proponents makes it sound like they have any interest in putting away Joe Slowroller.

Such a theory can only be rooted in “slippery-slope” philosophy and emotion (“Well, every time we thought these a-hole politicos couldn’t think any lower, they did, so OF COURSE they would find some small-stakes players to make an example out of…”) rather than any sort of evidence. If the optimists are whistling past the graveyard, the pessimists are throwing themselves into open graves and scattering dirt on themselves. Neither way is “realistic.”

To get to your more specific point (assuming I’m not missing it, and I might be)…if online poker becomes legal, I can’t really see the government caring enough to be vindictive against the sites that “openly flouted” the law, especially since (please let it be true) the sponsors and main pushers of UIGEA won’t be in power anymore if/when online poker legalization is realized. Not that it would matter, but none of these sites feel like they are openly flouting the law anyway. They feel, for whatever reason and to say nothing of the merit of their position, that the law doesn’t apply to them.

Customer base is what its about in the online poker world. That is why Party ruled the poker world even though their software AND support sucked ass.

Now lets be clear in that they would have to be considered similar to an online gambling site which they are hoping to lobby against.

The fight isn’t over but if you look at Firepay they have closed themselves off to US clients. So lets hope that the rules are loose enough to allow neteller to continue to operate.