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"engaged in the business of betting or wagering."35   Phone

in your picks to the office football pool and rest easy.

E-mail them in and, under Kyl's bill, you would face as

much as $500 in fines and three months in jail.36   Even the

Department of Justice criticized Kyl's discriminatory

treatment of Internet gambling, noting that lawmakers may

find it "hard to explain why conduct that is not a federal

crime in the physical world suddenly becomes subject to

federal sanction when committed in cyberspace."37

Kyl's bill would also, unlike the Wire Act, make

interstate gambling a federal crime, even when carried on

between states that have legalized the games in question.38

The Wire Act exempts from prosecution bets transmitted

between two states, or a state and a foreign country, so

long as both jurisdictions permit such betting.39   The Wire

Act rightly keeps the federal government out of locally

legal business, whereas Kyl's bill would create a whole

new class of federal crimes.

Kyl's bill reaches beyond the Internet--and even

interstate communications--to interfere with matters better

left to state and local authorities.  Its coverage

includes "any information service" that "uses a public

communication infrastructure" to "enable computer access by

multiple users to a computer server."40   Kyl's bill would

thus cover e-mail merely sent across town.  Given that

many office e-mail systems rely on outside service

providers, it might even cover e-mail sent across the

hall!  The Wire Act that Kyl claims to take as his model

modestly, and properly, limits its scope to transmissions

"in interstate or foreign commerce."41

The Goodlatte-LoBiondo Bill

Although it shares the name and the professed aims of

Senator Kyl's bill, the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act of

1997 that Reps. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.) and. Frank A.

LoBiondo (R-N.J.) introduced in the House differs from the

Senate bill in some important respects.42   Whereas Kyl's bill

targets only Internet users, the Goodlatte-LoBiondo bill

would expand federal law to reach all individual amateur

bettors, online or off.43   It would make it a federal crime

to telephone a neighbor and casually bet a six-pack on the

big game.  Together, the two bills thus offer a Hobson's

choice between unjust inconsistency and unjust breadth.

The Goodlatte-LoBiondo bill would require an interac-

tive computer service provider, once given mere notice by

law enforcement agents, to discontinue furnishing any