Earlier today, PocketFives brought you an interview with Poker Players Alliance Executive Director John Pappas, who discussed the implications of the Department of Justice’s announcement that the Wire Act of 1961 only applies to sports betting. To get another take on the situation, we sat down with Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association Chairman Joe Brennan (pictured), who told us that last Friday’s announcement could be “much ado about not much at all.”

According to Brennan, Friday’s opinion letter, which was written in September, was a non-starter: “Everything that happened on Friday, from a legal perspective, was a non-event. The question is why Illinois and New York asked for clarification if Federal law already permitted it and other state lotteries were already engaged in it.” The two states sought to expand their lottery sales online and what resulted was an opinion that they would not be violating the Wire Act.

Brennan reminded the industry that the Black Friday indictments did not cite the Wire Act: “No one on Black Friday was indicted under the Wire Act. None of the guys on Blue Monday were indicted under the Wire Act and they were most definitely engaged in sports betting. If the Feds weren’t going to use the Wire Act for a sports betting charge, when were they going to use it?”

Instead of invoking the Wire Act on Black Friday or Blue Monday, Federal officials used the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA) and Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA).

Speaking of IGBA, which we haven’t talked about much here on PocketFives, Brennan called it “a Swiss army knife utility because it simply says if you’re running an unlicensed, unregulated gambling business, you’re violating IGBA. You have that and you have the UIGEA. All of the defendants were also indicted for bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering, not the Wire Act.”

Many in the industry have asserted that because the DOJ said that the Wire Act only applies to sports betting, by extension, online poker is permissible. However, according to Brennan, the DOJ only specifically mentioned sports betting and state lotteries in its letter; to extrapolate that to online poker could be a fatal mistake.

Brennan cautioned, “The Justice Department spoke only about sports betting and state lotteries. They didn’t say anything about poker and other forms of internet gambling. Now, everyone is saying the Justice Department has softened its stance on internet gambling, but it has done nothing of the sort.In the last year, you’ve seen more action against internet gambling than in other years. They’ve just utilized IGBA to do so.”

In Nevada, the push for above board online poker is in full swing. In fact, licensed and regulated sites could be coming as soon as 2012.

Brennan noted that the UIGEA already included a carve-out for intrastate online poker: “The UIGEA already covered it. The UIGEA says that the only thing that matters is the state in which the player and bet-taker treat the activity. What you had was a number of people saying you’d violate the Wire Act because there’s no such thing as a solely intrastate internet transaction. But, in the UIGEA, there’s also a specific piece that says the intermediate routing of data has no effect on legality.”

Those advocating interstate online poker could point to Powerball, an interstate lottery game that regularly seeks jackpots above $100 million. Gambling law guru Nelson Rose (pictured) summed that point up in a recent blog, saying, “There may be nothing preventing states from making compacts with other states, and even foreign nations, once they have legalized an online game like poker. If Nevada and the District of Columbia want to take internet poker players from each other, what Federal law would they be violating?”

State law also retains a considerable amount of weight. On Black Friday, for example, violations of New York state law set off a tidal wave of legal action. “If you violate state law, it triggers this cascade of the UIGEA and IGBA,” Brennan observed. “The Feds came in and said the site’s founders violated New York state law and that triggered other violations.”

Stay tuned to PocketFives for the latest poker legislation news.