"…The Internet, with no government oversight and leaky parental controls, only compounds the problems. Self-imposed age-verification measures are almost laughable in their naïveté. Most ask visitors if they are of age, or ratcheting up the level of difficulty, request people to punch in their dates of birth to ensure they meet the qualifications. All that’s needed to get around that more advanced system are some basic math skills and a desire to sneak past the virtual bouncer. Anheuser-Busch, to its credit, will have one of the smarter gatekeepers keeping watch over Bud.TV. It has bought an identity-verification system used by casinos and banks, Aristotle’s Integrity, which checks the names and Zip codes against driver’s licenses and other public records."

To read the complete article, please visit the New York Times Magazine website.

Bud.TV's potential appeal to underage viewers was one of the first stumbling blocks for the project.

Like the rest of the alcohol industry, A-B uses the honor system to verify that Web visitors are at least 21 years old. Visitors are asked for their birth dates at the entrance to beer sites.

Critics argued that this honor system easily allows underage children to enter.

The point of making something illegal is to stop people from doing it, and penalize them if they do.

Then there’s Internet gambling. The federal government is clear: gambling on the Internet is against the law. And yet millions of Americans do it on hundreds of Web sites, to the tune of billions of dollars.

While Internet gaming is illegal in the United States, correspondent Lesley Stahl reports it is absolutely thriving.

In the virtual casinos of the Internet, you can bet on anything. Spin the wheels on slot machines and roulette, roll the dice in backgammon and craps. You can wager on any sport. Or take a seat at Partypoker.com.