First of all, Jim, although you did fall a little flat at first, your further posts and repeated use of dirty, dirty facts is pretty damn funny.
Jersey Devil: I play at Pokerstars. Whenever you deposit money they require your SSN (US) and a valid phone number. They called me the first time I made a deposit to confirm my identity (such as they could.) A couple years later, when I tried to make a deposit at around 2am, they called again to ensure I was still who I said I was. (There was no trouble or anything out of the ordinary for them to call the second time, so I assume it is something they do at random. I would be pretty annoyed if I had to do it every time I played, though.)
Due to the impossibility of verifying someone's identity through the anonymous medium of the internet (yes - it is IMPOSSIBLE using reasonable means), there really isn't much more they could do. The fact that they actually made the calls to speak to me personally (especially the second one, which they didn't have to do at all) shows that they are at least making an effort. I mean, really, what would have them do - fly to the home of every customer to verify with their own eyes who is playing?
Maybe someone will come up with a technical solution that is effective without being intrusive, but for now what you envision is simply not feasible. Do you have a fingerprint scanner in your home? A webcam? Should Pokerstars offer them to you free of charge, or force you to stay in view of the camera at all times? I'm sure I speak for plenty of folks when I say: Fuck that.
Full Tilt, by the way, offers (for a small fee) a little keychain code generator that randomly assigns a code every thirty minutes or so that must be entered to play on the associated account. So that, at least, prevents kids from playing off a responsible parent's account. (Which is probably a far more common problem than kids signing up for their own accounts.)
I mean, yeah - there are all sorts of things that kids will do that they're not supposed to, but there is a valid argument in saying that parents bear the burden of responsibility when their kid's behavior is the issue.
Sure, kids might be able to find a way to gamble, just like they would in real life (I read that Phil Ivey used to use a fake I.D. to enter real casinos when he was a teenager.) However, if some kid keeps dumping all his money because he's addicted to online poker (or anything else, for that matter), well, then, his parents should probably have noticed this continued behavior. If it happens, it happens - and it will - but if it KEEPS happening, the individual parental figures are to blame.
Really, I don't see what's so "chilling" about the response you got from [whatever governing body it may have been.] All they basically said was "we don't want to create a hassle and piss off our customers to try and do something that we can't really accomplish anyway." It is true that any time a business says "keep our customers happy" they really mean "keep them shopping here." But the issue of sending players to other, unlicensed (read: unsupervised and unknown) online rooms that are under the radar is also a valid point. That WOULD be bad for the players. I trust Pokerstars to treat me fairly and to cater to my desires - and I want them to keep me happy, even though I know it's not because of my pretty face. I actually thought you were given a pretty professional, logical response, which I think is why Jim commented on your "interesting interpretation."
Also, legalizing/regulating the industry in the US is obviously their main concern right now, and certainly one that needs to be handled before attempting more specific forms of regulation. Meanwhile, kids that are playing online poker elsewhere in the world can be governed by their own national policies - that's really not our concern.
In closing, I offer this final word:
Testicles.
That is all.
SageLee