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http://www.iomguide.com/tynwaldhill.php
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In 1979, Tynwald celebrated its Millennium under the watchful eye of Her Majesty the Queen, Lord of Man. The Queen returned to preside over the ceremony in 2003, a year after her Golden Jubilee. The Isle of Man is not part of UK, but remains a Crown Dependency.
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http://www.gov.im/mnh/heritage/story/tynwald.xml
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The World’s Oldest Continuous Parliament.

The most enduring relic of Scandinavian culture in the Isle of Man is the Island’s parliament, Tynwald. After 1,000 years the world’s oldest continuous parliament normally sits in Douglas, but still meets once a year at midsummer on the Tynwald Hill at St. Johns. This was not the only meeting place for Tynwald, and like others it was given legitimacy by its closeness to a burial ground - in this case one of the oldest and most extensive on the Island - and allowed the living to be associated with land owned or administered by their forbears.

But Tynwald is more relevant to the living than the dead. It is a vital social institution, and, after all the past conquests and re-conquests, today it is consolidating the independence of the Isle of Man.
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PokerStars is in Isle of Man. They have strictly rules regarding online gambling including coding audit, datacenter servers locked and monitored (can't get in without warning) and the need to have legal reps in the Island for avalible all time. Of course, they also set a number of rules about how the code behind should work. They also heavly tax them. The real problem here is that Las Vegas is upset with online gambling and they are trying to find an excuse. For more info: http://www.gov.im/gambling/

A lot of the British companies doing online gambling have British offices and employees but are actually incorporated in Costa Rica, Panama, Gibraltar, and various other countries with advantageous tax regimes and very little or no regulation. e.g. BetOnSports - Antigua / Costa Rica corporations with UK based holding company, Pokerstars - Costa Rica / Isle of Man; the Isle of Man company appeared after IoM enacted a streamlined deregulation of online gambling which explicitly states it's legal to offer such services to the US at about the same time they introduced 0% corporation tax, quite a fewer companies are now based there, also here's a list for Gibraltar, some big names there include Ladbrokes which is one of the UK's largest gambling operations, and PartyGaming which is one of the largest online poker providers in the world.

According to EFF, the date to beat to show prior art is January 19, 1996. In 1994 Microgaming Software Systems released the first online casino in 1994.
http://www.gov.im/ebusiness/microgaming.xml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgaming

Any other cited examples of prior art? Help shut down this asshat and contribute your prior art info to: http://w2.eff.org/patent/wanted/contribute.php?p=sheldon

Canonical is registered in the tax haven Isle of Man and employs staff around the world, along with their main offices in London and support office in Montreal. Isle of Mann is not part of the United Kingdom, but external relations, defence, and ultimate good-governance of the Isle of Man are the responsibility of the government of the UK. So no it's not UK based and it has a global reach; So laws around the world impact upon it. That includes but is not limited to UK, Canadian, Usa, Chinesse, Polish, Liechtenstein and Monaco laws.

Every nation has bad laws, welcome to planet Earth. It is interesting that you are so blase; people accuse usian of being ethnocentric jingoistic, however it seems that's a more universal trait;-) Thanks for demonstrating that.

I'm more of a fan of ogg speex and ogg vorbis than mp3 . I think I finaly added a repo that had the mp3 codec after a long time. I might be liable for a civil tort, *shrug* oh well. I won't go with fluendo no matter what.

Happily as far as I know only 3 countries allowed patents on software: US, Japan, and Australia. EU which UK is part of allows patents for "Technical contributions" that might include software. Actually from the two recent Supreme Court rulings, the UK and USA might now be on even par concerning the patentability of software; so wipe that smirk from your face.

As for end-users being liable, in the usa I am fairly certain that they are. It been that way since 1903 at least. As for software being patentable -- from 1981 to 2007 pure software was patentable in the usa. Whether end-user in the uk are liable look at EUROPEAN PATENT CONVENTION and UK Acts, Rules and Directions and the case law. I have a gut feeling it would be similar to the usa in that regards though.

Where did you get this figure? The Manx 2001 Census reports it very differently:

Total Resident Population: 76315
Those born in South Africa: 388

(from http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/treasury/economic/censu s/reportvolume1.pdf via wikipedia)

I guess I'll have to wait until the law is actually implemented. At a push the Isle of Man http://www.gov.im/ sits right between Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales yet is not a part of the UK or the EU (its a UK Crown Dependency but has its own Govnerment). For email and web hosting the latency would be minimal and its a nice enough place.

I was nearly killed by a routine MMR vaccination, and I know others who have been damaged. Later, the thimerosol gave me ADD and mild autism.
See here if you're a UK resident who's been injured by vaccines
In British Columbia, parents of autistic children have launched a lawsuit against healthcare authorities for endangering and permanently damaging children. Vaccination causes autism, ADD, and other mental disorders.
See here for interesting info if you're a vaccine victim from Canada
Personally, I'd like to maim the moron who decided that mercury derivatives make great additions to the crap they shoot into kids nowadays.

Info here
Interesting Viera Scheibner's research here
help for Isle of Man vaccine victims here
You probably have friends who have been damaged by vaccines. Think about it.

In conclusion, Bill Gates is still evil. Even Dr. Gardner agrees; ou have all been warned. Thank you.

no have at look at http://www.gov.im/

Take a look at http://www.gov.im for more information. Commonly mistaken as part of the UK, but we aren't even in the European Union let alone the UK. Associated with the UK by the British Crown as a Crown Dependency (the Queen is Lord of Mann - but not Queen of Mann, so she appears on our banknotes without a crown). Tynwald - our parliament - is the longest running parliament in the world, it has been in continuous existence for around 1000 years.

Under the legal systems (there are separate judicial systems in England and Wales (both share the same judicial system), Scotland, Northen Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are not parts of the UK. The States of Jersey, States of Guernsey, States of Alderney, Island of Sark (collectivly the Channel Islands) and The Isle of Man are all independent Crown Dependencies, not parts of the UK.