Slashdot Mirror
Greek Anti-Gaming Laws Still Being Enforced
Gamaroo writes "An AFP report on Yahoo indicates that innocent Internet and gaming cafes in Greece are still being raided by police, despite the laws being ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court of the land. From the article: 'In a desperate attempt to clamp down on out-of-control illegal gambling, Greek parliament passed in 2002 a law that summarily banned all public gaming conducted by electronic and mechanical means. Said one man, 'They treat us like criminals,' said Aris Assimakopoulos, a 28-year old computer specialist who runs an internet cafe in downtown Athens. Policemen stormed Assimakopoulos' enterprise twice in January, threw out all clients, confiscated 50 PCs and arrested an employee.'"
He is talking about people who run illegal computerized gambling, which is what the law targeted in the first place.
From the news report : A draconian computer gaming ban enacted two years ago is still alive and kicking in Greece, despite a string of court decisions throwing it out as unconstitutional, the country's internet cafe owners complain.
As you can see, there ARE court decisions overruling the laws and letting the cybercafe owners get away with this. In the real world, however, this means still means squat in light of the fact that all your computer hardware (which is 99.9% of a cybercafe's investment) is destroyed from police confiscation, not to mention uncounted losses in profit. Until the laws fully get taken down, the cybercafe owners are gonna get screwed even if they get off the hook.
The quote taken out of context:
"These guys earn so much, that even when police catch them and confiscate their PCs, they can pay the fines and buy new material with just a single day's proceedings," Gusakis added.
This particular person, a cafe' owner, was talking about the illegal cafe's that are the REAL target of the police raids; the ones doing the illegal gambling, etc.; as evidencied when the entire discussion is re-read:
"Rather than combatting gambling, the law just seems to open the door to abuse of legitimate internet cafe owners. "Greece is full of phony internet cafes, opened by operators of banned gambling halls," Yiannis Gousakis, another internet cafe owner, told AFP.
"These guys earn so much, that even when police catch them and confiscate their PCs, they can pay the fines and buy new material with just a single day's proceedings," Gusakis added. "
I'm amazed that TWO slashdotters read what they wanted into this in less than 16 replies. Shame, shame, shame...
Maybe we could lend those poor cafe' owners some American lawyers; I'm sure a few successful lawsuits (or one successful and sufficiently giant class-action lawsuit) would get that law changed pretty darned fast.
I am Jack's Savage Beats.
IANAGL, but I have a friend whou is. You have to understand that precedent in court does not count as much here in Greece as in the US. This has good and bad side-effects: the good is that a judge's vedrict is not a law (and really, if it is, how do you cancel it?), and the bad is that bad laws have to get all the way to the lawmakers to get cancelled or amended, which takes time.
And don't get me started on the police, they're a joke...