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U.S. Arrests Online Gambling Company Chairman
imaginaryelf writes "Reuters reports that U.S. authorities have arrested Peter Dicks, the chairman of U.K. based online sports betting company Sportingbet Plc, while he was passing through Dallas. Just two months ago, the CEO of another U.K. based online sports betting company, BetOnSports, was arrested on U.S. soil as well. They are both charged with violating the 1961 Federal Wire Act, which can be broadly interpreted as declaring all forms of online gambling illegal in the U.S. Is online gambling the Alcohol Prohibition of the 21st century?"
If you live outside of the US and have done something that the US have made illegal then don't go there.
Its another great example of the US deciding that its perfectly okay to have their laws apply to people from other countries, but the idea of an international criminal court that might try CIA and US Soldiers for torture and crimes against humanity then the answer is no.
Remind me again why people think the US is imperialist?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Funny. Pretty much sums up how I feel about the prohibition industry.
So it's okay for the United States to arrest foreign nationals because they run a business in their own country that is (sort of) illegal in the States.
And yet the American government complains loudly when Freedom Fighters in the Middle East capture and detain members of the American invasion force who are obviously breaking the law by invading those countries?
It would be really nifty if the American government spent as much time trying to provide health-care to its citizens, teaching science in its schools, and waging peace, as it spends on enforcing fear driven puritanical laws at home and waging unjust ideological wars abroad.
--brian
In the near future, the United States of America may be a country that non-Americans fear to travel to. With the DMCA, the Patriot Act, association with gambling sites, corporate deals with Iran, corporate deals with Cuba ... you just simply do not know whether or not you will be arrested when entering the United States. If your non-American company did business with Cuba, could you be arrested? If you engaged in fair use of media in your country, could you be arrested for DMCA violations?
You won't know until you are on American soil.
Of course, were the USA we can do what ever we want... I often wonder how we'd react if say Bill Gates was arrested in Communist China for being an "obscenely rich capitalist"..
He let's Americans gamble on his site, so he lets them break the law. That's illegal. At least that what I'm guessing their logic is. My guess is that their claim to him is a little tenuous to say the least. I bet he refused to bar access from US betters. The US's stance is hardly unknown, especially if you are in that industry.
I think that "online gambling is prohibition" comment is rather ridiculous. Online gambling is something people do from home, where one of the big things about prohibition is that it removed a common social activity (going to a bar with friends and to meet people). They are nothing alike except that they are both bans on something popular, and (are likey to get) overturned.
Don't forget that there is a REASON online gambling is still illegal. While that act can be intrepreted that way, Congress could have easily changed that by passing a law. However, don't think that all the casinos in Vegas and elsewhere like the idea of online gambling. That could take away a LOT of a their business if it was legalized. I'd be amamzed if they weren't pouring out money to keep online gambling illegal.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
No. Marijuana is the Alcohol Prohibition of the 21st century.
Started up a website serving up good old kiddy porn, started charging US users to download those images I should be safe then.
I think another person suggested that the US should have censured illegal sites.
How about if you're going to conduct business in a country, you follow and obey all local rules and regulations? If you can't comply, then about making it so that you block access yourself so you don't violate those laws and regulations.
Second, I can't believe this Dicks decided to go through the US even though the other guy went in a couple months earlier and got arrested. It's either arrogence or stupidity.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Remember Dmitry Sklyarov?
Perhaps this is all a fiendish plot to cut down on US tourism...
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No, you got that backwards. The shop isn't flying to Saudi Arabia selling vodka, but the Saudis are flying to the UK buying vodka in a local shop ("This is a local shop, for local people; there's nothing for you here").
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Casino winnings are taxed
If Congress could figure out a way to tax all online gambling winnings, they'd do it in a heartbeat. (Specifically winnings paid out by companies outside the U.S.A.)
As it is now, if you win from some offshore gambling outfit, it is up to you to report your winnings... or not.
To support the Submitter/Editor's assertion that online gambling is similar to prohibition: Politicians caved in to the Prohibitionists because income from the relatively new income tax (just 7 years old) made it possible for the Federal Gov't to do without the cash from liquor taxes.
Prohibition ended in 1934, because income taxes tanked ~60% during the first few years of the great depression.
To summarize: Because (1) the tax revenues wouldn't be that large/needed and/or (2) Congress can't figure out how to enforce taxes, they will continue to 'ban' online gambling. Once 1 &/or 2 gets changes, they'll reconsider.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Is the Prohibition of the 21st Century.
If a smoker wants to smoke in a public park, let them. It's a public place meant for everyone. You can't please everyone.
If a smoker comes though and blows smoke in my general direction, it should be considered socially acceptable for me to go fart in that smoker's space too.
Thing is, my space belongs to me. I find having cigarette smoke blown in my direction akin to invading my space. I find it more disgusting than the smell of fart, and more harmful to my health.
I think we should start a campaign where we go and fart in smoker's spaces.
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Nobody forced Mr. Dicks to sell services to American citizens.
Nobody forced Americans to proactively make use of Mr. Dicks' services.
In the case of selling most products internationally you have to actually make an effort to sell in another country. Even if you're shipping stuff sold "on the Internet" you're shipping it physically to a foreign address and should certainly make sure you're not shipping stuff to countries where it's illegal. When you open up a server on the Internet that content is available to everyone by default. In fact, there's not even really a reliable way to tell where the hits are coming from given proxies, VPNs and whatnot. The same problem exists with payment methods: yes, in most cases it's easy to determine the location of a payer given, say, a credit card billing address. But it's certainly possible to get money routed through foreign accounts or through online payment systems that don't list a shipping address. Perhaps when operating a site that accepts payments for controversial items one should mandate a payment system that includes a billing address and refuse to bill any countries but those where the service is known to be legal. That's not really very difficult, so you're right that this one guy has it easy.
But what about services that don't require payment? For example, the P2P software that's been deemed illegal in Australia. Or racist websites operating in the US that run afoul of Canadian and European laws. Falun Gong sites that are illegal in China. Various types of pornography that are illegal in various places in the world. IIRC it's still illegal to export cryptographic software from the US to certain embargoed nations under the same laws that prohibit the sale of weapons to these nations; I'm pretty sure if you sold any other weapon to such a country the Feds wouldn't take, "But he clicked a box on our website saying he wasn't from Iran," for an answer. We run into the problem that it's easy to cross national borders on the Internet and impossible to control which borders you're crossing. All you have to do to "export" something online is sign up with your neighborhood ISP. This is one of the reasons it's been so successful.
Expressing the laws of every country and state through a technological standard would be ridiculously challenging; even accurately representing the location of clients to every server would be pretty difficult without massive cooperation. If every country in the world tries to apply their import/export laws to Internet traffic we'll be creating massive amounts of work for server operators, who would likely overcompensate by trying to lock down their services to domestic viewers. Countries like Saudi Arabia and China that figure they probably can't force foreign webmasters to obey them set up firewalls, but those are expensive and hard to maintain. I don't have a total solution, but I think as a practical matter Internet traffic can't be treated like standard imports and exports.
...I flat out refuse to fly. I'll drive or take a damn sailboat before I'll give an airline one penny or give those goons the satisfaction of seeing another sheep bend over to get sheared and get the shaft put to them. I cannot understand why any MAN would put up with seeing their wife or daughter get felt up by some armed goon pervo at the airport. I will NOT put up with that be a sheep nonsense at the airport. I am a FREE MAN, not some peasant who must bow and scrape in front of the king's mercenary henchmen. FUCK EM!
So good for you foreign guys, and every time you avoid flying into or out of the US, drop a note to the airline you avoided and to some select senators here, and maybe a few letters to the editor at the big papers, let them know that this bullshit is stupid!
The entire REASON for the formation of the USA was because we wanted to trade FREEDOM for the ILLUSION of "security" that was given by being a "king's subject". Screw that noise.
"But what about services that don't require payment? For example, the P2P software that's been deemed illegal in Australia. Or racist websites operating in the US that run afoul of Canadian and European laws. Falun Gong sites that are illegal in China. Various types of pornography that are illegal in various places in the world. IIRC it's still illegal to export cryptographic software from the US to certain embargoed nations under the same laws that prohibit the sale of weapons to these nations; I'm pretty sure if you sold any other weapon to such a country the Feds wouldn't take, "But he clicked a box on our website saying he wasn't from Iran," for an answer. We run into the problem that it's easy to cross national borders on the Internet and impossible to control which borders you're crossing. All you have to do to "export" something online is sign up with your neighborhood ISP. This is one of the reasons it's been so successful." When I was stationed in Spain, I tried to download a 128 bit encrypted browser, the site recognized my IP as not US, so denied the download. I could have gone the proxy route, but figured it was easier just to get the stuff I wanted from work with the US military IP's. But seems that most sites could deny access from sites that it is known to be illegal to access the service or software, but why is that really their concern. It's not illegal (afaik) in the UK to export gambling services, just like its not illegal to export P2P clients, so why should they be bothered.
What's an international company supposed to do to keep americans from using their freedom? They ask if you're from the US. They tell you to check and see if it's legal to do what you're doing there. Are they supposed to visit you?
The guy at my deli never asks for ID when I buy lottery tickets and all the bingo I played as a kid at church was when I was under 18... but you let one american bet the Packer's to win the SuperBowl and bam! You're in jail.
We have a goverment that outlaws things so they can profit from doing it themselves. When the Mega-Millions jackpot is $25 million, you know how much money they make? Let's just say the goverment is taking more than half before showing you that number.
I think your point about exporting, in general, makes sense: people can take measures to prevent exports that their own country deems illegal. If we were really going to treat Internet exporting like physical exporting, though, the government would be cracking down on proxy servers that potentially broker traffic between embargoed nations and websites offering services. We generally don't do that, and it would probably be a horrible mess if we did, but I think that there should be a clearly codified reason why. We wouldn't want the government to randomly begin applying pressure on particular proxies it didn't like by surprise, or anything like that.
/. a while back). They should be bothered because people that distribute Falun Gong material aren't treated very nicely when they travel to China. Because, while they perhaps should be able to export anything their own countries allow from their domestic servers, the countries they're exporting to aren't seeing it this way.
"It's not illegal (afaik) in the UK to export gambling services, just like its not illegal to export P2P clients, so why should they be bothered."
They should be bothered because a UK man was just arreseted for exporting gambling services to the US, and because some P2P company was somehow ordered by an Australian court to provide a modified program to Australians (I don't remember exactly how that was enforced, but it was on
This is why I believe we (the United States, but also every other country that wants to consider itself a civilized nation) need a clear policy for these situations: what should our response be to illegal material from other countries on the Internet? Right now we clearly have confusion, because if there was a clear policy that the people in his situation would be arrested our UK friend would probably never have traveled to the US.
If this was all as above board as some suggest, then why weren't these people simply extradited, instead of the Feds hiding behind the baggage carousel waiting for them to change planes? I mean, it might be hard to understand, with the USs puritanical views on gambling, but these are executives of publically traded companies - Richard Branson is equally as guilty http://casino.virgingames.com/, as an example. This is not the equivalent, in the UK at least, of some drug baron using loopholes in the law to sell prescription morphine to kids, or Louigi 'Fingers' Spaghetti running a craps game down the back alley. Over here these people are running companies as legitamate as QVC or Bloomberg.