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State of Kentucky Seizes Control of 141 Domain Names
ashmodai9 writes "In a rather interesting (read: insane) decision, a district judge in the State of Kentucky has awarded control of 141 online gambling domain names to the governor of the state. Most of these are hosted offshore, and very few are registered under US domain name registrars, let alone registrars in the State of Kentucky (are there any?). You can check out the press release here, and confirm that the Commonwealth of Kentucky does in fact now 'own' these domain names by performing a WHOIS search on any of the domains listed here."
Live in one country, host in a second, DNS in a third. Preferably non-contiguous ones that don't share languages.
What the hell is so fundamentally wrong with gambling?
As long as it's taxed and has governmental oversight, nothing. There are state owned and run lotteries, Nevada and New Jersey have casinos, many other states have "Riverboat casinos," and many horse/dog tracks around the country.
Hell, the Kentucky Derby isn't there to look at the "purdy ponies."
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Didn't the WTO rule that online gambling is legal, and doesn't that trump this? Also, isn't the domain name registrar outside the law? I could be wrong, but this ruiling is rediculous.
does that look like a nice picture ?
That's entirely dependent upon whose brand of pig-headed nationalism you want to subscribe to and whose you want to take a giant shit on.
I think you are right, because I checked again, and only 10 or so domains currently are owned by the State of Kentucky. Yesterday, the number was much higher - over half - and it wasn't a matter of registrar compliance (I don't think the individual registrars had a say in the matter), ICANN was the one who handed control of the domains to the State.
Well, there's a little thing called lex causae that kicks in here. We have laws of one state attempting to govern people who are not within that state and are not technically doing business in that state. This is effectively allowing the state of Kentucky to overrule the sovereignty of other countries. Such extraterritorial influence should only be allowable if the action they are prohibiting causes provable harm to victims within the state (e.g. fraud laws). These laws, however, prohibit harm to third parties (legal in-Kentucky gambling institutions).
Kentucky should have the right to punish its citizens for online gambling, but IMHO has no legitimate claim for punishing anyone outside of KY for taking the bets any more than they have the right to fine companies in California for shipping wine directly to KY residents (see Granholm v. Heald). In fact, that case is pretty much an exact mirror of the way this one would go down if it ever reached the Supreme Court except that in this case, Kentucky doesn't even have little bits of the 21st Amendment to help prop up their position.
This law about as clear a violation of the interstate commerce clause as you can possibly get, and it's only a matter of time before it gets overturned. That said, given that Kentucky has done this before with other industries and has been slapped down, I think this time the Kentucky government needs to be slapped down a LOT harder, much like a repeat offender gets a longer jail term....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Interestingly enough, the DNS for GOLDENCASINO.COM is still live, and it still appears to serve the casino's website.
Perhaps the Kentucky secretary of justice doesn't quite understand how DNS works. ;)
Naturally, I cannot find the quote now, but I remember hearing yesterday (I want to say it was on the BBC world service) that the judge involved "was aware that the ruling could affect other countries' access to the gambling sites, but said he was only concerned with Kentucky.".
In other words, he knew perfectly well what he was doing was going to affect people outside KY and he did it anyway. Can't we do something do him for that?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I've actually made "cloned" recipes from that site, and most of them are...not exact, to say the least. They're from people who tried to make something that tasted like the original dish, not the actual authentic recipes for the dishes in question.
Besides, if anyone ever posted the authentic recipe, the KFC mafia would find them and smother them to death in beakless, clawless chickens with enormous breasts. Everyone knows that.
well it helps if you know the 'rest' of the story. not only are these offshore gambling sites using rigged double dealing programs, so that nobody ever wins 'big' prizes... but some of them are so dishonest that they then sell your CC info to credit card pirates, or even double or triple bill people.
so basically they're a reverse ATM you spend hours and hours giving these sites your money, so they can put it in a bank.
there is no way to win, which is why people should only play casino games online if they're 'free' to play with no membership fees or prizes...
if you want to wager money go to a a reputable casino, avoid bar units, gambling rooms, and some Indian casinos. or at the least, play a real card game with real cards where they use a machine shuffler.
las vegas is generally clean, but there have been times that corruption in the state gambling agency that grants licenses that have allowed machines to be 'chipped' to avoid the big prize.
online gambling is the biggest set of crooks since the mob learned that reel machines could be mechanically rigged to mint money.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html