Slashdot Mirror
US Shuts Down Canadian Gambling Site With Verisign's Help
First time accepted submitter ausrob writes "Domain seizures are nothing new, but this particular case is interesting. The Department of Homeland Security has seized a domain name registered outside of the U.S., by individuals who are not American citizens, and who registered with a Canadian registrar. From the article: 'The ramifications of this are no less than chilling and every single organization branded or operating under .com, .net, .org, .biz etc needs to ask themselves about their vulnerability to the whims of U.S. federal and state lawmakers (not exactly known their cluefulness nor even-handedness, especially with regard to matters of the internet).'"
At least, I assume it does, otherwise why would the DHS be involved in closing down gambling sites?
Either that, or they are just trying to spend money and justify their existance and vast budget somehow.
Also, first.
This is why we should move the control over the internet infrastructure to UN. United States is, once again, abusing their privileges. Even China acts nicely and only censors within their border. US does everywhere and for other nationals. In my opinion, US is much worse than China in terms of censoring.
So glad we're not letting those slimy UN people take control over the DNS system, look at the awesome job we are doing!
Thanks, DHS! I have long been worried that terrorists could gamble online and somehow infringe my safety and freedom.
OK, we've got it. He broke your heart.
US federal and state lawmakers (not exactly known their cluefulness nor even-handedness, especially with regard to matters of the internet).'"
Yeah because Canadian, Australian and UK, etc lawmakers are just so clueful and evenhanded. Seriously, can we cut out this nonsense anti-American bullshit?
This isn't new... even Slashdot has covered stories like these before.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/07/04/1439246/us-uk-targeting-piracy-websites-outside-their-borders
The summary can say not-American for a billion things, at the end of the day the domain TLD was com, over which the U.S. firmly asserts jurisdiction as the companies that run them are all U.S.-based.
Besides fighting 'The (U.S.) Man', people would do well to realize this and register somewhere a bit more friendly (in addition to any .com, .net, .org, etc.). In the case of this Canadian business, perhaps .ca? Oh wait, they did. And that ( bodog.com ) in turn redirects to a .co.uk .
"Whatcha doin' over there eh? Don'tcha know aboot our border?"
Verisign is evil? Who would have thought!!
It's impossible that an organisation that controls practically all of both DNS and SSL, that charges up to $1000 for a certificate would ever abuse that power! Well, except everyone who ever had a clue: http://www.webdesignsnow.com/news/091703a.html
For years, a few people have been screaming for domain registration/DNS to be handled by an international body like the U.N. While the risk with the present system seemed obvious, the U.S. had not performed any action to establish distrust. This made me feel ambivalent towards any action and opposed to the U.N.
I remain opposed to the U.N. running the internet! But, the time has come for a distributed P2P like registrar/DNS system. The internet needs to be ungovernable.
This was a Maryland law, which makes it illegal to run a gambling site anywhere in the world that the guy was convicted of, the US is enforcing with this domain.
So if one of those religious US nut-job states (you know the kind that think the world was created 5000 years ago by Adam and Eve, Santorum voters) decides that pornography is a crime, even if the sex took place in Japan, then likewise, the US will prosecute those Japanese and will shut down their websites.
I think the USA can't be trusted with the Internet.
With all net profits used to help cut down taxes. If people want to gamble, at least make sure their money is going back into their country instead of out of the country.
Ok. Can someone suggest an out-of-the-U.S. registrar that provides a relatively safe harbor?
Are there ANY non-country domains that are NOT controlled by the US?
sure registering a ".ca" is cute, but doesn't really say "world class"... even Tuvalu's ".tv" is kinda lame.
I guess ".co.uk" has a certain niceness about it, but looks too much like ".cock"
are there ANY top-level domains that are like ".com" but not controlled by the US???
If you're a Canadian company with Canadian customers, use .ca, eh? .com makes it seem like you're targeting your southern neighbors.
Or any TLD that's managed by a US company. Verisign manages .tv and .cc.
http://www.firstrowsports.tv/
They moved to http://www.firstrowsports.eu/
In the old days of commerce by ships, they labelled this kind of behaviour as "Piracy on the high seas"
The punishment was generally hanging, I understand.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
Bodog.com saw this coming from a mile away and switched their domain name to Bovada.lv in November 2011. Bodog.com was just a redirect site when it was seized and Bovada.lv is still up and running.
No telling how long it will take the US to get to Bovada.lv, but I wouldn't feel safe playing there. I think they had been trying to do something about Bodog for 5 years!
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
I think that's all part of the problem. Most likely, they were serving US customers. They probably made no attempt to turn away customers from other jurisdictions where the website may not have been legal. To operate within the law, they should probably do like all the media sites (like Hulu and Netflix) and assure that all payments are done on credit cards within countries that have legalized online gambling, and that traffic is coming from proper IPs. sure there are ways around this stuff but if they were making an effort to block US traffic, I'm sure they wouldn't be in this position in the first place.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
If you're a Canadian company with Canadian customers, use .ca, eh? .com makes it seem like you're targeting your southern neighbors.
And Eastern, Western, and Northern neighbors too.
erm, no it's not it was intended for commercial entities world wide. You have .us to use.
Maybe this is being done on purpose. Maybe the USA is making things bad enough that the UN should step in and take over the Internet. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/29/1840252/eric-schmidt-un-treaty-a-disaster-for-the-internet
You mean in the same way as US firms with US customers use .us?
Could you cite your source that .com is only for US? I've certainly never perceived that way.
Cheers, Glen
Well then, by your logic, american companies should use .us .com is the de facto standard top domain for pretty much any website in the world. As an open TLD it doesn't have any restrictions even though it was originally inteded for for-profit organizations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
It's not just .com and .net. Once the US Government decides that ICANN itself is in the US, what happens when they want to revoke "bodog.ca"?
"federal law prohibits bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located outside the country,"
Newsflash - a company registered outside the US and not doing business in the US is not bound by ANY type of US law, federal or otherwise. Perhaps someone should remind the US authorities that they don't run the world just yet.
They probably only did this because they think canada is a soft touch. I'd like to see them try it with a chinese or russian company.
Sovereignty, who's got it anymore? It seems Canada sold us theirs at a garage sale.
Take the Red Pill.
A source link in TFA goes to the actual warrant. The way it reads, a Maryland detective in addition to a DHS task force "officer", have a warrant to retrieve property, in this case "the Internet domain name bodog.com".
I haven't read my TOS when I registered my domain, but I believe that the domains belong to me and don't belong to the registrar. The warrant makes it sound like the domain belongs to Verisign. I am not a lawyer and I'm probably reading this incorrectly.
I have many questions regarding this, namely WTF is a local detective involved in this case. What was his role? Was there some sort of crime in Maryland (specifically Anne Arundel County) that started this investigation?
We don't live in Shouldland.
evil anti us/apple www.samsung.com
If all they have taken is the DNS record, the website is still there at the IP address it always has been.
If browsers / DNS servers were configured differently they would cache the different values and present some interface to allow users to go to the old one when they are presented with a takedown page. Or warn the user that the IP address has changed, and that the new one might be an imposter, showing the old page as well as the new page to allow you to choose.
It is interesting how U.S. corporations and government is doing all it can to destroy their market for business and influx of money for the sake of shortsighted economical benefits. They are setting up themselves and their corporations to be strong armed by other jurisdictions who will use this as an excuse to protect their markets and businesses. And what about scaring off foreign investors all ccTLDs that are under U.S. companies are going now to be avoided. The U.S. brand is dying slowly because of stupidity and greed. Welcome to the 21st century.
The issue of Internet jurisdiction really ought to have been sorted out by now. At present it's shoot first and ask questions later.
It's hard to make a case for any online business if the mere fact of its availability outside the country in which it is domiciled can render it (and its staff) potentially liable for criminal, privacy, libel, patent and other legal processes in countries where it may not even know it has customers - or indeed can have its service disrupted by actions against upstream providers with whom it has no contractual relationship. The Internet is as precarious as the Pony Express.
The US, in particular, seems particularly resistant to international discussion on any aspect of the Internet - witness the bizarre conspiracy theories spouting forth from FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell which prompted the wonderful headline in the New American "Obama Quiet as UN & Dictators Push to Control Internet" [http://thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/computers/10953-obama-quiet-as-un-a-dictators-push-to-control-internet].
Unfortunately, if there isn't some progress on the subject of jurisdiction we're going to have a series of discrete regional networks (US, Europe, China, ...) and a distributed Great Firewall of Protectionism.
In the meantime, if you're looking for a new business idea, I'd suggest whittling might be fairly safe, provided you produce no rectangles with rounded corners.
What's wrong with governments trying to shut down everything good these days? Can't they just leave us live?
What's the problem with targeting other countries? .com and not having to pander to stupid domestic laws of a few countries. If they were specifically targeting US customers, they would use .us anyway isn't it?
You think international web sites such as slashdot target only a single country in particular? Do you think slashdot would change its content if it was not allowed in say, North Korea? Of course not. Why would it be any different for the US? It's still just one country out of about 200.
It it fine to run an international web site as
The people who want to gamble are going to to do it. This is just going to push legit gambling sites out of business and make it easier for fraudsters to run off with peoples money. Credit cards are a crappy solution because they make everything more expensive, just like a tax, except the money goes somewhere else.
The manufacturing sector has been hounded out of the US and now it is the turn of the most vigorous replacement industries (those based on the internet).
The reason the internet has been such a phenomenal success, with the most amazing record of growth ever, is that up to now the government has, perhaps unwittingly, kept its hands off. But there is nothing that the government can't improve, and they are going to improve the hell out of the internet.
I know I am picking on the USA. Up to now freedom has been greatest there, and Americans have reaped the benefits. Now Americans have the most to lose. Like gun and abortion rights, this is going to be a never-ending battle against the forces of darkness.
Support the EFF!
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
If the UN was in control, NOTHING would get censored because NOBODY could agree on it. Just like there is no resolution against Syria because China and the USSR doesn't want it. The US could veto ANY UN censorship attempt, so could the UK and a host of other nations.
Now the US has total control and the US has shown to be far worse at it then the countries you list, none of them have tried to censor outside their own borders.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If this was done without the consent of the Canadian government (can't read TFA until after work) then this likely violates international law and could be construed as an act of war. With the united states military talking about hacking US sites being an act of war, what is going to happen when a foreign country fights back? Will we go to war against Canada because of political stupidity and corporate greed?
I guess we're going to get Internet-screwed by the U.*. one way or the other.
(Either U.S. or U.N.)
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
If you host the domain name in Ontario Canada
It is considered property due to a recent ruling by the Ontario supreme court , one might argue that this site is legal in Canada and might get A similar judgement as long as it was hosted in canada.
NOW all we have to do is start a class action lawsuit and then take a trade suit to the WTO and get sanctions against the usa.
The last time this happened an entire nation was allowed free patents and copyrights when the USA lost.
DO not kid yourselves here...THIS IS GONNA NOW START GETTING REALLY UGLY.
http://www.antiguawto.com/
I mean if you're running an illegal site you might as well just have people link directly to your sites ip. sure, it's a little awkward but less awkward than getting your dns switched to one of those tacky "HACKED BY FBI" signs the feds like to put up.
HERE is where the usa is going stupid
recent supreme court ruling said domain names if hosted in canada are property....
THAT means the US GOVT JUST ILLEGALLY STOLE SOMEOENS PROPERTY.
GUESS what this could mean....if they start doing it a lot.
trade sanction at the WTO, it happened once where an entire nationin south america was allowed to freely violate all Intellectual property of the usa.
IMAGINE THAT the usa wants to gvie canada a gift THANK YOU AMERICA KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK.
It looks like all the US government seized is the .com domain name. They didn't shut down the website.
I run a small company, we manufacture medical devices. No clue if our devices are legal in the US and don't care to find out... .com domain. I find all of this very interesting to say the least. Like other posters, I have never perceived the .com domain to be uniquely for US companies. Sadly, there is no alternative that Joe Sixpack is familiar enough with.
But I wonder, if it turns out that our devices are not legal for use on patients in the US, would the US block our
bodog was operating contrary to both Canadian AND American law.
So, while in Canada, domain names are considered property, don't break Canadian law and expect the Canadian government to protect you when the Americans say "hey, we're going to do what you should have been doing yourself."
This is like that stupid guy who wrote stuff against the Koran, then fled to another sharia-law muslim country for asylum. Or the crackhead who went to the cops to complain that they got only half a rock from their dealer.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
If you're a Canadian company with Canadian customers, use .ca, eh? .com makes it seem like you're targeting your southern neighbors.
.com is the de facto standard top domain for pretty much any website in the world
The Facts
.us .gu .vi ] .mil .edu .gov ] .com .net ] by spirit belong to the global community and are under the control of ICAAN, however, ICAAN incorporated in the U.S and falls under U.S Jurisdiction. The highly controversial [ .xxx ] sTLD is also sponsored by a U.S company and falls under the jurisdiction of the U.S government.
.com belongs to the global internet community but U.S legislation may be forced upon adopters at the U.S governments whim.
Country-Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD) are two-letter domains established for countries
Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) are three-letter (or more) domains that operate directly under policies established by ICANN processes for the global Internet community
Sponsored Top-Level Domains (sTLD) are proposed and sponsored by private agencies or organizations
U.S Jurisdiction
The U.S government has jurisdictional control over the ccTLD of its country and territories [
Being the sponsor of the following sTLD's, the U.S Government also has jurisdictional control over [
Generic Top-Level Domains like [
There are many other TLD's I have not listed here that are also under U.S government jurisdiction either directly or indirectly (i.e. through organizations incorporated within U.S borders)
Conclusion
sources: as listed by parent
--
I'm too cool for a sig
[Rent This Space]
From here:
Liberty in your lifetime
The world is going to move to an alternate DNS system that cannot be controlled by any one entity. It's the future of the Internet. Think of these sorts of "attacks" as initiators of innovation and evolution. They are a good thing in the end. They keep the people on the side of the hackers, or at least the important people.
he reason the internet has been such a phenomenal success, with the most amazing record of growth ever, is that up to now the government has, perhaps unwittingly, kept its hands off. But there is nothing that the government can't improve, and they are going to improve the hell out of the internet.
I believe that this mistake in perception is one that we can't afford to make again. The government is only a puppet of the businessmen that back them. The government doesn't just engage in random acts of police power. There is a purpose behind each and every move. If that purpose is not clearly to protect the public's interest, then you know whose interest it is protecting. Follow the money. By attributing these evils to the government instead of the businesses behind them, you allow those businesses to escape the scrutiny and ridicule they deserve. Even if you succeeded to remove the government's power to "protect" the business interests of these businesses, those businesses would just find some new way to accomplish the same goals. They could hire mercenary hackers to take out sites, or use any number of tools that don't require a government and couldn't be stopped without a government powerful enough to stop them.
Government is the only way common people have any hope of counteracting the power and influence of people and organizations with huge sums of money. Arguing that government power should be limited because it can be co-opted and used against you is the same as arguing that guns don't offer any self-defense value for the same reason.
I remember the discussion some years ago here in Slashdot about why ICANN and DNS should stay under U.S. control because it was the "land of the free", the country was neutral regarding these matters, there would be no political pressure of any kind, guaranteed freedom of speech, yada yada yada. It's also funny (in a sad way) that we are seeing this whole apparent enforcement of U.S. jurisdiction on foreign countries (NZ, Megaupload, the extradition of the British guy that posted links, etc.) when the military on American bases abroad are never subjected to local laws even when committing crimes locally outside the base, and when U.S. absolutely refuses to sign or endorse the International Court of Justice (recognised by more than 190 countries) because it will not accept foreign influence on its sovereignty in any way. I don't think my country (Brazil) is any better, but at least I'm not brainwashed since birth to think otherwise.
If you're spending more than 10 hours a week online gambling, do yourself a favor and quit. Cold turkey. Cash out, uninstall, and close your account(s). Even if you're profitable.
At issue is that the US government controls some key TLDs (such as .com). Any site which registers with a US government controlled TLD is subject to the whims of the US government. If I (a US citizen) registered mysite.ca, then I would be subject to the Canadian government.
This isn't about terrorism... it will be all legal once the government finds out how to extract their cut from the on-line gaming
shops are next?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Time to occupy DNS. Esp. *.gov.
Time for a distributed DNS, screw the nazi monkeys.
... that the UN does eventually get control.
Also, what the hell is DHS doing enforcing gambling rules and laws at all? Let alone on other nations?
Check your premises.
Subject 1 - US shuts down website registered in the US for violating US customs laws. Duh .com domain registry. Should it?
Subject 2 - US controls
dot com is not US domain, it is international. Other countries should oppose this.
Screw justice systems of the world, let's solve this with more tech, like usual...
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Namecoin
Time to make Malicious Governance a felony and RICO crime - pierce that veil of sovereignty and make the thugs personally liable and send them to jail.
It seems to me that if Maryland law was broken by Maryland residents, then those residents should be the target of these gestapo tactics...but I guess there's more $$$ to be had by squeezing an international business than a bunch of casual gamblers...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
And people wonder why there is such a real possibility of the rest of the world giving control of the Internet to the ITU/UN?
The article seemed to avoid the question of where the servers were. Part of me wonders if they were intentionally avoiding mentioning if the servers or the entire organization was being run out of Maryland, and that's what gave the US jurisdiction in this case. Sorry, the article just looked a little suspicious for the lack of information which might inform the reader as to why Maryland might claim jurisdiction.
Also, as I always point out in these stories: the internet is global. This creates a number of problems for enforcing laws. It seems like in the long run there's only two options: countries either succeed in enforcing their own laws (against, say, gambling, copyright infringement, counterfeiting, child porn, slander, money laundering, drug trafficking, hiring hitmen, creating computer viruses, stealing/reselling credit card information, etc) or all countries must accept the aggregate of the most permissive laws of every country. For example, if one country decides piracy or child pornography is legal, then all countries have to suffer the consequences because everyone in the world will have instant access to it. I'm not the least bit surprised that this has caused tension in the global system.
I think that's all part of the problem. Most likely, they were serving US customers. They probably made no attempt to turn away customers from other jurisdictions where the website may not have been legal. To operate within the law, they should probably do like all the media sites (like Hulu and Netflix) and assure that all payments are done on credit cards within countries that have legalized online gambling, and that traffic is coming from proper IPs. sure there are ways around this stuff but if they were making an effort to block US traffic, I'm sure they wouldn't be in this position in the first place.
Think about what you are saying! Essentially you are asking website owners to not only be fully versed of the legal situation of every single goddamn visitor to their site, but also somehow to police it. The site can be accessed from anywhere in the world: Thousands and thousands of independent jurisdictions with their own silly little contradicting laws that you have to obey. Ridiculous. If some guy from Bumfuck, USA is breaking the law then it is up to the legal system in Bumfuck to deal with it, NOT the website owner.
15 years ago when we were running around screaming about this... where were you guys?
Need Mercedes parts ?
....The U.S. Government replaces the DNS Changer virus with itself.
Silence is a state of mime.
this is why current DNS needs to go away and we need multiple decentralized DNS servers that do IP redirection based on consensus instead of a definitive registry. don't trust the US? compare US+Canada+India+China, go with the IP address that the majority of the DNS servers agree upon. this is how fly-by-wire airplanes determine what to do. in case of conflict, they use a tie-breaker computer. "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." - Abraham Lincoln
If it's illegal to sports gamble in Maryland, arrest people sports gambling in Maryland, but these 2 bit wahoo prosecutors that think they can impose Maryland state law on Canada can go F&*%$ themselves. It's not an illegal business here, it's a legal one. Websites can't be expected to know all the laws everywhere or block everyone from every hick burg that has different laws from accessing their site. The internet is free, lets keep it that way
Oh, wait ...
You can't get from: Generic Top-Level Domains like [ .com .net ] by spirit belong to the global community and are under the control of ICAAN, however, ICAAN incorporated in the U.S and falls under U.S Jurisdiction.
to:.com belongs to the global internet community
Your conclusion is illogical.
Disclaimer: What DHS did was unforgivable in my not so humble opinion.
Just another day in Paradise
To put it into perspective... imagine that this wasn't a website but it was land.
first off, that could be and very likely would be considered an act of war. and before anyone wants to think that Canada would automatically lose, consider two points.
1. the American military is currently mostly deployed overseas whereas Canada's troops are mostly at home.
2. Canada would likely have most (if not all) of the commonwealth nations at it's side.
Unfortunately, my company firewall prevents me from reading TFA, but your comments refer to a Detective in Maryland, the DHS, ICE and moving money through foreign banks. I do know that in the cases for PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and the others that were shut down in the last big legal action, what they were actually charged with was bank/wire fraud. The credit card companies, in compliance with US law, were refusing to make payments from US residents to these foreign casinos. So the casinos were disguising the charges' origin and nature by routing them through a third-party and presenting them as being for non-gambling products and services. If you are presenting a fraudulent charge to a US credit card company for a US customer, it seems to me that you are breaking US law and under US jurisdiction. What if Bodog is doing the same thing? What if they are routing a charge through the Maldives and disguising its' origin and nature, presenting it to a customer and credit card company in Maryland? At that point aren't they doing business in Maryland? I don't think we can pretend this is all perfectly legal in Canada any more. And if they are legally seizing assets, isn't the domain an asset that is based in the US? If we say that Verisign shouldn't obey a US court order, then what court should have the authority to seize that property? Are you saying the Fed should have to go to a Canadian court because the original registrar is in Canada? Even if the law was broken in the US and the domain resides in the US?
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
in an anarchy.
Anarchy is the REAL democracy.
Twitter: @dainsanefh
If by "Left" you mean Obama and the Democrats, please realize that you are using US definitions for "Left" and "Right". In the rest of the world, Obama qualifies as "Right-wing" and the Republicans range from "Right-wing to Very-Far-Right-wing". There is no "Left" in US politics as seen by the rest of the world.
It seems hard for most /. posters from the US to keep this in mind, everything is relative I suppose, but the US is generally speaking, very right wing in its politics and culture. That doesn't mean all Americans are of course, but those I would view as "left-wing" by say, Canadian standards (where I live), are few and far between. Now, of course my country is finlandizing to the US and growing increasingly rightwing itself in the process. Our current PM, Stephen Harper is about as right-wing a leader as this country has ever seen, and even he probably qualifies as just a left-leaning Republican in the US.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Is there anything ? any one tiny tiny thing that the government of the United States,
that was voted in by all you people that wont admit you did, can be trusted with ?
come on... there must be something ?
If you're a Canadian company with Canadian customers, use .ca, eh?
Well, except for companies in eastern Canada. They don't use .ca, they use .eh (or is it .ca.eh?)
It is often very difficult to tell a true subversive from a normal citizen. If you complain about something because you are unhappy is it because you really want something fixed or because you want to break down the morale of the public? When we have an industry such as internet gambling it is known that some of these games are rigged. Now is that simply to steal money or is it also to try to boost the debt level of Americans and weaken our nation? Or does a portion of the profits clearly flow to promote violence against our nation? With gambling so much money is involved that government needs to be very certain of the motives of the businesses as well as very aware of where all of the cash goes. The same applies to illegal drugs. Surely some drug runners and dealers are in the business and deliberately attempting to destroy the US. There is a danger in assuming that a drug runner simply wants to make money. If you begin to understand that many of these people are eager to see the collapse of America and drugs and dope are only one way of attacking us. Smuggling in alien species of plants and animals can cause billions in losses to us. So when we see such smuggling it would be wise not to just consider the person who sets these species loose not just an animal lover. They may be trying to screw up our nation. Imagine what you can do with killer bees by establishing nests around the nation. Or how about the water hyacynth? One plant can cost a state millions to eradicate. We are at war and it is high time we took other nations seriously.
This originated from Maryland? The same same state on the eastern shore of the U.S. that has a state lottery AND slot machines?
The U.S. is out of control.
Well I find the implications more distressing than reality. The fact that they did this is scary. It will be interesting to see what the response is, both civilly and legally from government (though with conservatives I don't see them doing squat). This is nothing short of a violation of sovereignty. Applying your laws to another country, I mean at least the US could just buy off our politicians like the past.
Anyway the fact that it was a scuzzbag gambling site, which is more than likely (if previous examples have showed anything) involved in illegal activity (even by Canada's laws) anyway so I am not about to shed too big a tear. Though as likely already pointed out, it is a slippery slope, as today may only be a douchebag gambling site, who knows what tomorrow brings...
I'm sorry, but anyone who tries to tell me that my kids come second to anything is wasting their breathe.
As for religion causing discord between you and your daughter, maybe it's time to lay off a bit? After all, it's not your decision as to what she believes provided she is not in immediate danger.
We could get into the whole "sovereign god vs action" bit, but ultimately being a good parent means giving them the tools to make their own decisions, and then respecting them, even when we disagree.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
FUCK VERISIGN.
Sorry for letting out my inner 4th-grader, but FFS, could this company possibly be any farther up the US Gov't's ass?
They make me sick. They "compete" every few years for the DNS contract, but let's face it, the fix is in. My old roommate was involved with a company that tried to go up against Big Brother, excuse me, Verisign, and it was clear from the beginning that the fix was in.
Makes me sick. Ever drive over to their campus? Tons of Porsches, BMW M3s & M5s, Mercedes S600s, etc... We're all paying for them. The engineers might be outside the shenanigans, but they are still part of the system and still eating at the trough.
Having lived in Europe for six years, and Asia for another six, I would disagree with your assessment of the rest of the world. I would agree that Canada, Australia, N.Z., and western Europe are definitely to the left of the US (and I'm happy you are...I have relatives in Ontario, and have spent a couple years of my youth there)...not so much in the world. In general, it all depends on what topic you're aiming at. For example, the original post mentioned Japan, which clearly has more right wing pornography rules than the US.
All that said, the original post was squarely aimed at the far right (Christian conservatives..in US terms), and as I pointed out this has all taken place on the more liberal (again in US terms) Democratic watch, and in a rather liberal (I lived there for 7 yrs) state.
For the record, I'm a fiscal conservative, but rather liberal when it comes to social issues...I don't care what you do, as long it doesn't impede me from doing what I want to do.
Just another day in Paradise