Court Of Appeals Overturns Kentucky Gambling Domain Seizure

from the good-ruling dept

Back in September, the state of Kentucky tried to seize over 100 domain names, claiming they violated a local state law against "gambling devices." None of the domains were run or hosted in the state of Kentucky, which made this quite a stretch in legal terms. While many of the domain names were for gambling websites, some were merely parked domains. The politicians who ordered the seizure were quite open that this was an attempt to "protect" local gambling interests -- but it seems like an incredible legal reach to claim that because of local protectionist laws, the state somehow has the right to seize domain names from around the world. The domain owners complained, but a local Kentucky state court ruled in favor of the government. However, an appeals court quickly told the state to hold off seizing the domains until it could review the case.

That court has now overturned the lower court ruling saying that a domain name is clearly not a gambling device, and is not covered by the law. However, this does potentially leave the door open for Kentucky politicians to change the law to include domain names... at which point we'll need to go through this whole silly legal battle all over again.

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Kentucky Appeals Court Tells Kentucky To Hold Off Seizing Domains

from the wait-just-a-second... dept

While a lower court in Kentucky had agreed to allow the state to seize 141 domain names as being "illegal gambling devices" despite having nothing to do with the state of Kentucky, other than being available on internet connections there (and everywhere else), an appeals court has now issued an injunction to stop the state from seizing the domains until the appeal can be heard. While we still have to wait for the full appeal, at least damage won't be done in the interim.

There's one other interesting note in the article, which is that Kentucky's Attorney General appears to be trying to distance himself from the case. Even though most state actions are normally taken by the AGs office, in this case, the lawsuit was filed by the state's Secretary of Justice and Public Safety (there's some question if it's legal for this person to bring the suit). Either way, the AG's name was on the case, but he's now specifically asked to have his name removed from the case. That seems like quite a statement. When even the Attorney General of the state wants nothing to do with the lawsuit, perhaps it's time for the state to admit it overstepped some legal bounds.

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EFF, ACLU Ask Court To Strike Down Kentucky's Domain Name Seizure

from the good-for-them dept

You may recall that a judge recently allowed Kentucky's governor to seize a bunch of domain names that were related to gambling -- even if neither the owners nor the servers were based in Kentucky -- setting a terrible precedent. That's why it's good to see the EFF, the ACLU and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) team up yet again to ask an appeals court to overturn this decision. Hopefully the appeals court recognizes how truly awful the original decision was, and notes how it seems to violate multiple clauses of the Constitution.

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Judge Allows Kentucky To Seize Domain Names

from the bad,-bad-news dept

Last month, we wrote about a judge allowing Kentucky's governor to seize 141 domain names that were somehow associated with gambling sites under a bizarre interpretation of Kentucky law. Pretty much everyone involved admits that this is just Kentucky's governor protecting local gambling establishments who supported him in the election. No one is even hiding the fact that this is purely about protecting the governor's political supporters from any sort of competition.

However, what's scary is in how the seizure is incredibly broad and far-reaching. None of the sites are based in Kentucky. Many of the sites are nothing more than holding pages, rather than actual online casinos. And, the law itself interprets these sites as "illegal gambling devices" which seems like a big stretch. There was some pushback, as people explained to the judge what an incredibly bad precedent this ruling would set -- as it would effectively allow any local law to be used to take possession of any website.

Apparently, the judge doesn't care. Late last week, the judge upheld the original ruling, giving one small out to the various sites. If they implement filters that block access to any IP address in Kentucky, they can keep their domain names. That's backwards. It shouldn't be the responsibility of a website that is just online to use geocoding techniques to comply with every single local law. If that were the case, the internet would ground to a halt, as any website would face so many different liabilities from so many different jurisdictions to make it impossible to comply -- and in each lack of compliance, face a potential seizure of the domain name. This is a bad ruling by any stretch of the imagination, made even more bizarre by the judge's unilateral ruling before a hearing was even held. The whole thing sounds quite questionable, and hopefully will be dumped on appeal.

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Kentucky's Gambling Domain Name Grab Sets A Terrible Precedent

from the governors-who-want-more-power dept

Last month, we wrote about a bizarre lawsuit in Kentucky, where a judge gave the government the ability to seize the domain names of numerous online gambling sites, even though none of them were based in Kentucky, or even registered via Kentucky-based registrars. The whole thing smelled of corruption, given that the governor is closely tied to offline casino interests, and his campaign apparently included a big promise to bring more offline casinos to Kentucky. This effort seems mostly focused on not just blocking out online competitors, but seizing their domain names. Lots of people are pushing back and explaining how ridiculous the scenario is to the judge, noting, for example, that following similar logic would allow any country to seize any domain name. For example, China could decide that the BBC website violates its laws and demand that the BBC domain name be turned over to the Chinese government. Most folks would recognize that this is ridiculous -- but it's effectively what the Kentucky governor has done.

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Kentucky Governor Seizes Online Gambling Domain Names

from the can't-have-competition-for-horse-racing dept

It's always fascinating to watch US politicians act as complete hypocrites when it comes to gambling. They talk about moral issues on why they need to stop online gambling, but allow their own personal favorite types of gambling, such as horse races and lottery. Kentucky, of course, is a big horse racing state, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that the state has strict anti-online-gambling laws. These laws are so strict that the state's governor is using them to seize 141 domain names of sites that the state claims are used for illegal gambling. Of course, it appears that many of the domains aren't online gambling sites at all, but parked domains. The state doesn't seem shy about the fact that it's doing this to "protect" the horse racing business, but of course, throws in the moral argument as well:

"Illegal Internet gambling poses a unique threat to our Commonwealth. For individuals - particularly our youth - it is tantamount to a virtual home invasion. For some of our vital and most venerable legitimate enterprises, it undermines their exemplary regulatory compliance and siphons away their constituents."

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