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.

Filed Under: domain names, gambling, governor, kentucky, online gambling

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.

Filed Under: domain names, gambling, governor, kentucky, online gambling

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."

Home invasion? Really? A parked domain is the equivalent of a home invasion?

Filed Under: domain names, gambling, governor, kentucky, online gambling

Kentucky Agrees To Stop Selectively Blocking State Employees From Reading Critical Blogs

from the hearing-what-your-critics-say-is-a-good-thing dept

A couple of years ago, we wrote about the fact that the state of Kentucky had started blocking certain political blogs from the computers of state employees. The interesting part was that the state was only blocking blogs that were critical of state officials. The group Public Citizen filed a lawsuit saying that the selective blocking was a First Amendment violation. It looks like that issue won't get settled in court any time soon, as a new administration in Kentucky has decided that it is changing that policy and won't block critical sites, leading Public Citizen to drop the lawsuit.

Of course, without a court ruling, it's now not clear if the original actions were legal -- and there's nothing to stop a future administration from reversing the policy yet again. In the meantime, what kind of politician actually thinks it's a good thing to block out those who disagree with them rather than hear what they have to say? Talk about sticking your head in the sand...

Filed Under: blogs, first amendment, kentucky

Kentucky Lawmaker Introduces Bill To Make Anonymous Cowards Illegal

from the so-many-problems dept

Just about everyone seems to be submitting the story from last week about a local Kentucky legislator who has put forth a bill to make anonymous comments online illegal. I first saw the story on Digg, but it's been submitted about 30 times already and is starting to show up elsewhere -- sometimes with inflammatory headlines (including the one at Digg). First off, this is for Kentucky only. Second, the chances of the bill getting anywhere are slim to none. Third, even if it does miraculously pass, there is no way that it would be enforceable. In fact, even the guy who introduced the legislation admits as much. Fourth, the bill is clearly unconstitutional, violating our rights to anonymous speech (which has been reaffirmed many times by US courts). Fifth, it goes against section 230 of the CDA in that it puts the blame on service providers for the speech of their users, rather than putting the liability on the users themselves. In other words, while this gets some attention as a ridiculously bad bill, the chance of it actually going anywhere or having any impact at all is virtually nil.

Filed Under: anonymous content, comments, free speech, kentucky