3 ms·

It's real and it's happening now. I have nothing to do with online gambling (anymore), but this just sent shivers down my spine. Who's next? The US Government

by TY 15y ago

It's real and it's happening now. I have nothing to do with online gambling (anymore), but this just sent shivers down my spine. Who's next? The US Government has just strengthened the case of those who were concerned about having parts of Internet infrastructure under the control of the US government. Domain seizures have been happening for a while (i.e. [1]), but this case will probably be the highest profile to date and will hopefully raise public awareness about this disturbing issue. I won't be surprised to see US based domain registrars to start loosing a lot of their business quite soon. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/04bar.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/04bar.html

blhack 15y ago
Unfortunately, I highly doubt that this will be seen as disturbing by the main stream.
- jarin 15y ago
  I'm not so sure, a bunch of my mainstream friends are freaking out about it. They didn't care about the previous seizures, but once you stop people from playing Internet poker at work everyone turns into a civil rights advocate.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    That's not necessarily a representative sample - it's only poker players, thus far.
    - BrandonM 15y ago
      That group is probably bigger than you think. There is a very large population of professional poker players, and those people make their money from a population of everyday players that are least ten times the size of the professional players. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people whose poker accounts have essentially been frozen. TL;DR: About $100M-$1B of law-abiding citizens' money is currently in limbo because the government didn't consider the collateral damage of its attack on the big 3 poker sites (for all intents and purposes, UB and AP are the same site).
kls 15y ago
but this case will probably be the highest profile to date and will hopefully raise public awareness about this disturbing issue It will but not in the manner you hope, you see they always go after sex, drugs or gambling when they are trying to set precedence. The moral outrage hands them the jury and then they can use the precedence on less morally distasteful targets as case law gets build upon past rulings.
TillE 15y ago
Indeed. I'm quite disgusted by the principle of the thing. Something about being deprived of property without due process of law. My primary domain is a .net. I'm loathe to part with it since the TLD is a useful descriptor in this case, but now I'm very seriously considering registering and switching over to the .eu equivalent, which is only a couple bucks more per year.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Does the EU not have a similar procedure they could follow? Or do they just not have a history of doing this (yet)?
  - varjag 15y ago
    They likely have jurisdiction only over .eu TLD. That said, they have implemented mandatory wiretapping on everyone some years ago, so I wouldn't count on EU sanity or benevolence there.

by TY 15y ago

blhack 15y ago

Unfortunately, I highly doubt that this will be seen as disturbing by the main stream.

jarin 15y ago
I'm not so sure, a bunch of my mainstream friends are freaking out about it. They didn't care about the previous seizures, but once you stop people from playing Internet poker at work everyone turns into a civil rights advocate.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  That's not necessarily a representative sample - it's only poker players, thus far.
  - BrandonM 15y ago
    That group is probably bigger than you think. There is a very large population of professional poker players, and those people make their money from a population of everyday players that are least ten times the size of the professional players. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people whose poker accounts have essentially been frozen. TL;DR: About $100M-$1B of law-abiding citizens' money is currently in limbo because the government didn't consider the collateral damage of its attack on the big 3 poker sites (for all intents and purposes, UB and AP are the same site).

kls 15y ago

but this case will probably be the highest profile to date and will hopefully raise public awareness about this disturbing issue It will but not in the manner you hope, you see they always go after sex, drugs or gambling when they are trying to set precedence. The moral outrage hands them the jury and then they can use the precedence on less morally distasteful targets as case law gets build upon past rulings.

TillE 15y ago

Indeed. I'm quite disgusted by the principle of the thing. Something about being deprived of property without due process of law. My primary domain is a .net. I'm loathe to part with it since the TLD is a useful descriptor in this case, but now I'm very seriously considering registering and switching over to the .eu equivalent, which is only a couple bucks more per year.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
Does the EU not have a similar procedure they could follow? Or do they just not have a history of doing this (yet)?
- varjag 15y ago
  They likely have jurisdiction only over .eu TLD. That said, they have implemented mandatory wiretapping on everyone some years ago, so I wouldn't count on EU sanity or benevolence there.