U.S. Arrests Online Gambling Company Chairman 634
imaginaryelf writes "Reuters reports that U.S. authorities have arrested Peter Dicks, the chairman of U.K. based online sports betting company Sportingbet Plc, while he was passing through Dallas. Just two months ago, the CEO of another U.K. based online sports betting company, BetOnSports, was arrested on U.S. soil as well. They are both charged with violating the 1961 Federal Wire Act, which can be broadly interpreted as declaring all forms of online gambling illegal in the U.S. Is online gambling the Alcohol Prohibition of the 21st century?"
Yes! (Score:5, Funny)
JFK, not DFW (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:JFK, not DFW (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:JFK, not DFW (Score:5, Funny)
Common sense (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh no! I went to Holland last year and smoked some weed, which is illegal in the US. Guess I won't be seeing those relatives across the pond now.
Like driving on the left hand side of the road? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is either harrassment or just the US thinking it has rights to push the rest of the world around.
Re:Like driving on the left hand side of the road? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nobody forced Americans to proactively make use of Mr. Dicks' services.
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If this was all as above board as some suggest, then why weren't these people simply extradited, instead of the Feds hiding behind the baggage carousel waiting for them to change planes? I mean, it might be hard to understand, with the USs puritanical views on gambling, but these are executives of publically traded companies - Richard Branson is equally as
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Now you know what I've been going through!
I don't know if the FBI has these things I've done on the internet in the nineties on record desperatly waiting for me to fly over. I always have these nightmares where I set foot on American soil and have all these FBI guys grinning at me when I finally feel confident enough that the things I've done went unnoticed or uncared about, and shipping me off in a we
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Fortunately, law doesn't work like this. You cannot exercise judicial power for things outside a country's juristiction or if you're not a citizen of that country (you can be held accountable for age of consent laws without borders solely based on citizenship, for example if you're an Aust
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online gambling isnt illegal! (except in washington)
another interesting thing is american companies do illegal things in america EVERY DAY and their CEOs are almost NEVER arrested, instead the companies are fined/penalized or get away with it.. yet this guy is held personally responsible for something that MAY be illegal in the FUTURE... WTF??
whos racketeering here? the government is arresting these guys cause they dont pay protection (american taxes, cause they arent american comp
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Our government isn't in the habit of arresting foreign nationals for activities that are perfectly legal in their country of origin. But if he was providing illegal services to U.S. citizens then he put himself at risk. Why that is such a shock to you people I don't know, unless you just need another excuse to America-bash. People complain bitterly when a Google or a Yahoo complies with the laws of another country when they disagree with those laws, fully expecting that those companies should simply break that country's laws with impunity. And maybe they should: but the principle works both ways
Now, having said that
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If a US website operator was executed, is that okay too? Should they just know better?
I'm not saying that this is right or wrong, but prosecuting citizens of other countries for things which are legal in their country but illegal in yours will become a very slippery slope.
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the first time (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember Dmitry Sklyarov [wikipedia.org]?
Perhaps this is all a fiendish plot to cut down on US tourism...
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't laugh - a lot of people are paying extra so they won't have a stopover in the US on the way to another destination, just to avoid the hassles, even if they have never done anything wrong.
This is just going to make the situation worse. The losers are the US air carriers, and services based in the US.
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Interesting)
I lived in Toronto for 13 years, and I decided to go to New Zealand to visit some friends and see how the place is like for a longer term basis. Quickest way to get from Toronto, Canada to Auckland, New Zealand is probably take a flight from Toronto to LA, then from LA to Auckland. Seeing how soem of my muslim friends got treated in the US (more like his parents, who are elderly), me being "non-white", more tech savvy (I brought my computer along, I love my Shuttle box), I don't want to take the chance of having dealing with American customs and risk having my data inspected, so I took the long way, went to Hong Kong (I was born there), which was nice because I got to see my relatives and do some shopping, before leaving for Auckland a week later. My return journey will be the same, and I will never step foot in America again, even as a stop over (aside from the Anchorage technical stopover, but we never were allowed to get off the plane, which is fine with me).
Even though the whole journey is about 8 hours longer in total flight time, it's worth it for me. Cathay Pacific gets my business also because they are one of the best airlines in the world. The price was right too, my mom's travel agent was able to secure the flight I took (round trip) for only CND$2200, which is definitely unbeatable. My parents told me they recently took a flight with Air Canada from Toronto to Vancover, they said the service was appalling and the staff did not know what to do, and the food and flight was expensive (CND$800 per person). It's absolutely disgraceful that North American airlines are completely backwards and behind in terms of service (given the cost) compared to their Asian counterparts.
No, not gambling... (Score:3, Funny)
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It sure is getting there, and I hate it.
I'm not a smoker and I hate being around smoke, if you want to smoke, that's your business.
I don't see why a business that wants to cater to smokers isn't able to in some municipalities.
I can understand banning smoking in libraries, museums, airplanes, and buses but come on, bars and nightclubs?
If a smoker wants to smoke in a public park, let them. It's a public place meant for everyone. You can't p
Re:No, not gambling... (Score:5, Insightful)
If a smoker wants to smoke in a public park, let them. It's a public place meant for everyone. You can't please everyone.
If a smoker comes though and blows smoke in my general direction, it should be considered socially acceptable for me to go fart in that smoker's space too.
Thing is, my space belongs to me. I find having cigarette smoke blown in my direction akin to invading my space. I find it more disgusting than the smell of fart, and more harmful to my health.
I think we should start a campaign where we go and fart in smoker's spaces.
Re:No, not gambling... (Score:4, Funny)
The trouble with that plan is that we all carry lighters.
So the second guy is a moron... (Score:3, Interesting)
Second one gets arrested - man, how dumb to you have to be to fly through the US when you know you're likely to get arrested? It's not like international flight lists are ignored these days. Passengers that may pass on domestic flights aren't going to escape scrutiny on international (especially incoming) flights.
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Our laws, your country... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remind me again why people think the US is imperialist?
Re:Our laws, your country... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Our laws, your country... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way they could have arrested him legally, if he broke a law in the USA WHILE in the USA.
You cannot break US laws outside the USA, so in the UK what he does is perfectly legal.
Why isn't the british diplomacy concerned about the kidnapping of a UK citizen? In the 18th century they would have sent the gunboats already.
Re:Our laws, your country... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's an analogy. Say I'm in Mexico with a trebuchet and tons of pot. Let's say for the sake of argument that we paid off the federales, and we can operate with impunity. Let's say you're in Texas with a catapult. If you send me money via your catapult and I send you bales of dope via my trebuchet, I'm guilty of selling drugs in the US, even though I never set foot on US soil.
See?
Re:Our laws, your country... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Our laws, your country... (Score:4, Informative)
The reasoning is that it's because there was no crime committed. It's legal to gamble in Vegas, just like it's legal to smoke pot in Amsterdam. Americans can't be arrested for smoking pot in Amsterdam any more than they can be arrested for gambling in Vegas. It all depends on where the action took place, and whether or not the action was a crime in the place it was committed.
The guy in the article was arrested because the gambling took place within an area where it's illegal -- namely, somewhere on US soil. He couldn't get arrested if the gambling only took place in Mexico or The Netherlands or Djibouti or wherever else gambling may be legal*.
*I have no idea if gambling is legal in Mexico, The Netherlands, or Djibouti. I was just pulling country names out of my ass to make a point.
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How do you figure that?
The servers were in the U.K.
The dice rolled (or rather, the RNG was called) in the U.K.
Why do you place the gambling in the U.S.?
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Again, I'm not trying to defend the actions of the government here, I'm just trying to explain h
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The action of gambling took place at TWO places (technically this still isn't accurate, but then we'd go into internet architecture):
a.) client-side: the USA client broke the law for gambling.
b.) server-side: the UK server and it's owners are in the clear, because it is legal to operate a gambling server in the UK.
Btw, let me ask the following: let's say, a las vegas casino were to offer gambling online. Are you saying the casino owners were com
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You cannot break US laws outside the USA, so in the UK what he does is perfectly legal.
It doesn't matter where the person happens to be standing when the illegal act is carried out, it matters where the illegal act happened. If I throw an explosive across the US border, I still committed a crime in the US, despite not being within the border when the crime happened. In this case, it was a financial transa
Re:Our laws, your country... (Score:4, Insightful)
He WAS in the US while breaking this law.
I was leaning towards his rights until I found out that his site lists US phone numbers and EST calling times, and 77% of his business is from the US. It isn't like he's got a few people he didn't manage to keep off the site. He actively encourages them to break the law.
Disclaimer: I stole those facts from above posts. They could be totally wrong. But I doubt it.
Re:Our laws, your country... (Score:4, Informative)
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And now I'd also have to agree that sounds to me like what would actually push it into breaking US laws, since those US numbers indicate an actual presence in (and specific to) the US itself, and not just on the internet (which is quasi-international).
Nice to see somebody who actually has a well-reasoned opinion and lets the facts speak (and even change one's mind when they're strong enough).
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on another note.. i thought they where supposed to use that flight list stuff the stop terror peps not online poker..
Re:Our laws, your country... (Score:5, Informative)
Could it have something to do with a vote dealing with a ban on Internet gambling coming up in the legislature in the next couple weeks? Could it have something to do with the fact Carruthers has been a vocal opponent of the upcoming bill. Strange that. The man is arrested based on his involvement in running an Internet gambling company. Yet referencing the vote on banning Internet gambling requires using the future tense.
Perhaps using a 1961 law that only questionably relates to the Internet and even more questionably relates to an individual operating out of a different country is not quite so sound...
http://www.reason.com/sullum/072606.shtml [reason.com]
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/sullum_ on_internet_gambling_ar.php [scienceblogs.com]
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Its another great example of the US deciding that its perfectly okay to have their laws apply to people from other countries
You have it exactly backwards. The guy is providing services to Americans that are illegal in America. What difference does it make where he's doing it from? Columbian drug runners are also regularly thrown in jail for selling services in the US.
What you're really saying is that you think UK laws should be forced upon the USA. Sorry, but that's not how it works. If the guy breaks
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Columbian drug runners are also regularly thrown in jail for selling services in the US.
With the "drug runners", they are actually in the US when they commit the crime.
This case hinges on where the crime actually occurred. An argument could be made that the gambling was done in the US, because that's where the customer is located. Another argument can be made that the gambling took place in the UK, because that's where the "dice" were "rolled".
IMO, the gambling took place in the UK. In the US, so
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I don't necessarily agree with the gambling laws, but hear me out.
While this man and his website are located in the U.K., he accepted money from people in the U.S. Another comment has pointed out that it would have been very simple for him to deny all credit cards with billing addresses inside the U.S., at least to the point of plausible deniability. So he is guilty of facilitating a criminal act, Americans involved in online gambli
Prohibition (Score:2)
How about drug prohibition or pornography prohibition? Anytime the governement gets in the way of people and what they want to do, someone will find a way around it.
Oh that's good... (Score:2, Insightful)
So it's okay for the United States to arrest foreign nationals because they run a business in their own country that is (sort of) illegal in the States.
And yet the American government complains loudly when Freedom Fighters in the Middle East capture and detain members of the American invasion force who are obviously breaking the law by invading those countries?
It would be really nifty if the American government spent as much time trying to provide health-care to its citizens, teaching science in its s
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U.S. a no go zone (Score:5, Insightful)
You won't know until you are on American soil.
Re:U.S. a no go zone (Score:5, Insightful)
In 1998 I went to the US to do training and none of this was a concern. The programmers boot camp I went to sucked by on one of my two weekends off in the 10 week hell I went to the Kennedy Space Center and I loved it! I always wanted to go back and take a look at the Grand Canyon. Now I wouldn't go if they paid me.
Fuck 9/11. Fuck the terrorists. Fuck the people who've used it as a power grab. Fuck the blind sheep who'll let them until its too late. I've had a gut full of this bad behaviour from all sides.
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In the near future, the United States of America may be a country that non-Americans fear to travel to.
Yeah, because every non-American is running services TO AMERICANS that are illegal in AMERICA. ::rolls eyes:: None of your examples fit that criteria.
Guess what? If you sell cocaine in the USA that happens to be legal in your country, you'll be arrested as well.
No, online gambling is 3rd (Score:2)
Second is alcohol prohibition -- lowering the drunk driving standards until you're gulty of drunk driving even though you're not even impaired.
Online gambling is 3rd.
One of these things is not like the others... (Score:2)
Drunk driving bans are meant to limit the number of auto accidents. You may or may not be right about where the limit is set, but it isn't prohibition either.
Gambling, on the other hand, has no "collateral damage" aspect to it. Or rather, it has no downside that causes people unrelated to the user to suffer.
Prohibition was justified as a way to prevent people from being self destruct
Um... (Score:2)
What a load of bullshit.
Re:Um... (Score:4, Informative)
What a load of bullshit.
So if cocaine was legal in the UK and they sold it to people in the US then the feds shouldn't go after them? (Replace cocaine with any product or service that fits) Just because something is legal in one country doesn't mean one can't face prosecution in another country where it's illegal if that product/service is offered in the other country.
I worked briefly for a company that ran a gambling website in the UK in conjunction with Harrahs casino. On-line gaming is apparently huge in the UK. In order to legally operate the site there were all sorts of checks to verify that a user was based in the UK. It included not only identifying the physical location of an IP address but validating the address of a credit card and other steps. Apparently all legitimite gambling sites in the UK are required to take these sort of steps if you don't want to run afoul of UK gaming laws. If this was a legit UK gaming website then they would have these same checks in place that would prevent people in the US from using it. It's his own fault for violating US laws (that happen to be well known in the gambling community) and thinking that he could travel here without getting arrested.
The real terrorists?? (Score:2, Funny)
Take a look at your so-called friend, Britain!
still wonder how this is illegal for a non-residen (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, were the USA we can do what ever we want... I often wonder how we'd react if say Bill Gates was arrested in Communist China for being an "obscenely rich capitalist"..
So I guess if I set up a boat off-shore and (Score:2, Insightful)
I think another person suggested that the US should have censured illegal sites.
How about if you're going to conduct business in a country, you follow and obey all local rules and regulations? If you can't comply, then about making it so that you block access yourself so you don't violate those laws and regulations.
Second, I can't believe this Dicks decided to go through the US even
By Any Other Name (Score:2)
21st Century Prohibition (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Marijuana is the Alcohol Prohibition of the 21st century.
Gambling is here to stay (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a big-time outspoken conservative and I love to play no-limit hold 'em (and hi/lo omaha). I'd like to state that I am very diappointed that republicans are backing this and I believe this really is just for votes this fall. There are democrat supporters on this as well, so it isn't completely one-sided. Everyone interested in keeping internet gambling alive needs to talk to their representative.
The good news is that this was tried in the late 90's and failed. It passed the house in 2003 but the senate didn't take up the issue. With the rate at which poker in particular is gaining popularity, this should be an issue that can be defeated. I see the senate again not taking up this issue in 2006. Post 2006 elections, it should disappear for a while again. Apparently big money doesn't buy all the votes as online gambling is worth bilions of dollars. AFIAK, as long as we have state lottos and Indian casinos, I don't want to hear anything from the state about why online gambling should be illegal.
Now as for the gentlemen who have been arested... the only good thing is that maybe they can sue and further clarify the law. The fifth circuit says the law only applies to sports. It would be great to see additional courts back this up as I believe they would.
Nope (Score:3, Interesting)
Alcohol prohibition of the modern age (Score:3, Interesting)
Come back Dmitry (Score:2)
Didn't the US try this before and get told where to shove it ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_case_of_Sklyarov
ObArar (Score:2)
Maher Arar: Statement to the Media November 4, 2003 [amnesty.ca]
One sentence summary: Maher Arer was a software engineer for the MathWorks in Canada, was vacationing in Tunis, was called back by The Mathworks on an emergency, scheduled a flight back with a transfer at Kennedy airport in NYC, and the U.S. deported him to Syria for torture.
17 / 135 points (Score:5, Funny)
> L
You are sitting in an airplane seat, in the coach section of an airliner. The airliner is descending.
> I
You are carrying:
>READ TICKET
I don't see any ticket here.
>READ TICKET STUB
The ticket stub is for an intercontinental flight from Great Britain to Mexico, with a stopover in Dallas.
>DALLAS?
I don't know how to dallas.
>DOES THIS PLANE HAVE A STOPOVER IN DALLAS?
I don't see any plane here.
>LEAVE PLANE
Your seatbelt holds you in the seat, preventing you from standing up.
>OPEN SEATBELT
You cannot open that.
>UNFASTEN SEATBELT
Unfastened.
>LEAVE PLANE
You need to stand up first.
>STAND UP
You are now standing. The passenger sitting next to you looks agitated.
>LEAVE PLANE
The exit doors are locked, as the plane is still in flight.
>FUCK
I don't know how to fuck.
The plane is about to land in Dallas. You are likely to be arrested by a grue.
>ARE THEY GOING TO ARREST ME?
I don't see any they here.
>EXIT
You cannot exit now.
Your sword is glowing faintly.
>QUIT
You cannot quit now.
Your sword is glowing faintly.
Gambling Hypocrisy (Score:4, Interesting)
Racketeering? (Score:3, Interesting)
As to the Wire Act, and the enforceability of such: This is really no different than betting over the phone or by mail. This is just a newer version of an old debate - when an activity takes place over a distance, and it is illegal in one location and not the other, can it be enforced on the person in the latter? Obviously, the government of Louisiana feels it can, provided that person comes within their territory, or can be extradited. Other governments have behaved similarly, for other laws, although most just prefer censorship.
The issue is not whether gambling should be illegal. Sure, it's a stupid law, and it would be a simple answer for this one situation if gambling was legal, but it wouldn't answer the larger question. On the one hand, no government at any level wants its laws to be so easily avoided, and it's ineffective to go after the individuals who use the service rather than the providers (just ask the RIAA - well, in a few years anyway). On the other hand, there is certainly a case to be made that those who offer services should not expect to be held in violation of a law that didn't exist in the locality from which they offered said services.
So I guess what I'm saying is, "I dunno." Is it fair to say, "If you do something that breaks the law here, and that has an effect here, you can never come here"? Or is it fair to say, "You can't touch us, you can only block access to our site from everyone in your country"? (This has in fact been suggested by other posts here! Is this something you want to encourage?) I for one am going to consider it some more rather than locking myself into some knee-jerk reaction.
P.S. One last thought - it's possible the warrant was issued due to activities during a previous trip to the US. That would change the whole situation.
No. The War Against Drugs (Score:4, Insightful)
Archaic laws used to punish people for crimes that (Score:3, Interesting)
Why are we arresting these men under a Wire act that was written in 1961. The simple answer? We can't prosecute them under any other law. Gambling is illegal but because they arn't in america they arn't liable.
The sad thing is that Americans want gambling, obviously. But they are accusing a EUROPEAN company, of breaking an American statute dealing with american "wires".
Btw check the wikipedia article closely. "The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Wire Act applies only to sports betting and not other types of online gambling. The Supreme Court has not officially ruled on the meaning of the Federal Wire Act as it pertains to online gambling." The real question is was the betting on american sports?
The sad fact is as an American I feel bad in this case. Every time we take an obscure law and hold someone under it, something that someone goes "oh we can nail them for that" and others go "that's clever", I die a little inside. The founding fathers didn't say "let's be clever" They said "let's make a country and laws". They didn't look for some loophole with the british, they busted some barrels of tea, got liquored up and won a war (not all in that order or the same night... I hope).
If America really believes something like this is wrong make a law. If America really believes something like this is acceptable revoke the law. America is a very easy place but we make everything complex like this shit.
They ask if you're american and block you. (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy at my deli never asks for ID when I buy lottery tickets and all the bingo I played as a kid at church was when I was under 18... but you let one american bet the Packer's to win the SuperBowl and bam! You're in jail.
We have a goverment that outlaws things so they can profit from doing it themselves. When the Mega-Millions jackpot is $25 million, you know how much money they make? Let's just say the goverment is taking more than half before showing you that number.
Jxn (Score:4, Informative)
The Constitution provides Congress with "Power
In this case, the person apparently set up a server in the UK and used it to conduct business with people in the US. Furthermore, in doing so, he apparently violated US laws which prohibit people from engaging in this form of commerce where it involves the US, regardless of where the person happens to be while doing it.
The same sort of thing occurs regularly within the US. For example, if a person in Maine has a website which is part of a business, buying or selling something (as opposed to being merely informational), then they are engaging in interstate commerce nationwide. An Alaskan user who buys something from their site has engaged in commerce with them, and now the person in Maine is subject to Alaskan law. This is the price of doing business with people across borders in our legal system: the differing laws on both sides of the border apply, because the transaction as a whole is occuring in both, not just in one or the other.
The actual situation is a bit more complex than this, but this is the gist of it.
If the person who was arrested doesn't wish to get in more trouble in the future, then he's going to either need to comply with US law, or stop doing business that crosses the US border. Or he can try to avoid going to the US or having assets in the US so that he simply stays outside of our reach, despite violating our laws. (N.b. that airspace counts: there are plenty of instances of people flying on planes, and getting served while crossing the airspace of a particular jurisdiction, by someone that followed them on the plane and waited for the right moment. Landing in that jurisdiction isn't required.)
In any case, this isn't much of an example of our stretching ourselves. If you want to see that, I'd suggest looking at the Alien Tort Claims Act. Personally, I don't have a problem with that, or with our general approach to this.
To those who would argue that repressive countries such as China or Saudi Arabia could try the same thing for basically innocuous things like pointing out how repressive they are (as opposed to something arguably more serious, such as illegally running gambling operations), let's remember that they are repressive countries and thus no one should ever want to go there until they clean up their act. As many idiotic and downright evil things as the US has been doing lately (or historically), we're not quite that bad, and I hope we're soon to get significantly better.
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Leave the poor guy alone. It's not his fault his first and last names are both euphemisms for 'penis.'
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Funny. Pretty much sums up how I feel about the prohibition industry.
Re:Prohibition? Hardly... (Score:5, Funny)
You wanna bet?
Re:I dont see the logic in this (Score:5, Interesting)
If the US government did that, then you'd be complaining about censorship.
The problem is that this guy and his company accepted money from US citizens who were on US soil in exchange for providing a service that is illegal in the US. It would be trivial for him to refuse credit card transactions for cards where the address on record is in the US, and at least then he'd have plausible deniability. Of course, doing so destroys most of his market, so it's easy to see why he wouldn't do that.
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If the US government did that, then you'd be complaining about censorship.
Furthermore, the US government can't do that. It's not technically feasable. We don't have a single, nationwide firewall like some countries do that can be configured to block out arbitrary foreign sites.
I suppose it's far easier to arrest a single foreign national -- even though what he's doing is perfectly legal in his own country -- than it is to arrest his American customers, who really are committing crimes on US soil. Less
Re:I dont see the logic in this (Score:4, Interesting)
I now hereby dub YOU "Bad Analogy Guy, Jr." (in reference to your previous post, of course).
Last time I checked, using and selling drugs are BOTH illegal in the U.S. Therefore, both users and dealers should be arrested.
Whether the law makes sense or not makes little difference to the law enforcement community. This guy broke a U.S. law, and he was arrested for it.
The REAL question here is whether he broke the law on U.S. soil, which really boils down further to the question: where exactly is a website located? Is it located where the server is located? Or is it located where the person using the website is located? If it's the former, then the U.S. people who used the website could be considered to be gambling in a foreign country, and not on U.S. soil, because the website is technically located in the U.K. (and thus they were not breaking U.S. law). But if the latter question is true, then the administrator of any website can be held accountable by the laws of any country any user connects from, even those laws that contradict each other.
Either way, the U.S. government is going to do the same thing with online gambling that they did with alcohol: ignore it, then ban it, realize that ban creates crime, unban it, tax the ever living hell out of it, and finally protect the industry forevermore as a revenue stream.
Wait, it'll happen.
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Not true. If you are not wearing a seatbelt, you are unrestrained, and you can turn into a projectile in the case of an accident. You can kill/maim other passengers in your vehicle, pedestrians, or people in another vehicle if you don't wear a seatbelt.
Re:I dont see the logic in this (Score:5, Interesting)
In the last three cases we expect the citizen to follow the law, because to restrict or monitor access would be UnAmerican. Gambling is a "vice" crime so to the law enforcement "religion" it's different. The fundamental problem is that it's easier for the govt to collar these guys illegally than it is to fix the real problem going on in the country. Also, "rightist" state legislatures and law enforcement work very hard to delay, subjorn, etc. the Will of the people to change these backwards laws. For them "Law" is the "religion" and so they should not "compromise" even if the people vote for it.
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Even without it, I gather that many credit card companies were disallowing charges to betting companies anyway. They were getting a lot of chargebacks, people claiming that their cards were stolen and that it wasn't them doing the gambling, and it just wasn't worth it to continue to support those sites.
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So? Why should he even CARE or give a shit about that? He is a CEO of a business operating i
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Re:I dont see the logic in this (Score:5, Insightful)
He let's Americans gamble on his site, so he lets them break the law. That's illegal. At least that what I'm guessing their logic is. My guess is that their claim to him is a little tenuous to say the least. I bet he refused to bar access from US betters. The US's stance is hardly unknown, especially if you are in that industry.
I think that "online gambling is prohibition" comment is rather ridiculous. Online gambling is something people do from home, where one of the big things about prohibition is that it removed a common social activity (going to a bar with friends and to meet people). They are nothing alike except that they are both bans on something popular, and (are likey to get) overturned.
Don't forget that there is a REASON online gambling is still illegal. While that act can be intrepreted that way, Congress could have easily changed that by passing a law. However, don't think that all the casinos in Vegas and elsewhere like the idea of online gambling. That could take away a LOT of a their business if it was legalized. I'd be amamzed if they weren't pouring out money to keep online gambling illegal.
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Why do you think this is likely to be overturned? This is a federal law, correct? I don't see either party getting real excited about legalizing online gambling. Are you thinking the courts will overturn this? I doubt it.
Re:I dont see the logic in this (Score:4, Insightful)
Casino winnings are taxed [irs.gov]
If Congress could figure out a way to tax all online gambling winnings, they'd do it in a heartbeat. (Specifically winnings paid out by companies outside the U.S.A.)
As it is now, if you win from some offshore gambling outfit, it is up to you to report your winnings... or not.
To support the Submitter/Editor's assertion that online gambling is similar to prohibition: Politicians caved in to the Prohibitionists because income from the relatively new income tax (just 7 years old) made it possible for the Federal Gov't to do without the cash from liquor taxes.
Prohibition ended in 1934, because income taxes tanked ~60% during the first few years of the great depression.
To summarize: Because (1) the tax revenues wouldn't be that large/needed and/or (2) Congress can't figure out how to enforce taxes, they will continue to 'ban' online gambling. Once 1 &/or 2 gets changes, they'll reconsider.
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Or let's switch the table. America is pretty lax with its gun laws. What if an American company persistently sold high powered weapons to countries that banned weapons. I am guessing there would be quite the outrage in the other counteries. And if a CEO of such a company stepped fo
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However, there is this never ending hypocrisy with the US. They do not allow online gambling, since that could be controlled by foreigners, but it is OK for them to have a whole damn state that is pretty much dedicated to the business of gambling, prostitution, etc.: Nevada. It is not OK to drink before 21, but they can drive at 1
Re:I dont see the logic in this (Score:5, Informative)
"To contact BetonSports Customer Service please call toll free 1-866-481-3057. You may also send email requests to:
customer_service@betonsports.com
Customer Service hours are Monday to Friday, 10am - 10pm EST. "
Hmm, looks like a US number and a US timezone there. May be UK based, but they are definitely targeting business to the US
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Well your plan for solving this is almost certainly unworkable in the real world. A US version of The Great Wall of China would immediately turn into a fight between the "We-Should-Have-Complete Acce
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