by Hillary LaClair, Senior Editor
With more information being obtained about the legal activity that Kentucky Democratic Governor Steve Beshear plans to take against online poker rooms, some officials believe it to be a farce.
According to online-casinos.com, “US media are reporting that the lawyers who put together the domain list and legal argument for Governor Steve Beshear were engaged on outsourced contingency agreements – no pay, no win.”
It would seem as though this legal team has done little educate itself on internet poker gambling websites, as some 30 percent of the domain names that are sought to be confiscated are no longer operational and have not been for some time. Two of the domains that were said to have been seized, HighRollersLounge.com and LuckyPyramidCasino.com, were taken offline after the death of the owner and operators, Warren Cloud. Each online gambling operation are now under the management of the Virtual Casino group.
It became more clear that Kentucky Justice Cabinet Secretary J. Michael Brown knew very little about the operations at hand as he stated, “At this point in time, I don’t know why they are shut down, but it’s not the pursuant to our actions.” Such information is available to anyone with internet access and relevant to the case.
A decision will be reached this afternoon, announcing whether or not the domain seizures will be permanent. A multitude of parties involved are sending their legal teams to voice their objections. iMEGA, as well as GoDaddy (a domain registrar that will be greatly affected by the court ruling) have both announced that they will be sending lawyers in where they intend to file an objection.
GoDaddy released a statement calling the domain seizures a “dangerous precedent.” President Jeremiah Johnston continued, “It appears that there may be no statutory basis for this unprecedented action, that Kentucky may lack sufficient may lack sufficient jurisdictional grounds and that it also may violate the commerce clause of the U.S. Constituion.”
If it is ordered that the domain seizures take place, state officials will inform registrars of the order and seize only the temporarily controlled domain names. The ruling will be “subject to anybody filing some sort of objection.”
J. Michael Brown, who already anticipates much opposition to the court proceedings, has said that the intention to take control of these online poker domains is meant to force company operators into settlement talks and soon afterward prohibit Kentucky citizens from accessing the websites. If the court rules in favor of Kentucky, the domain names will be returned after a hefty fee. If the fee is not then paid, the state will “block access to the sites by users across the world,” according to Brown.
Andrew Allemann, a Texas domain-name industry expert believes that the court proceedings will backfire. “I’d say (the governor) has underestimated the expense of this battle, and he’s also underestimated the backlash.”
Allemann feels that the opposing team will argue on the basis of freedom of speech, that will come from more than just the online gambling industry.
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