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FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names

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Re: FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names

#71

Post by blhack »

cynicalkane wrote: post #59
nika wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa is a currency. So are travellers checks and regular old checking checks and coupons. All of these are also denominated in dollars. If you were to take some time and study the actual laws, and also check out the legal opinions, from members of boards of federal reserve branches, as well as the secret service and lawyers that were obtained before the Liberty Dollar project was started you'd recognize just how absu…

Visa is a currency. So are travellers checks and regular old checking checks and coupons If you were to take some time to study the laws--or high school economics--or the cardholder agreement you sign when you apply for a Visa card--you'd know this is incorrect. I bet you have "research" that tells you that credit cards are currency or something, contrary to very basic legal and economic interpretations of the word.…

Could you elaborate on this for me? It sounds like what they're saying makes perfect sense (btw, there is really no need for the --or high school economics-- jab).

Visa is an abstraction of my money. A better example would be american express gift cards. I can buy american express gift cards, and I can trade these gift cards or goods or services. The gift cards have a non-static real-value that is tied to the United States dollar (it's value in GBP, for instance, will fluctuate based on currency values).

I can take $100 USD, give it to a third party to hold, then slowly spend it as I see fit (effectively).

How is doing this with gold something that they should have covered in "high school economics class"? (No high school I've ever seen or heard of teaches an economics course, by the way)

I take $100, and give it to somebody who gives me an abstraction of that $100, gold.

To me, this sounds like literally the exact same thing as a gift card, just shinier.

Re: FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names

#72

Post by gst »

ig1 wrote: post #17

As what happened with the guys run the porn redirector under the Libya domain, if you're using a domain/registrar which is regulated under laws which make your website illegal then you're just asking for trouble. It's just basic common sense: Use domains/registrars which fall under the legal authority of a country in which your website is legal.

I think that up until now .com was considered to be a "neutral" domain, with individual domain names falling under the jursidication of the country where the registrar is located. However, in this case at least for ub.com the registrar is located outside the US, so this implies that the US has jurisdication over all .com domains.

If I'd was a non-US company using a .com domain I think now is the time where I'd switch to another TLD.

Re: FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names

#73

Post by Vivtek »

iwwr wrote: post #29
vnorby wrote: post #5

WHOA, that's really big news for the poker industry. These are all very large, very big businesses (talking billions of dollars) in the US. Can anyone confirm if their poker clients are still functioning properly?

Weren't they all banned in the US a few years ago? Illegal even for banks to process transactions to them.

Yeah, I remember having troubles with Moneybookers payment processing and Joker.com registrar payments, because my bank (which was Chase Fricking Manhattan and thus should know better) assumed that they must be gambling sites.

Re: FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names

#74

Post by nika »

cynicalkane wrote: post #59
nika wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa is a currency. So are travellers checks and regular old checking checks and coupons. All of these are also denominated in dollars. If you were to take some time and study the actual laws, and also check out the legal opinions, from members of boards of federal reserve branches, as well as the secret service and lawyers that were obtained before the Liberty Dollar project was started you'd recognize just how absu…

Visa is a currency. So are travellers checks and regular old checking checks and coupons If you were to take some time to study the laws--or high school economics--or the cardholder agreement you sign when you apply for a Visa card--you'd know this is incorrect. I bet you have "research" that tells you that credit cards are currency or something, contrary to very basic legal and economic interpretations of the word.…

My understanding of economics is sufficient that I understood we'd be having a housing bubble in 2001, and by 2007, I'd profited massively from it and gotten out, well before the crash of 2008. All of that came from my application of economic principles.

I don't think I'm entitled to my own facts. But I have read the laws here, and I find your response to be devoid of any actual argument or citation of facts and full of smear and insinuation.

Re: FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names

#75

Post by jonknee »

nika wrote: post #48
jonknee wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I find this ridiculous, it's quite different from the Liberty Dollar case which you mentioned losing $20 in. In the US it is clearly illegal to begin running your own currency and has been for a long time. The fact that NotHaus went as far as putting the word Dollar on it was just the icing on the cake.

Visa is a currency. So are travellers checks and regular old checking checks and coupons. All of these are also denominated in dollars. If you were to take some time and study the actual laws, and also check out the legal opinions, from members of boards of federal reserve branches, as well as the secret service and lawyers that were obtained before the Liberty Dollar project was started you'd recognize just how absu…

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/486.html

It seems extraordinarily cut and dry to me, but I'm not a lawyer (and by your post I assume you're not either).

Re: FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names

#76

Post by elliottcarlson »

generalk wrote: post #68
davidcann wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue here is the seizure of domain names. US citizens who gamble online know full well that they're breaking the law and are subject to lose assets. The domain seizures are very troubling, though. Edit: There seems to be some dispute over where it's a crime to "participate" in different US states, but for the purposes of the "customer assests seized", the transaction is illegal, so it's to be expected that…

You do understand that gambling online isn't illegal in the United States, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIGEA UIGEA "prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with the participation of another person in a bet or wager that involves the use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any federal or state law." but does not make it a crime for a citizen to engage in the activit…

Correction - it is illegal for them to participate in the activity of gambling - it is not illegal for them to participate in the activity of playing poker, for fun.

Re: FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names

#77

Post by eof »

generalk wrote: post #68
davidcann wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue here is the seizure of domain names. US citizens who gamble online know full well that they're breaking the law and are subject to lose assets. The domain seizures are very troubling, though. Edit: There seems to be some dispute over where it's a crime to "participate" in different US states, but for the purposes of the "customer assests seized", the transaction is illegal, so it's to be expected that…

You do understand that gambling online isn't illegal in the United States, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIGEA UIGEA "prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with the participation of another person in a bet or wager that involves the use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any federal or state law." but does not make it a crime for a citizen to engage in the activit…

It is illegal in a handful of states.

http://www.gambling-law-us.com/State-Law-Summary/

You are right though, the UIGEA makes it illegal to transfer money from a US citizens account to an 'illegal gambling operation.' It doesn't actually define what an illegal gambling operation is.

Re: FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names

#79

Post by smokeyj »

cjeane wrote: post #31
nika wrote: post #7

Reagan is the one who signed "asset forfeiture" into law. I remember at the time reading newspaper articles claiming this was "just going to be used to keep drugs off the streets" and how "law enforcement are outgunned and now can defend themselves against drug dealers". It was obvious to me then that this was a violation of due process. Also, it is not authorized by the constitution, and thus every act of seizure un…

Constitutional law is so much more complicated than, "this is what the document says". What is happening is here is reprehensible, but I don't think you will find any defense against it in due process.

> Constitutional law is so much more complicated than, "this is what the document says".

If you can't read the document and deduce it's meaning, why use this document? Is this an emperors clothe type of thing?

Re: FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names

#80

Post by cookiecaper »

mycroftiv wrote: post #12

This is a disaster. A very sad day for the internet. We are entering into pastor Niemoller territory here: first they came for the file-sharing websites, next they came for the online gambling websites, and I would guess that Bitcoin is probably next in line, and following that, Magic: the Gathering online and the MMORPGs.

Bitcoin is in for it as soon as it gains any reasonable traction. The government is not going to be happy about that at all. Fortunately, btc is a peer-to-peer network and should theoretically be hard to shut down. I doubt it's actually hard to shut down since the client gets its list of peers from the user list in an automatically and transparently joined IRC channel (if I understand correctly). Heh.

I think, however, the domain seizures just emphasize the importance of using a system that doesn't depend on regularly constituted DNS and getting more and more P2P infrastructure in place. I2P should be looked at as particularly promising.

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