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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

#111

Post by wtn »

nika wrote: post #83
jonknee wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It would be cut and dry if you could show any "utterances" from the Liberty Dollar / NORFED, where they represented their products as US government money. They did not, and further, they were careful to put disclaimers on their warehouse receipts, and various features on the physical pieces to make it clear that this was not being represented as government money. For instance, ever piece contained a copyright stateme…

Shouldn't have printed the words "Dollar" and "USA" on the damn coins.

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

#112

Post by nika »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #102
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…

I lived in Las Vegas in the 70's when the Secret Service stepped in and shut down the process of people paying for things with Casino Chips. For those not familiar with them, a Casino Chip has a current denomination ($1, $5, $25, etc) and the name of the Casino on it. For a long time Casinos, as service to their customers, didn't care if you played with another Casino's chips so you could just carry them around from…

I won't attempt to argue that the Liberty Dollar wasn't a misguided enterprise. Even when the law is on your side, the fact that the government controls the courts assures that you'll never get a fair trial.

You're misunderstanding the constitution and what the "right to create currency" means. There are many currencies in circulation, and there have been many state and even private currencies over the years. Even today there are localities that make their own currencies- such as the Ithica Hour http://www.ithacahours.com/

What the constitution reserves to the federal government is merely the power to determine how many grains of silver are contained in a given dollar.

Thus, actually, the current paper US dollar, which is not denominated in silver, is illegal, it is counterfeit!

Thus it is clear that tradition has long ago seperated from the law. But this is relatively recent. In 1930s it was that the government made ownership of gold illegal and switched from silver certificates to unbacked dollars, but even then the dollar was backed internationally with gold, until Nixon closed the Gold window in the 1970s and defaulted the US government.

An excellent book on the history of Money in the USA, is "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin.

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

#113

Post by rauljara »

smokeyj wrote: post #79
cjeane wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you actually read the document, you would see that the document includes provisions for a court system under the very correct assumption that some people would read the document and come to different conclusions about just what the document means.

Ever played a board game and had people disagreed on what the rules said. If you play games of any complexity, it happens all the time. Life is considerably more difficult than any game.

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

#115

Post by viraptor »

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?

Pokerstars client does not use dns at startup at all. It uses one of the ips you can see in trace.ini. (not sure how it obtains those ones however) Wouldn't expect other clients to be worse. They're going to be ok.

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

#117

Post by ikono »

cjeane wrote: post #38
skunkworks wrote: post #25

US government has been gunning for poker sites for a while (since 2006 when the UIGEA passed). Some places like Party Poker withdrew from the US market, while others flourished by skirting the rules to the best of their abilities (e.g. can't have ads for internet gambling on TV, so let's make a play money site fulltilt.net that will eventually funnel traffic to our real cash games). I am however surprised that they'r…

There was so much hope that poker would be granted legal status about a year ago, but congress does tend to get sidetracked. Nice to see other 2+2ers on HN.

It's kinda cool to see a link to 2+2 at the top of HN, sucks that it has to be for this though...

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

#118

Post by nika »

samfoo wrote: post #96
smokeyj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because the world is a complicated place where a single (short) document is unlikely to fairly represent anything other than guiding principles. Having guiding principles is hugely important and valuable, just as giving people the leeway to make judgement calls on those principles is. Justice shouldn't be black and white.

I don't think anyone denies that there are areas where the constitution is not sufficiently detailed. However, the constitution still says what it says, and many actions that are considered "legal" today do not fall into the areas of constitutional vagueness, but are simply laws that violate the constitution that have never been sufficiently challenged.

The constitution is pretty black and white, and this is a good thing, because it means you can tell what is set out by it, and what is up to the legislature.

All the areas where the constitution enumerated powers it gave the legislature a free hand to determine what is right.

Thus for the areas that the constitution does address, it is pretty black and white and it is meant to be enforced by the people.

... and it really isn't hard to understand, nor does it require much interpretation. Just careful reading.

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

#119

Post by smallblacksun »

uptown wrote: post #105
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.

What about these? Disney Dollars: http://www.disneydollars.net/ BerkShares: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jul2007/sb20070... Buy Local—With Town Currency Dollar alternatives, such as BerkShares in Massachusetts, are shoring up local economies by keeping money in the community Microsoft Points: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/MicrosoftPoints Pittsboro Plenty: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/9/north_ca…

As linked in another reply, the law deals with coins "of gold or silver or other metal".

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

#120

Post by jarin »

blhack wrote: post #84
TY wrote: post #36

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 da…

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

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.
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