Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

forumserver.twoplustwo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 402 posts

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

#151

Post by nika »

ryanc wrote: post #121
nika wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here it is: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00000242----... USC 18-242 I called it a felony though the law only makes it one if a "dangerous weapon" is involved.

This law refers to race discrimination and isn't relevant to your argument. Key part with lots of sub clauses removed for readability: "Whoever, under color of any law, willfully subjects any person in any State to the deprivation of any rights, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; "

No, you're rewriting it by omitting the relevant clause. The race discrimination is one of the clauses that can invoke it, not the only one.

Let me quote it with line breaks for readability:

"Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, "

So, anyone who dies this.

"or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, "

Or who does this based on race, residency....

"shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both"

Shall be punished.

You can invoke the law by doing the first set of things, or by doing the second set of things.

It is an OR clause, meaning if A OR B are true, then the penalties apply. IF there were an AND on race, it would be the way you read it.

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

#152

Post by nika »

elliottcarlson wrote: post #140
colanderman wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make any sense to me... is bartering illegal? Where does one draw the line between bartering with chips and paying with chips?

Depends on the intentions... are you a farmer bartering your crops for another farmers meat; or are you knowingly circumventing laws. This is similar to the way Pachinko parlors work in Japan and Taiwan - you collect a ball from the machine when you win, and with a certain amount of balls you can receive various token prizes. This prize can then be redeemed around the corner at a different location for cash. Cash was…

There is no law prohibiting private currency.

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_carolina_town_pri....

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

#154

Post by Locke1689 »

nika wrote: post #112
ChuckMcM wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 to…

What the Constitution allows and disallows is a matter of the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution at the time. You have yet to make an argument that the federal government's seizure contradicts the established jurisprudence on this topic.

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

#155

Post by nika »

bdonlan wrote: post #149
nika wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/currency 1. something that is used as a medium of exchange; money. 2.general acceptance; prevalence; vogue. 3. a time or period during which something is widely accepted and circulated. 4. the fact or quality of being widely accepted and circulated from person to person. 5. circulation, as of coin. Currrency can refer to physical money. But it also refers to gift cards, visa car…

If you looked at the actual laws the liberty dollar is cited as allegedly violating - http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/514.html and http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/486.html - you'll find it's quite specific about what is a problem; the former law makes illegal attempts to fraudulently pass off your currency a official US currency, and the latter makes it illegal to mint _metallic coins_ for use as current mo…

I have looked at the relevant laws, an the liberty dollar does not violate either. They never passed it off as government money, nor did they mint any coins. (Coins are government only, so to have minted them they would have had to pass them off as government money.) These are not easily mistaken for government money, and there are a variety of other currencies, such as disney dollars, that are passed off, are physical objects, and are exchanged "as money would be" (though that phrase is not relevant legally, that standard is your opinion.)

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

#156

Post by jbooth »

gloob wrote: post #150
jbooth wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are not currencies, they are payment methods for dollars. A note that you owe someone some amount of dollars is entirely different from saying, repeatedly, in advertisements, that you're an "alternative currency".

Normally I wouldn't be this pedantic, but in a discussion about currency, it's worthwhile specifying whether you mean American dollars, $some_other_country's dollars, or the Platonic form of dollars.

I meant US dollars, but now that I think of it, you can do transactions in any currency using Visa, which is more evidence that they're a payment system rather than a competing currency like "visabucks" or something.

The principle here is that you're not allowed to compete with the US gov't when it comes to providing the currency of the land. There are a lot of good reasons for this, and some mediocre reasons to oppose it, but at the end of the day it's pretty clear that there's a difference between Liberty Dollars and a cashier's check denoted in US dollars.

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

#157

Post by die_sekte »

cabalamat wrote: post #133

Note to self: all future domains I buy won't have a .com extension.

I'm using .is from now on. Sure, it's more expensive, but there are no fucking "domainers" there – even two letter domains are still available. And I have a hard time thinking of something Iceland would shut down (except for child pornography, obviously).

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

#158

Post by Locke1689 »

blhack wrote: post #71
cynicalkane wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Macro and micro economics are AP tests... thousands of schools across the country teach classes in the topic.

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

#159

Post by bdonlan »

nika wrote: post #144
samfoo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whoever, except as authorized by law, makes or utters or passes, or attempts to utter or pass, any coins of gold or silver or other metal, or alloys of metals, intended for use as current money, whether in the resemblance of coins of the United States or of foreign countries, or of original design , shall be fined under this title [1] or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. [Emphasis mine.] They were minti…

"They were minting physical coins." No, they were not: "a piece of metal stamped and issued by the authority of a government for use as mony" "They called them dollars." So does disney: http://www.disneydollars.net/ "Just because they decided they didn't think they were legally coinage" This is a dishonest characterization. They had opinions from independant council, the secret service, members of federal reserve bra…

> No, they were not: "a piece of metal stamped and issued by the authority of a government for use as mony"

The fact that § 486 exists suggests that, under the law, it doesn't have to be a government minting something for it to be a coin. Otherwise nobody could ever violate that law, right? Courts consider the intent of a law when interpreting it, and it's fairly clear what is meant here; only the government is _allowed_ to mint coins, but you can theoretically mint coins if you're not the government (it's just illegal then).

> This is a dishonest characterization. They had opinions from independant council, the secret service, members of federal reserve branches, etc, all saying that the product was legal.

None of these people's opinions have any legal weight. Only a judge can actually provide a binding opinion stating that what you're doing is legal. Additionally, as cited from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar#Legal_issues , there have been opinions in the opposite direction from secret service agents and the US Mint; if you're going to try to argue from authority (which is a bad idea anyway), you can't ignore contrary opinions at the same time.

Indeed, the Liberty Dollar project seems to have sued to get a binding opinion stating whether they were legal, and were raided shortly thereafter. This seems to indicate that, since the Liberty Dollar project forced the Justice department to take a side on whether they were legal or not, the Justice department prosecutors may have been forced to, well, prosecute.

> Unfortunately, many americans think like you do. The FBI calls them terrorists, railroads them and people think the justice system works.

Did the FBI really call them terrorist? I'd like to see a citation for that. In any case, this is hardly railroading. It happened four years ago, and with a jury trial. Two years passed from the start of the investigation to the indictment and arrest. The trial itself took another two years. You may disagree with the laws themselves, but I find it hard to see how the laws were misapplied here. § 485 and § 486 are really quite clear if you read them.

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

#160

Post by Locke1689 »

nika wrote: post #135
Symmetry wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law he cites rather explicitly said "in the resemblance of coins of the United States or of foreign countries, or of original design" are all covered. Metal coins of original design are still illegal to manufacture (though I'd agree they shouldn't be).

The first definition of coin: "a piece of metal stamped and issued by the authority of a government for use as mony" These were not coins. They were not issued under government authority, nor were they represented as such.

Your pretend definition of what a "coin" is has no relevance in a court of law. They were printed metal tokens that had passing similarity to US coinage. The fact that they weren't issued by the authority of the government is the problem, not the solution.
Post reply on HN