According to Reuters.com, Antigua and Barbuda officials accused the U.S. on Wednesday of violating international trade law with the indictment of the alleged operators of three offshore-based Internet poker companies and the domain seizures.
Both Antigua and Barbuda license Internet gambling companies.
The Caribbean nation’s finance minister, Harold Lovell, issued a statement saying:
“I am concerned that at this point in time United States authorities continue to prosecute nondomestic suppliers of remote gaming services in clear contravention of international law,” Lovell said.
Basically Antigua is saying the US is protecting its own gambling industry by cracking down on non-US gambling companies thereby engaging in protectionism.
Lovell went on to say:
“I am not aware of any other situation where a member of the World Trade Organization has subjected persons to criminal prosecution under circumstances where the WTO has expressly ruled that to do so is in breach of an International treaty”
Mark Mendel, the Caribbean government’s legal advisor, told Reuters:
“I don’t think there’s another country in the world that puts people in jail for engaging in trade that’s lawful under international law, by telephone on Thursday. “It’s as if Antigua would put Americans in jail for selling pineapples.”
One of the companies subject to the domain name seizure and law enforcement action Absolute Poker, is licensed in Antigua.
thats right the usa cares less about sovereign nations and inflicts us law on 3rd party nations..the us has no no right to coerce its outdated laws on 3rd party nations. and this is a violation of international trade laws.
this is why america is at war with the world.telling the world what to do.and yesterday news came out that in 2002 bp had plans for iraqs oil..thats how far back the gop plan was to
force more oil on the world market.
USA spends trillion $$$ on the war and lots of men/women who died but USA still does not get the oil..
China then sneaks in …
I can’t see why people play online poker anyway – you’re basically trusting that these sites are truly feeding you random cards, and then there’s the chance that two or more people at your table are colluding by talking on the phone during the game.
No thanks.
I lost $3,000 on pokerstars! Thankfully I don’t actually have to pay a penny of it because it was never taken out of my actual bank account! I win!
Just so I understand, if the poker companies had used ccTLD’s instead of .com’s, their domains wouldn’t have been so easily seized? Is that true?
If so, gambling-related ccTLD domains should start selling for big bucks. 🙂
My partners and I are split right down the middle as to whether or not we should use Pokerville.Co or Pokerville.org for our new play-money poker site. We already own both domains and the site should go live (beta) by July 1 on an invitation-only basis until the bugs are worked-out.
Any opinions on which domain we should use? And don’t say “the .com” – it’s priced outside of our budget.
It sometimes seems like the most successful online businesses are those that appeal to the most controversial human habits. Sex and gambling being two examples.
Online gambling is an amazing phenomenon.
There are probably people who look at run of the mill PPC pages and wonder “Who would ever click on this junk?” (I used to be one of those people many years ago.) Of course, people do click on them, month after month, year after year. As many successful domainers know.
Well, now consider those ridiculously large PartyPoker popup ads. Would anyone with half a brain actually click on them? In fact, yes, they would.
As Facebook pushes toward becoming an advertising in platform that claims to rival traditional media, for its effectivness, it’s enlightening to look into their short history and the things they experimented with. If anyone is trying to figure out ways to make users click, it’s Facebook. They are now the largest click ad think tank.
Turns out the single most successful ad campaign for them in terms of effectiveness was years ago, before they started hiring too many bottom line oriented executives. It was PartyPoker. PartyPoker didn’t pay for clicks. They only paid for each user who actually signed up, something like $4000 per head.
Apparently it was an extraordinarily successful campaign. In terms of effectiveness it is possible no other Facebook advertiser may ever come close to being as effective.
Google no doubt knows the power of gambling ads as well. In the early days they ran them too.
And no doubt Antigua and Barbados had their own taste of the amazing attraction of online gambling. One can understand why they might complain.
Here’s an article on PartyPoker and its history:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/jun/03/business.gambling1
correction: it was 300 per head and only if the subscriber deposited 50 in their account
Basically, the issuance of an order to seize the names is 100% illegal if you understand Icann and WIPO actions. The US courts cannot order a domain transfer to the US government without DUE PROCESS, so the best thing to do is put the whole thing into WIPO and get WIPO to tell Icann that until due process in a real action decides the domains do not belong to the registered owner, the US courts need to back down.
Besides, US courts by treaty law is now subservient to Icann an INTERNATIONAL BODY that 100% controls all domains, so Icann can flex it’s muscle if it wants and establish, without a real hearing where an owner of a domain had a fair chance to defend such a seizure, no one can take away a domain, NO ONE.
The casinos can afford to get lawyered up and put this in the court of appeals under mandamus and show under treaty law, Icann is the court not the FEDS to decide domain name stuff. Now the criminal stuff, ok, the feds have control over that IF it was done inside the USA, but they sure don’t own cyber space, no one does.
Icann controls the names and the US courts need to be biatch slapped IMO.
If you read the DOJ’s agreement with one of the gambling sites that is linked to in another post on this website, you see a clause that requires the gambling site not to challenge the domain name seizure. If the authority to seize domain names was clear, would that clause would be necessary?
The agreement does include a statement about not continuing to run any gambling sites or establishing any new ones. IMO, that’s really the crux of the entire agreement, but it’s hidden at the end of a paragraph.
The way it is written the agreement is focused on a single domain name, as if it were tangible property. And as if domain names, let alone a single name, were necessary in order to conduct business on the internet. This is more evidence of the perceived power of domain names.
ICANN has no legal authority in any jurisdiction and cannot adjudicate anything. WIPO is simply a contractor providing mediation services to ICANN, and also a representative of the interests of IP holders worldwide, such as trademark owners. There is no requirement for ICANN to select WIPO as a contractor. ICANN is a non-public US company with highly compensated directors and no shareholders. Non-public. US company. No shareholders.
Needless to say, ICANN and WIPO are two very different organisations in terms of where they derive their authority (if any), what they do and to whom they are accountable.
What does ICANN do?
ICANN purports to authorise the rental of numbers and names to be used on a network that they do not own, a network that is wholly owned by no one. They do this through a carefully constructed layered bureaucracy laden with acronyms and technological red herrings that effectively (though probably unintentionally) provide a formidable barrier to entry for the great majority of the network’s stakeholders, which consist of its end users worldwide.
ICANN has nothing to do with these domain seizures, its not something they have any ability to stop or regulate.
WIPO and UDRP are completely different legal method again having nothing to do with domain seizures
If a registrant wants to avoid seizures by a country’s authorities, then perhaps he should not use a registrar based in that country.
The .com registry (Verisign) is based in the US and subject to US jurisdiction. This has been extended to mean that any .com domain adinistered by Verisign is also subject to US jurisdiction. Therefore any .com domain is subject to potential seizure by US authorities.
The jurisdiction of the registry, not the registrar, is what the US is using to seize domains.
Under this approach, the Libyan government could interfere with any .ly domain (recall the bit.ly incident), the Colombian government could interfere with any .co domain, the Swiss government could interfere with any .ch domain, and so on.
The lasting message from all these seizures is that when you register a .com, in some sense you’re doing business with the US, because the US government can potentially take your domain.
Maybe we’re headed toward a future where the best TLD’s will be the ones located in the countries that are the most accomodating to online businesses?
But today, .com is king. And the US is making the most of the advantage that provides.
CANN purports to authorise the rental of numbers and names to be used on a network that they do not own, a network that is wholly owned by no one. They do this through a carefully constructed layered bureaucracy laden with acronyms and technological red herrings that effectively (though probably unintentionally) provide a formidable barrier to entry for the great majority of the network’s stakeholders, which consist of its end users worldwide.