Legal question: Internet Poker vs. pre-lawsuit Napster

[crypto]

I understand that the standard response of US Law Enforcement Agencies is that the reason they can’t come down on illegal internet gambling is because the servers are sitting in another country.

So?

They still know who is gambling, and where they are located. They can certainly track credit card transactions. If they could prosecute college kids using Napster before it went pay to download free music, why can’t they prosecute illegal gamblers?

Who cares about the physical location of the poker site servers? Let them exist on servers on some island somewhere. Start fining/jailing the gamblers and I’m guessing the illegal gaming would start to slow.

So what am I missing here? If I understand this right, if I had a bunch of servers sitting next to the gambling servers with millions of mp3 files, would downloading them be any more legal? Would Napster have been able to avoid all legal issues by moving their software server to another country? I doubt it… so why aren’t US internet gamblers facing similar legal problems for their illegal gaming?

Or is this just something winked at, because gambling isn’t really something that anyone wants to crack down on, while downloading free music was the crime of the internet era?

[RealityChuck]

Napster had copyright violations, and copyright law is international. There are places that don’t enforce it closely, but in general moving the servers elsewhere would only delay the shutdown.

Laws against gambling are local or national; there are no international treaties like the Berne Convention for copyright.

[crypto]

@RealityChuck

Napster had copyright violations, and copyright law is international. There are places that don’t enforce it closely, but in general moving the servers elsewhere would only delay the shutdown.

Laws against gambling are local or national; there are no international treaties like the Berne Convention for copyright.

I understand the copyright issues. But in the US, it’s illegal to gamble over the internet. Shutting down Napster was inevitable, but I remember they prosecuted a few people for downloading more than their fair share of pirated music. In the scheme of things, I don’t see the difference in difficulty of finding an internet poker player in San Diego vs. an illegal music downloader at San Diego State.

[Gfactor]

Many U.S. Web users continue to visit these sites in record numbers. Currently, the federal government does not prosecute the gambling sites’ customers, but some state governments do.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/2005-04-25-online-gambling_x.htm

For its part, the Justice Department said it is focused on the online gambling businesses, not individuals. “There is certainly not a law that expressly prohibits a bet by a casual bettor,” said a Justice Department official in a phone interview. “We think that is more for state law to decide.”

Catherine Hanaway, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, who brought the indictments against BetOnSports, said she didn’t consider pursuing charges against the company’s customers. “There are limited resources, and we are trying to go after the worst first,” she said. “Just like in the arena of gun dealers, we go after the biggest gun dealer we can find first.”

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115374581708215293-3RvBXBqOyk2vzHuVL8eXDwEG940_20070724.html

And, like New York, few states explicitly bar the casual bettor from wagering online. Even in Washington state, which recently made it a felony for a person to gamble online, state officials said it’s unlikely they would prosecute casual bettors.

Gambling experts said one of the few reported cases of an American being prosecuted for online gambling involved Jeffrey Trauman, a North Dakota resident. In 2003, Mr. Trauman, a professional bettor, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for violating a state law that limited legal gambling to wagers at a tribal casino or sanctioned charity. He received a $500 fine and one-year deferred sentence.

Id.

[MOIDALIZE]

The same reason the authorities target drug traffickers and dealers rather than the users. It’s more worthwhile to go after the source.

I have to imagine quite a few people in the U.S. have gambled online. Is the government gonna prosecute them all?

[Gfactor]

And see,

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (the “Second Circuit”) affirmed the judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (the “District Court”) which held that Jay Cohen, the director of an offshore sports betting Website conspired to violate and violated the terms of 18 U.S.C. §1084 (Internet Gambling Law). Jay Cohen, a business located in Antigua accepted bets from United States citizens over the telephone as well as from bettors on the Internet. The Second Circuit held that Jay Cohen violated the provisions of 18 U.S.C. §1084 by means of the Internet and telephone to transmit calls and accept bets from bettors in New York, where gambling is illegal, to the World Sports Exchange in Antigua, where gambling is legal.

http://www.ibls.com/internet_law_news_portal_view.aspx?id=1677&s=latestnews

[Oslo_Ostragoth]

@Stink Fish Pot

I understand the copyright issues. But in the US, it’s illegal to gamble over the internet.

Nope. It depends on state law. Under federal law, it is illegal for financial institutions to transfer money to or from internet gambling sites.

[aldiboronti]

Astonishing that such an admirably liberty-conscious nation should have no problem with the government jailing people for making a bet.

[Hank_Beecher]

@MOIDALIZE

The same reason the authorities target drug traffickers and dealers rather than the users. It’s more worthwhile to go after the source.

I have to imagine quite a few people in the U.S. have gambled online. Is the government gonna prosecute them all?

That didn’t stop them from going after some token cases of people downloading music from their dorm rooms.

[Fear_Itself]

@Hank_Beecher

That didn’t stop them from going after some token cases of people downloading music from their dorm rooms.

IIRC, those were civil cases filed by the music publishers, not criminal charges brought by the government.

[Turble]

The use of credit cards for online gambling took a big hit a couple of years ago with the midnight passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act (UIGA) attached to the Security and Accountability for Every Port Act (SAFE). Actually, basically only deposits are made by credit card and they get charged to some very generic sounding company name, not to IllegalPokerSite.com. Cashouts have pretty much always been by check, not by credit card refunds, again from generic company names.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,220496,00.html

Some online poker sites can have over 100,000 players online at any given time. Many of them are not Americans, many of them are playing not for cash but only for play money, and many of them are playing for very low stakes, literally for pennies.

An online poker site may be owned by a holding company registered in Antigua which is owned by a holding company registered in Belize which is owned by holding company registered in Costa Rica which has offices on the Isle of Man and its servers are on an Indian reservation in Canada – and the actual owners, if you can discover who they are, may not live in any of those places – and it is all perfectly legal in those countries.

And keep in mind " … the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in favor of Antigua in a case it brought against the U.S., citing that the U.S. position on online gaming violated WTO rules …"

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2006/10/is-wto-answer.htm

Still sound easy to prosecute? Who do you subpoena to get the records? What sort of resources are you willing to invest in attempting to prosecute people who play penny poker?

[beowulff]

@Fear_Itself

IIRC, those were civil cases filed by the music publishers, not criminal charges brought by the government.

Correct.

[racer72]

@Hank_Beecher

That didn’t stop them from going after some token cases of people downloading music from their dorm rooms.

Big difference. It has not been the feds going after those downloading the music, it has been the RIAA. They are using civil statutes to go after the college kids. Also, technically, the RIAA does not go after those that download the music, they go after those that are making the music available for upload. My brother recently settled his case with the RIAA. The sole evidence submitted to him in the demand letter was the 235 songs the RIAA downloaded off my brother’s computer. If his daughter had done something as simple as move the music she downloaded to a different file on the computer he likely would not have been busted. It cost my brother a little over $5000 and he had to let an “independent” computer techician verify all the illegal music was removed from his computer. The guy removed the hard drive from the computer and returned it a few days later in unworkable condition.