New Moves by Kentucky Lawyers in Domain Seizure Case

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New Moves by Kentucky Lawyers in Domain Seizure Case

By: Shirley Spicer November 26th 2010

The state of Kentucky tried to seize the 141 international online gambling domain names more than two years ago, and is still not giving up the fight.

This past week has seen Kentucky's attorneys introducing new motions ahead of a scheduled hearing that is set to take place on December 6th. The case is back in the court of Judge Thomas Wingate, who was the original judge that ruled that Kentucky was legally able to exert jurisdiction over the specified domain names, even though all the domains are owned and operated outside of the Commonwealth.

Kentucky's attorneys, have already made moves to have iMEGA, and other such organizations that have been fighting on behalf of the online gambling domains, removed from the case, claiming that they have no legal standing. In addition to this, the state's legal team is now proposing that the 141 domains be treated differently than they had been treated before. This time, the state is suggesting that the domains be organized into smaller groups, in an attempt to better manage the rather long list of domains.

Kentucky's representatives have been unable to uncover who the owners of the specific domains are, and this new move is likely to ensure that the domain name owners will step forward, or that they will simply abandon their domains.

The state's attorneys gave the following submission to the court: "In order to effectively manage the large number of sites, the Commonwealth suggests that the determination of identification and ownership of sites occur in groups. The Commonwealth requests that the initial group consist of playersonly.com, sportsbook.com, sportsinteraction.com, mysportsbook.com, and linesmaker.com."

Not only this, but the submission also requests that the owners of these online gambling domains would also need to file any motions within 30 days. Although it has not been clearly stated, many of the online gambling industry's leaders suspect that this is simply a ploy to find out who the domain name holders are, and is not really for the stated reason to "effectively manage the large number of sites."

Although the state of Kentucky allows certain land based gambling, it is opposed to online gambling, apart from some horse racing and lottery gambling that is allowed online. When a state allows a number of forms of gambling, and also online gambling, it is clear that their issue with other gambling is not some moral opposition to the gambling, or online gambling itself, but simply a protectionist move to guard their own interests.

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