The legal victory in September by the state of Kentucky to control gambling within its borders through the seizure of 141 domain names belonging to online gambling companies has been appealed. The appeal has now been joined by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU, and the Center for Democracy and Technology, who use an amicus brief to argue that the initial seizure ruling was flawed on several levels.Ars Technica outlines the arguments in the brief, these being the registrars for the domain names are not in the state of Kentucky and the state has not demonstrated it has jurisdiction; that the ruling “would allow Kentucky to effectively control commerce in other states and nations, leaving it on the wrong side of the Constitution” and “the decision would, ‘chill speech of all types’.”Domain names are simply addresses pointing Web users to the proper Web sites, lawyers for the groups wrote reports IDG with the court’s flawed order needlessly creating “‘uncertainty about the basic rules governing the operation of the Internet as well as the authority of courts both inside and outside of the United States to affect behavior in other jurisdictions,’ the groups wrote.”Media reports on the domain name seizure are available from:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081114-eff-kentucky-domain-seizures-flawed-on-many-levels.html
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/111408-groups-ask-kentucky-court-to.html [IDG]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/14/kentucky_domain_name_grab_amicus/