Some Online Poker Rooms Ban 13 States
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September 2008
The UIGEA made waves in the online poker world, and some could argue that it may never be the same again. Following the passing of and signing into law of this bill by what some consider to be an underhanded move by Bill Frist and Jon Kyl, several gambling websites decided to move out of the American market and stop offering their services to all Americans. Examples of these are PartyPoker (PartyGaming), iPoker, Ongame and more.
Others argued that their services were not related to gambling, and continued to offer them to Americans as normal. Examples of these are Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars and Microgaming. The Microgaming network, to which popular rooms such as Doyle’s Room and The Purple Lounge had belonged, kept offering its services to the American players well after the UIGEA was signed into law.
However, at some point well beyond the infamous signing of the UIGEA, a “partial” ban was implemented to the perpetually unfortunate American players. Only certain states were affected. The Microgaming network banned customers of 13 US States and the District of Columbia from playing on its sites. Besides DC, the thirteen states included in the partial ban were Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, and Utah.
Microgaming was the only large site that was still offering casino gambling to American customers post-UIGEA, when all the others pulled out quickly. But Microgaming’s approach would make the site and its gambling services available to 39 of the 52 states.
The following is speculation: Microgaming’s approach might seem a bit wacky at first, but if you look at it a little more carefully, you might understand the logic behind it. It seems that a few of the states were much more aggressive in enforcing the online gambling ban that was intended to start by introducing the UIGEA. So, instead of applying the hammer, the Microgaming network instead chose the precision surgical instrument approach by only excluding players from the states which have proven to be most problematic. By previous articles you might have realized that all of the states affected by Microgaming’s ban have been involved in being the boyscout-type, eager to enforce the poorly worded and badly implemented law that is the UIGEA.
The rest of the American states, which have been more or less neutral towards online gambling activities up to that point, continued being served as usual. The service did not skip a beat, really. Of course, every site on the Microgaming gaming network was affected by this move.
And now follow the facts as we have them: This move came in reaction to a sudden urge by the state of Kentucky to seize the domain names of every gaming site the state deemed “provided gambling games illegally to Kentucky residents.” The claims by the Commonwealth of Kentucky were outlandish, and if it got its way in court, would send a pretty feared precedent for the whole entire Internet, not just online poker. How you say? You can claim that a website is in violation of a random law in your municipal high court, and get awarded its domain name for you to do as you wish with it. Obviously, no one in their sane minds would even dare think something like this up, but hey, leave it to the guys behind the Kentucky Derby!
This gambit by the Commonwealth was simply a test as to the reach of the state in regards to Internet Gambling in general. It was a test of its power. Sites that were already providing online poker play to American players, such as PokerStars, Full Tilt poker and also smaller ones like the newly founded Cereus network and Cake network greeted this news with relative skepticism but kept their guards up. Microgaming, on the other hand, announced that it (therefore, all the sites making use of its network at the time) would take measures against it, and the most immediate measure included banning the 13 states that had, at the time, some form of custom laws in their books regarding online gambling. Perhaps the most infamous of state specific laws comes to us from Washington State, which made gambling on the Internet a Class C felony, comparable to animal torture, repeat drunk driving or threatening the governor.
It seems “protection of local gambling venues” can go to great lengths in American politics. Rather than just prohibiting people from playing altogether (which, if you want to argue about addiction, this should have been the only way to go if the addiction can indeed be proven with hard facts and thorough independent research), we have seen several clumsy attempts to dry up the monetary river to and from the sites. Politicians have also tried to make gambling innocently at your home behind a computer screen a felony, and now, the greatest move of them all, tried to infringe upon free speech and affect thousands of users who are not nor have ever been in your country by calling the URL of a gambling site a “gambling device, used to facilitate gambling by individuals in the state” and to demand its confiscation. This is the latest of the lame attempts we have seen to make it more difficult for us to participate in the hobby we love (and some professionals), but you can bet it will not be the last.
When will common sense prevail? Hopefully at some point during our lifetime.
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