Kentucky Domain Name Seizure Ruling Overturned

The Kentucky Court of Appeals has this week overturned a decision that allowed the state to seize a total of 132 domain names and allowed a trade organization to represent all of the domains owners, meaning that individual identities do not have to become public. In a nutshell this means that all owners of the site names do not have to represent themselves and the trade association known as the Interactive Gaming Council can fight the case on behalf of all. Previously, it was ruled that the group could not defend the owners as they lacked any standing. Among those seized six years ago were fulltiltpoker.com, allslots.com, bookmaker.com, bodog.com and many more.

It what may be considered a mini victory for online gambling, Judge Allison Jones stated that, "The Commonwealth cannot now turn the tables and ask the court to require each domain name owner to come forward individually and assert virtually identical legal arguments through separate counsel to resolve threshold, purely legal issues that affect the validity of the entire forfeiture procedure," It's safe to say that Judge Jones was acting on common sense when making this decision. In a brief statement, Keith Furlong of the Interactive Gaming Council stated that, "Obviously, we consider this a win, we are also proud to be a catalyst for this decision which provides guidance to all associations seeking to represent their members in the Commonwealth of Kentucky." Most online gaming companies affected by the seizure of the domains simply changed their url's to .ag and .eu domain names, and carried on business as normal. This decision is being reviewed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky as to whether or not they will appeal.