Internet gambling has been and continues to be a fantastic money making venture online.
Gambling by its very nature favors the house, so the even the Internet “house” is usually into profit from the minute the site starts working.
In recent news however, gambling and the world wide web have not been getting along so well.
Best Odds Corp. of Las Vegas, who owns macpokeronline.com, is suing Michael Jackness, who owns competing Web sites macpoker.com and macpoker.net.
This entire dispute arises over the use of MAC POKER and the ensuing customer confusion and accompanying look and feel disagreements.
Best has owned the MAC POKER mark since approximately June 3, 2005, and they claim that since January of 2009, Jackness has been infringing on Best’s service mark MAC POKER with his site.
Not to be outdone, the Commonwealth of Kentucky filed a lawsuit against “Pocket Kings” who own Full Tilt Poker in a bid to recover losses by Kentucky residents in online gaming.
This is not the first time in court over this issue. Back in September of 2008, the Commonwealth of Kentucky sought the forfeiture of 141 internet gambling domain names, including those belonging to the industry giants Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars.
Many of these domains were siezed by the Commonwealth at this time.
Then again last month, the Kentucky Supreme Court again sided with the Commonwealth in their contention that the organizations lacked standing.
The owners of TruePoker.com in an attempt to salvage this suit, claimed membership to the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association aka (iMEGA).
One of the factors involved is a 100 year-old Kentucky case that asserts; “an operator of a poker room is a winner because he has the same interest as a winner.
A poker operator has no interest in who wins any more than the operator of a lottery or bingo game cares who wins.”
This assertion rests upon the idea that in poker, the action is player versus player, not player versus the house.
If Kentucky can make this lawsuit stick, the Commonwealth’s new lawsuit names over 100 Internet gambling sites in addition to Full Tilt.
Setting a precedent will be putting it mildly.
The Kentucky suit will be going after online casinos, sports books, bingo sites, and poker rooms. The stated end goal is to recover money lost by Kentucky residents from March 25th, 2005 to September 25th, 2009, over a 54-month period.
Kentucky is not the only State to get involved in the legal wrangling over internet and gambling however.
Nevada, the logical choice for internet gambling, is currently involved in a dispute regarding the city of Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County.
The two local governments are arguing over which has the more legitimate claim to decide who will control .vegas, which is expected to arrive next year.
Pre-emptively, and to further complicate the issue, both Las Vegas City Council and
Clark County Commission independently made deals with different entities with regard to the .vegas extension.
The Las Vegas City Council voted in early February to grant a company called Dot Vegas its blessing in exchange for 75 cents of every domain name that is registered under .vegas.
Then, the Clark County Commission approved a deal with Vegas.Com, and offered $1.50 to the county per domain name registered under .vegas.
If ICANN, can’t straighten out the issue, .vegas could be up for auction between Dot Vegas and Vegas.Com.
Reference this to the fact that ICANN said it will be doling out dozens of new TLDs this spring, at which point entities will have to pay $185,000 just to apply for a TLD. It has been suggested that starting a new TLD, back-end costs and administration, has an estimated start up of approximately $500,000.
Now factor in State vs. Federal vs. International juristdictions and the recently passed anti-cybersquatting measures in Utah.
Will a domain registered in the .vegas name-space, affect cases like the Kentucky one?
Effectively the case could be made that Kentucky residents would be subject to the Nevada / Clark County jurisdiction and a gaming friendly court.
We are entering a strange time from an enforcement standpoint and we are postioned to witness precendents set and broken with regard to the internet at a never before seen pace.
Gambling seems to be simply the latest challenge in online enforcement. When ICANN fianlly does approve and allow the new extensions, there will be several new legal issues that could mirror or surpass this one.
We are going to have to prepare to address these new challenges to online reputation management.
If you don’t want to gamble with your online reputation, Metamend has proven solutions and industry experts to assist you.
