By Alexis Russell

10/08/2008

                We’ve previously covered the current events happening in Kentucky as the governor, Steve Beshear, attempts to take control of 141 websites that promote online poker.  Beshear is heading up the Commonwealth of Kentucky group that aims to make these sites unavailable to state residents.  A number of critical questions have risen from the governor’s action and even prompted a judge to halt their efforts that they were approved of in an original hearing.

                Short story, the original hearing was put together very hastily, so much so that online poker rooms weren’t able to get there to defend themselves and ultimately favor was rules in that of the Commonwealth.  However, Judge Thomas Wingate determined that another hearing, in which the accused could defend itself because this is the United States of America, needed to be conducted and ruled that the Commonwealth of Kentucky must halt their efforts to seize the online poker domains.

                Well, the Commonwealth, which has been overlooking a lot of legal aspects that don’t work for them, decided to ignore the judge’s ruling in part.  Just before the hearing that happened yesterday on Tuesday October 7^th, lawyers defending the online poker websites got news that GoDaddy.com had forfeited the domains to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  Clearly they were moving forward with their actions when it was ruled they should not.

                Apparently they thought it was going to be an open and shut case in their favor and were getting a little ahead of themselves.  Judge Thomas Wingate heard both sides yesterday and decided that the matter needed further deliberation.  Wingate is giving himself a full week to mull matters over before making a final decision next Wednesday.

                Kentucky’s governmental move to ban state residents from having access to the online poker rooms has called into question many things, including a state’s right to restrict the internet freedom of its residents.   In the mean time, over 2,000 Kentuckians have spoke out against the state’s action.