Corrupt Kentucky politicians attempting to seize ‘digital land’

If you haven’t heard by now, a gang of thugs in Kentucky has been attempting to set an extremely dangerous new international precedent by seizing 141 domain names belonging to online gambling sites by way of a court order.  But this is no ordinary trademark dispute.  You see, these thugs are government of the state of Kentucky, and they are attempting to seal the heist inside the Kentucky – ahem – “legal system”.

Allow me to back up for a moment.  Those of you already familiar with the situation bear with me for a moment.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals is expected to issue a ruling any day now on this case, one which has given a whole new meaning to the term “eminent domain”.  A lower court headed up by Judge Thomas Wingate previously approved of a state plan to seize the internet domain names belonging to 141 online gambling sites registered and owned outside of Kentucky.

You see, the good people of the state of Kentucky should be able to rest assured knowing their government is doing all it can to protect them from an “illegal, unregulated and untaxed industry.”  That was how Jennifer Brislin, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, attempted to explain the motives of the state.

Matthew Zimmerman, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a friend-of-the-court brief that the ruling was “unconstitutional and made without jurisdictional authority.”

I would go a bit further than that.  In my humblest of opinions, this is government corru0ption at its worst.  Plain and simple.

According to Wikipedia, eminent domain is: “the inherent power of the state to seize a citizen‘s private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen’s rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner’s consent.”

To the best of my knowledge, the state of Kentucky has offered the rightful owners no compensation in exchange for their property.  At least when the government steals your house or your land you get SOMETHING back.

This begs the question of what would possess any of these domain owners to actually comply with the ruling, should it stand.  Again, to the best of my knowledge, not even one of the names being sought by the state was registered in Kentucky. Hence, Mr. Zimmerman’s basis for his remark about the ‘jurisdictional authority.’

A little further down on the Wikipedia page on eminent domain reads this: “The exercise of eminent domain is not limited to real property. Governments may also condemn personal property, such as supplies for the military in wartime, franchises; this includes intangible property such as contract rights, patents, trade secrets, and copyrights.”

You can add domain names to that list.  Unless of course the Kentucky Court of Appeals has a lot more sense (and/or higher ethical standards) than Judge Thomas Wingate seems to have.  We shall soon find out….