The KYPost.com reports, “A Franklin County Circuit judge last week ordered the transfer of the domain names of 141 illegal Internet gambling sites to the Commonwealth of Kentucky in an effort to stop illegal and unregulated online gaming.”

The article quotes Gov. Steve Beshear maundering about the dangers of gambling, saying,“Unlicensed, unregulated, illegal Internet gambling poses a tremendous threat to the citizens of the Commonwealth because of its ease, availability and anonymity,” and “The owners and operators of these illegal sites prey on Kentucky citizens, including our youth, and deprive the Commonwealth of millions of dollars in revenue. It’s an underworld wrought with scams and schemes.”

But further down, we get to the meat of the matter: “Unlicensed Internet gambling significantly undermines and threatens horseracing, Kentucky’s signature industry and a key tourism industry, by creating unregulated and untaxed competition.”

There’s no concern here about the citizens of Kentucky being scammed out of their money, or the dangers to the youth of Kentucky. It’s all about the money — the money that Kentucky scams out of its citizens from the lavishly taxed horseracing industry.

This judge is so overstepping his bounds — he’s not only ordering the seizure of domain names prior to a hearing; he’s ordering the seizure of domain names that aren’t even based in Kentucky. Supposedly, he wants online gaming establishments to block access to their sites by Kentuckians.

Judges who have no clue about the internet should not be permitted to hear cases relating to the internet. There is no reliable way to block access by Kentuckians, and even if there were, I’m sure that the good citizens of Kentucky would have no trouble finding proxy servers they can use to disguise their location. Further, I can’t imagine how this judge thinks Kentucky has any authority over domains belonging to sites that have no nexus in Kentucky.

This ruling is wrongheaded and boneheaded on so many levels. The judge should be tossed out on his ear.

Basically, if you use NetSol’s WhoIs search to find out if a domain is available, and if you don’t register the domain that very instant, NetSol “reserves” (read: registers) the domain. It appears to be a standard one-year registration, but because NetSol is a registrar, they can take advantage of their status and drop it after 5 days without paying for it.

What this means is, if you decide, a few hours after doing your search, that you want that domain, you can only register it through Network Solutions at their highly inflated $35 fee. Unfortunately, anyone else can also register the domain through NetSol, so they’re not really protecting you. This practice merely serves to lock in the registration at Network Solutions, preventing you from registering the domain at GoDaddy or somewhere else where you’d only have to pay $9 or $10.

Shame on Network Solutions. I’ve been advising clients for years not to register domains with NetSol. Now I have to start advising them never to search for a domain there either.

More info:

• Wikipedia
• Webmaster World
• Digital Point
• SlashDot