It’s Official: US Gambling Laws No Good in UK

The fight against restrictive American gambling laws has been going on for several years. It all began back in 2006 when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) turned the tables on internet gambling in the country, making it difficult for US players to play online. Since then, the state of Kentucky has been a hotspot of activity, with debates in the Kentucky Supreme Court about the state’s seizures of online gambling domains. In January of 2009, the Court ruled that website domains cannot be seized, because they are not technically “gambling devices”.

The fact that the issue of seized gambling domains was being fought out in Kentucky courts was not enough for one particular site called Full Tilt Poker. It did not want to wait for the Kentucky Supreme Court to make a decision, so they took matters into their own hands. The site went to court in the UK to prevent Kentucky from seizing their domain – and they finally won their case. The ruling was simple – Full Tilt Poker’s domain cannot be transferred to Kentucky because US laws just don’t apply to the UK.

Online gambling sites in USA and in other parts of the world appear to be safe from Kentucky’s grabbing hands – at least for now. As the debate over online gambling in US continues, both sides are on alert, and it’s still too early to predict the outcome. The next year will certainly be an interesting one for US players.