First you hear that it’s a bill to disallow the banking industry from sending funds to online casinos from U.S citizens.
Then you hear that it doesn’t criminalize online gambling or the affiliate industry.
Then you get told that under this bill, online gambling sites (affiliate sites included) will likely be blocked, eventhough I haven’t read anywhere yet that the hosting companies will disallow affiliate sites. What’s the point of allowing us to host a site, if they are going to block it in the first place ???
Then you get advised to move your site to the U.K or such, and possibly also transfer it to another registrar, but then you are also told that dot com names still belongs to the U.S and can be seized, even if the site is transferred to a foreign registrar. So what is the point of transferring it to another registrar then ???
You are told that the U.S government doesn’t want U.S citizens to gamble online, so you start to target the non-U.S market, but then you are told that despite the isps blocking the site in the U.S and the banks refusing transactions from the casinos, you are still breaking the law because you have links to gambling sites, eventhough they are intended for the non-U.S market only.
This bill leaves a LOT open to interpretation. I for one will wait and see exactly how this plays out before I start spending 1000s of dollars to transfer registrars and hosting accounts.
What a load of crap!!!
Imagine the Govt seizing thousands of top domain names on the grounds that they are illegal, only to use these sites for it’s own benefit once online gambling becomes legalised in the U.S. So in 5 years time or so, if online gambling becomes legalized in the U.S, you could look up who owns domains such as casino.com and gambling.com and find that they are owned by the U.S Govt who is now profiting from them.