Dikshit?
Seriously? Dikshit?
An internet tycoon who made billions of dollars building an online gambling empire has agreed to forfeit $300m after pleading guilty to violating the US Wire Act. Anurag Dikshit, co-founder of Gibraltar-based PartyGaming, entered the plea Tuesday in US District Court in Manhattan. A lawyer for Dikshit told US District Judge …
Seriously a name that silly has to be made up and if it is, then it is bordering on the unprintably offensive and you should be ashamed.
Next thing you know, the kids on the playground will be calling each other "Dan Goodin" just because those clever diks at The Register managed to slip it past the censors. God forbid that there is actually some poor girl who has to bear the name "Dan Goodin". If she wasn't already mortally embarrassed she certainly is now.
Regardless, we are all diminished by your clumsy wit. Dangoodin to you, you thrice-blighted, marmot-worrying, axminsterophilic, clan of raging dangoodinites!
And his co-conspirator is called Ruth Parasol. Which I suppose is handy when there's shit flying.
(Freudian aside:- when I first typed his name, it came out as 'Diskshit'. The article I was reading before this one was about IBM. I don't know if that means anything.)
Would there be any difference if instead of the US prosecuting a foreign national for providing a legal (in his jurisdiction) service, it was the Chinese prosecuting (for example) a US Journalist who'd published something about Tibetan independance which happened to be available to the Chinese.
Could''ve used some of his money to change his name. Or at least spell it differently - Dixit - like the actress - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dikshit
A name purportedly given to descendants of Alexander the Great's army - also someone notable for getting 'xit' on his dick.
Surely if gambling is illegal in the states where these people were playing then the crime is being committed by the individual in that state that is placing the bets, not the site that is running a perfectly legal internet business?
By this logic if (for example) someone in the UK accesses images from a US site that contravene the new 'extreme porn laws' but are perfectly legal in the US then we can extradite US citizens to the UK and force them to stand trial for failing to police our internet users for us? Yeah... Right.
Why the hell do we not tell the yanks to get stuffed (I'm being polite here). They do NOT own the internet whatever they may think.
For those crying "USA protectionism", you are both right and wrong. This federal law has nothing to do about "protecting" US corporations. If you had a clue, you'd realize there are very few US gambling casinos, and they are grouped in very few locations (Atlantic City, Vegas, Reno, etc). No, the real protectionism is about two things -- horse racing (which is explicitly excluded from the Wire Act) and state-sponsored gambling (states' scratch tickets, Keno, etc).
Let me repeat part of that because it bears repeating -- horse racing is the ONLY kind of gambling which the Wire Act allows across state lines. So yes, it's most definitely US protectionism. But not in the way you imagine.
Having said all that, my opinion is that if people want to gamble, let them gamble. But don't even think of allowing them to use government-funded assistance when they lose everything. it is not, I repeat, NOT any establishment's obligation (be it a casino, bar/pub/tavern, etc) to parent/police an individual. It is the individual's obligation to accept personal responsibility for their actions.
fine millions. Massive profit. Zero deterrence. That's the real crime here.
and for you wankers going off about protectionism-we've sacrificed our industries, our technologies to allow your economies to benefit, gave you billions in tariff-free trade for decades while paying your tariffs and pricing ourselves out of your markets. Blow it out your arse.
Funny how eurotrash bitch about people using the internet to avoid VAT and other taxes, using the internet to commit acts that are illegal in Europe, but America, we're not supposed to enforce our own laws and must allow every bit of sewage the world wants to send in across the internet, or we're "bullies".
We'll make you a deal. We'll allow your unregulated, unmonitored international money laundering (gambling) and you allow all your repressed citizens to mail order all the guns they want.
I believe he was caught while visiting in the states. So he actually did himself in.
300m on Billions? Not a bad way to get out of a sticky situation.
Its not an issue of "protectionism" since US corps can't do online gaming themselves. Its a case of the "Moral Majority" (which is a minority) has influenced government policy which is akin to prohibition.
The federal government has the authority to regulate any interstate or international commerce. As for the WTO deal, what's the point of being powerful if you can't throw your weight around once in a while? Besides, it applies to internal businesses as well, so it's not protectionism(physical gambling doesn't cross state lines, so the fed can't regulate it).
This is where your country has got it so very wrong. Anyone who hasn't (yet) murdered anyone can walk into a shop and buy an M16 assault rifle _yet_ having a game of cards over the internet is illegal!
Do you really think that guns can protect you from an oppressive government when you don't even have the freedom to gamble _your_ money and half the time you can't get into a bar without an ID card? I'm living in New York (temporary, can't be helped!) which is one of your more liberal cities, and I'm telling you now you are not even nearly as free as us 'eurotrash'.
What is more, you _are_ bullies as the entire rest of the world will attest. You no doubt will disagree or claim you have a god given right to do what you want internationally, whatever, I'm just telling it how the other 94.9% of the world sees it.
And don't give me this "we've sacrificed our industries, our technologies to allow your economies to benefit" rubbish, no you fucking haven't! Nobody made you buy any of 'our' stuff, or don't they teach you about capitalism in American schools?!
People pay what a thing is worth to them. You benefit from receiving goods just as I benefit from selling them and vice versa. It doesn't matter two shits to you if 'we' double tariffs or half them, the only people we could harm in anything approximating a free market would be ourselves. Honestly it's not 1750 anymore, we don't have an empire or a monopoly on shipping or cotton or slaves so, for as long as you or I have been alive we have both had the same 3 options...
1) Pay the asking price
2) Don't buy the stuff
3) Turn to any other number of suppliers.
Now please explain in detail how that equates to you sacrificing dick all?! If your economies in the shit it's YOU OWN FAULT buddy. Honestly, making out it's down to your sheer altruism? The vanity!
Roger.
PS: Anonymous coward - quite.