Shutterstock/Skyward Kick Productions Some contentious legal issues are like action movie villains. Maybe you’ve seen them bleeding out, chained to a boat that’s swallowed by a shark which is subsequently blown to smithereens by a torpedo. If you haven’t actually seen the body, however, there’s a good chance they’ll be showing up again in the final act.
That’s why International Game Technology, or IGT, wants to see the Wire Act’s body.
On Tuesday, it filed a petition with the District Court for Rhode Island, asking for declaratory relief against the Department of Justice. In plain English, it wants a guarantee that the same ruling granted to the New Hampshire Lottery Commission by the First Circuit Court of Appeals also applies to itself.
Fundamentally, the problem is that the First Circuit merely torpedoed the shark. It didn’t retrieve the villain’s body and put it in the ground. Neither did the DOJ itself, even after 26 state Attorneys General wrote it a letter asking it to do so.
Just like that movie villain, everyone knows that the DOJ’s interpretation of the Wire Act will never win in the end. At this point, though, the movie’s gone on long enough, and it’s time to roll the credits. Recapping the Wire Act battle
Here at Online Poker Report, we’ve invested several tons of digital ink in covering the Wire Act case. In case you missed all that previous coverage, however, here’s the nutshell version.
In 1961, the US federal government passed a law called the Interstate Wire Act. Its purpose was to prevent people from circumventing state laws by placing sports bets over the phone with a bookie in another state. Fast forward a few decades, and the definition of “wire communication” has expanded to include the internet.
Not content with preventing only interstate sports betting over the internet, the DOJ pressed on. Exploiting the specific phrasing of the law, it reinterpreted some of its clauses to include all betting.
The intent of the move was to hinder efforts to legalize online casinos and poker in the US . However, the new interpretation also posed a potential problem for interstate […]
Click here to view original web page at www.onlinepokerreport.com
