Be interesting to see how ICANN responds (Though I'll likely be long dead before they can form a committee to form a committee to see how they can screw the fees we all pay out of us to take a holiday down in Kentucky)
I read somewhere that when ICANN were asked for a stance when the case came to court in September, they said they would comply with US law. A little ambigiuous. If they went along with this though, where does it stop? It sets a precedent and would probably spell the end for ICANN so I'd be surprised.
Godaddy sent legal representatives to the hearing which speaks volumes. And a number of online gambling operators have already ditched their .com's in favour of .co.uk's and the like. The Judge has asked for casino and gambling operators to attend the Novmber 17th hearing - now that isn't going to happen and they know it because of the much publicised DOJ/FBI threat.
Also, as for the law, Kentucky apparently don't have a law directly banning online gambling and they (the Governor to be exact) are using a law relating to gambling on "mechanical devices" to support the case. As for the Democrat thing, lesser of two evils.
The Republicans forced through the UIGEA and have just stated in their manifesto that they support the prohibition of online gambling. General feeling in the industry is that Obama would give it more chance for regulation, but let's face it there are (arguably) more important items on the agenda.
This may turn out to be a (clever?) PR stunt to display Kentucky's stance on online gambling which is under pressure from the State's horse racing industry due to falling revenues (alledgedly).
Either way, a major precedent could be set which effectively could mean any US governing body could confiscate any domain name. The key to the case really is whether Kentucky (which actually is a Commonwealth rather than a State by the way) has jurisdiction over out-of-State domain names. If it does, every domain owner in every industry is potentially at risk. We'll know for sure on or around Nov 17.
There is no way to do that -- IPs are not registered at the state level. Any address info you get on IP databases is usually that of the IP's corporate headquarters... so if the Kentucky resident is using AOL, their IP will show as "Virginia".
To be fair, Judge Wingate said that he would consider every reasonable attempt made to block Kentucky IPs as acceptable.
