Beshear's Internet Folly UPDATE
Over the past months, we have followed the developments in Governor Beshear's fanciful attempt to regulate the Internet at the state level. We explained how his plan to seize domain names would be a horrible precedent, suggesting that each state in the country has the authority to censor what it does and does not like on the Web, leading to myriad, complicated, burdensome regulation of a technology so important to modern commerce. We have reported on the liberal media's blind love for regulation, our bewilderment with the backwards ruling of the usually dismal Franklin County Circuit, and our expectation of a wave of litigation against the state due to this folly.
Well the wave has come and where the case was formerly a sideshow, now it is serious. The Court of Appeals has stepped in to take the case away from the embarrassing Franklin Circuit and Attorney General Jack Conway can't extricate himself from this foolishness fast enough, as Mark Hebert reports:
One of the internet gambling companies being sued by the state, Interactive Media Entertainment, has filed a motion to include the AG as a party to the lawsuit. Jack Conway said thanks, but no thanks, in a response to that motion filed in the Court of Appeals. The appellate judges are scheduled to hear the case next month. A Franklin Circuit Judge has ruled that Kentucky has the authority to keep internet gambling outfits from doing business in the state but the companies have appealed.
In his office's response, Assistant Attorney General Lisa Lang wrote that the Attorney General clearly had the authority to file such a lawsuit against the internet companies. But Lang wrote that he didn't, and couldn't be dragged into one through a motion filed by one of the defendants.
Jack Conway knows better, and his disinterest exposes what a waste of time Beshear's litigiousness has been.
The private law firm has apparently spent close to one million dollars betting on-line, to use as proof in the lawsuit. But the only way Hurt, Crosbie and May gets paid is if damages are assessed. And they'd get 20% of the haul. But the chances of getting any monetary damages out of the internet companies would appear to be pretty slim unless they're threatened with some kind of criminal charges. And it would seem that Kentucky's Attorney General would be the one to do that.
