Are they saying that an English company (where sports betting is legal) taking bets from English punters is running afoul of Maryland law? I doubt it. What they are saying is that doing business with American citizens is subject to American laws.
>Are they saying that an English company (where sports betting is legal) taking bets from English punters is running afoul of Maryland law? //
Didn't Britain just extradite (or at least accede to an extradition 'request') a young man to the US for operating a service providing media links (but apparently no copyright material) - where it's likely that his actions were wholly legal under English law and he never set foot outside of the country ...
Seems like USA has their way regardless of other peoples democracy.
Ow, you touched a sore spot, we Canadians did exactly the same thing by extraditing a fellow who was selling grass seeds by mail to US citizens. Strangely (sarcasm intended), we have refused such requests for the operators of online pharmacies, who employ a lot of people and generate sales for some big and influential Pharma companies in Canada.
It's not strange at all: Canada extradites people if the actions they are accused of are crimes in Canada.
Drug trafficking, for all that it generally isn't enforced in the case of marijuana, is illegal in Canada; so a Canadian accused of trafficking drugs into the US was extradited. Selling prescription medications to patients with proper prescriptions is legal in Canada.
It appears that, while non-viable seeds are explicitly legal, there does not appear to be any prohibition against viable seeds, unless they are considered a marijuana "preparation". I suspect there's some case law floating around where a court has decided whether or not cannabis seeds are considered a marijuana preparation.
Edit: Erowid is somewhat helpful in this regard, although the linked article is broken:
I am not a lawyer, but I would be very surprised if Canadian courts didn't interpret that text in accordance with the general principle that all words have meaning -- i.e., explicitly stating that non-viable seeds are legal implies that the intention was that viable seeds are not legal.
I was under the impression that the law prohibited viable seeds but due to a loophole (you can't be certain a seed is viable or not) they couldn't stop people with any seed. I might be remembering this all wrong.
They could easily go after Americans, but then they'd having things like due process and trials by jury to worry about.
Instead, DHS would rather set precedent that a judge's signature in Maryland (a suburb of Washington DC) is all that is necessary to seize .com/org/net domains anywhere in the world. It's a fait accomplit against a foreign company, they're less likely to fight back, and the precedent extends their authority.
Edit: While the Rosenstein quote erroneously states that "Sports betting is illegal in Maryland", it seems more likely that this was actually a breach of the 1961 Federal Wire Act, which banned sports betting over the wire. If Bodog allowed bets to cross state lines, then they're involved in interstate commerce, so the Wire Act applies.
EDIT: An interesting read... http://www.vegassportsmasters.com/?q=article/feds-arrest-eng...