A panel of top US judges has thrown out a plan to SEIZE 141 gambling domain names.

The Kentucky Appeal Court said the domain names were not “gambling machines” and therefore the State Governor could not use a law aimed at controlling  illegal slot machines to close them down.

Beshear said the domains — which include big names such as bodoglife.com, doylesroom.com and fulltiltpoker.com — were a threat to legitimate gambling interests in Kentucky, including the world famous Kentucky Derby — the world’ s richest horse race.

Agreement

Last year a lower court ordered that the domains must be forfeited unless online casino operators took steps to BLOCK Kentucky players from using their sites, even though no ruling had been made that the operators were breaking any laws.

Yesterday’s decision — by a majority of 2-to-1 — resulted from an appeal by iMEGA, a group representing online gaming site companies.

iMEGA boss Joe Brennan Jr. welcomed the ruling, adding: “The judges clearly agreed with our interpretation of the law, and thankfully, this reverses what would have been a terrible precedent for our country and the Internet.”