I feel compelled to correct misinformation when it is posted.

Posted again because multiple posts were made while I edited it into the above:


This is why it is always very important to read the definitions section when you are looking at statutes.



Furthermore, the statute defines "unlawful" that way, but just defining unlawful as that does not make anything not specifically authorized by statute illegal and nobody can get in any sort of trouble for doing something that the statute doesn't specifically authorize. The statute still has to say that unlawful (as the statute defines unlawful) actions are not allowed. And it does say that. It says internet gambling businesses can't take money, etc. for unlawful gambling, which means the only gambling enterprise that a business could run is one that is specifically authorized by law. You have to read the definition and the below quote. The definition by itself does nothing.


So the statute defines unlawful as anything not specifically authorized by law and then it says that an internet gambling business may accepting money, etc. etc. in connection with the participation of another person in unlawful gambling using the Internet.


So it defines what unlawful means and then specifically states that unlawful gambling is illegal.

If all it did was say that unlawful means not specifically authorized by law, then nothing would happen. It then has to also say that unlawful something (in this case gambling) is illegal.



BTW the statute also has a specific definition for gambling:

You're wrong though. Especially for all practical purposes.

I'm not an etymology expert so if you just want to point out small technical differences in the words and how they developed over the years then ok. But there's not really any practical difference in the legal system today.

As to your first paragraph .... the UIGEA uses the term "unlawful" and it is referring to gambling businesses that already violate some other federal or state law.


You're wrong.

You are correct that poker doesn't have to be completely illegal in your state for the UIGEA to block transactions.

This is because a state can make offering poker with a license legal and offering poker without a license illegal. So offering poker isn't completely illegal. If someone offered poker with a license that would be fine. However, if someone offered poker without a license that would be illegal and the UIGEA would be triggered.

Also, there can simply be no state law about poker at all. In this case poker would be legal and the UIGEA would not apply.

Or a state could recognize poker as gambling, not have a law against it, not license it and it would still be legal and the UIGEA would not apply. I don't know why you think the UIGEA would apply merely because a state recognizes poker as gambling and doesn't license it.

In general, I agree, which is why I bowed out from the discussion in the Wire Act thread.

But in this particular thread, "why can I still play if it's illegal?" The technical difference between the two words could not be more germane.

Except in Washington, playing online poker is not illegal, but it is unlawful (not specifically authorized by law) in all 50 states, and unlawful gambling in every state which holds poker to be a form of gambling.

The bolded is freaking wrong.

Online poker is pretty clearly illegal in Washington.

Online poker is not specifically authorized by law in most if not all other states. In most states this isn't really the issue. Ok, in Oregon, the stautes say that offering any gambling that isn't specifically authorized by law is illegal (and I think it specifically mentions poker as gambling), so in that state if it isn't specifically authorized by law then it is illegal. I don't know why you would say offering poker is not illegal in Oregon. Pieces of the staute have been posted in this thread. You have read at least some of it.

But most states do not say that offering gambling that isn't specifically authorized is illegal. Most states have gambling statutes that may or may not apply to poker. If they apply to poker then most of them would make poker illegal.

If they do not apply to poker then there is no statute that applies to poker. Therefore, poker would be legal. But wait, there's also no statute that says poker is legal (or specifically authorizes it) so wouldn't that make poker unlawful. NO! In that scenario poker would be legal (and lawful).

There are many activities which no law specifically authorizes. That does not make all of those activities unlawful (or illegal). Activities are legal (and lawful) unless there is some law that makes the activity illegal (or unlawful).




And you can swap the words illegal and unlawful anywhere in my above post without changing the menaing of said post. However, I did at times pick a specific one due to your thoughts that they are used differently.

(I added some to my response here):


You're wrong.

You are correct that poker doesn't have to be completely illegal in your state for the UIGEA to block transactions.

This is because a state can make offering poker with a license legal and offering poker without a license illegal. So offering poker isn't completely illegal. If someone offered poker with a license that would be fine. However, if someone offered poker without a license that would be illegal and the UIGEA would be triggered.

Also, there can simply be no state law about poker at all. In this case poker would be legal and the UIGEA would not apply.

Or a state could recognize poker as gambling, not have a law against it, not license it and it would still be legal and the UIGEA would not apply. I don't know why you think the UIGEA would apply merely because a state recognizes poker as gambling and doesn't license it.

And so you go off the rails again...

1) The Oregon law could just have well defined the word "illegal" instead of "unlawful" as meaning "not authorized by law", and then said "illegal gambling" is punishable as a crime. As Lego points out, a definition in a statute only applies to the one particular statute.

2) The reason online gambling businesses are susceptible to having their financial transactions blocked/seized under the UIGEA is not because the UIGEA says banks can block transactions for sites that are not state licensed (e.g., your definition of "unlawful gambling"). It is because the provisions of the UIGEA say specifically that financial institutions can block any transaction that they "reasonably believe to be a restricted transaction", and "restricted transaction" harks back to the UIGEA provision that makes it illegal for a site to accept money for "unlawful Internet gambling", which in turn harks back to the provision in the UIGEA which specifies that UIG is online gambling that is unlawful under a federal, state or tribal law.

So, please provide me with an actual example of a federal, state or tribal law that makes some sort of online gambling unlawful but that doesn't make it illegal. If you can do so, you will demonstrate that the UIGEA can apply to a form of online gambling that is unlawful (not authorized by law) but not illegal (subject to criminal offense). But you can't.

This is probably worth quoting and I bolded a point for emphasis. The Oregon legislature happened to pick "unlawful" as the word to define as "not specifically authorized by law" and then in their statutes made it a illegal as a felony for internet gambling business to perform certain financial transactions with respect to "unlawful gambling" (gambling is also defined in the statute) and may have made other aspects illegal also .... I didn't read through all of the statutes.

However, the legislature could have picked any word to define as "not specifically authorized by law." They did not have to pick "unlawful." They could have picked "illegal" or "prohibited" or "unallowed," etc.

Or if they were feeling very silly they could have picked "chicken" or "rowboat" or "lawful" (though this one would not only be silly, it would also very likely be very confusing) or "rainbow" or any other word they wanted.

You are talking about the gambling businesses, the question the op had was for him as an individual. Many things individuals do is unlawful (not specifically authorized by law), sex without a marriage license for example is unlawful, but unless a law is broken it's not punishable.

For businesses on the other hand, it's (almost?) always illegal for them to operate unlawfully, see the sex example when brothels are shut down (except where specifically authorized by law).

So in business, operating unlawfully and operating illegally are virtually synonymous, but if unlawful and illegal were synonymous for individual behavior, there would be no one left to guard the prison.

Many state gambling laws only make it illegal to offer the gambling.

As a player you aren't doing anything wrong, illegal, or unlawful (all being used as synonyms), unless there is a law that prohibits the playing of gambling games, which there may be in some places.


Please answer this question: Is it your position that brushing my teeth is unlawful because there is no law that specifically authorizes me to do so and, therefore, if the government so chose they could punish me for brushing my teeth?


Cite something that says that sex without a marriage license is unlawful. Even better try to cite something that says sex without a marriage license is unlawful but is not illegal.

I would think that there may be laws on the books in many states that make pre-marital sex (and things like adultry and such) illegal/unlawful (read whichever one you want) and they just haven't been enforced in a long time. However, I'm not going to go and try to find one.

Unlawful - not specifically authorized by law

Going back to old English law, unlawful was meant to imply something against the law of the church, and illegal was a violation of man's law, Ayn Rand wrote endlessly about the danger of the two words being morphed together until someday no one was going to remember the difference - apparently that day has come.

Used properly, unlawful should only apply to something like gambling, sex, etc, so brushing your teeth would never fit the true definition, but flossing with someone else's pubic hair might.

The example I gave the OP was betting on a golf course, unlawful, but not illegal. By the old definition, a contract signed by someone under age would be unlawful because of the morality of taking advantage of a child, not illegal because of an arbitrary age limit determined by man.

This is modern day. As I said earlier if you want to look for semantic differences in the words and/or explore the etymology of the words to find differences then that is fine. However, in today's legal system there is no practical difference in the words.


If I understand correctly, Ayn Rand approached it from a philosophical point of view. Something along the lines of: to be a law something has to be universally accepted or a natural law (or as you said against the Church back in Old England was unlawful) whereas illegality is invented by people and often has no basis in morality. I really have never read much by or about Ayn Rand, however.


This isn't really relevant to the practicalities of today's legal system. For all practical purposes in today's legal system the terms are the same, despite past history. If you try to impune different meanings to unlawful and illegal because of how the words may have been used colloquially many years ago (or even how they may have been used in old English law) while attempting to analyze current legal situations in the U.S. you will likely make many mistakes, since those words are now used as synonyms.

There is a distinction, but it is irrelevant in this discussion. "Unlawful" means things that violate law yet have not been specifically prohibited by law, whereas "illegal" means things that are specifically prohibited by law. It is absolutely untrue that all things not specifically permitted by law are "unlawful'! That is ridiculous.

See http://blackslawdictionary.org/unlawful/:

“Unlawful” and “illegal” are frequently used as synonymous terms, but, in the proper sense of the word, “unlawful,” as applied to promises, agreements, considerations, and the like, denotes that they are ineffectual in law because they involve acts which, al- though not illegal, i. e., positively forbidden, are disapproved of by the law, and are therefore not recognized as the ground of legal rights, either because they are immoral or because they are against public policy. It is on this ground that contracts in restraint of marriage or of trade are generally void.

Moving on to OP's question...?

I believe that is the second edition of Black's from 1910. I posted the 9th edition from 2009 (most recent) here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=618



Also, I have said several times that the context of contracts is a little different, but even then there is not really any practical difference. Same result whether you say it is an illegal contract or an unlawful contract. Though it may be that technically a contract is only illegal if its purpose is to achieve an illegal end and is unlawful if it violates public policy, though I've never looked into this technical difference.


Even the paragraph from the second edition of Black's, which is posted above, says they are used synonymously and then when discussing the technical proper use of unlawful only discusses such technical proper use in the context of contracts and no other context.

Fair enough.

can we get an illegal vs unlawful containment thread?

I'm done. Way way too much time on it already. It's probably cost me a few billable hours.

+1

wait a minute, which one's illegal again?

It is not illegal to play online unless you live in a state that prohibits online play. See the ontiltraido show podcast on this at http://ontiltradio.podomatic.com/ent...10_38_43-08_00

In "our system" of anti-gambling laws, almost everything is unlawful; when you digress into the different context of buying groceries, then it might be meaningless to talk about unlawful.

According to this podcast, this is the list of states where playing online is prohibited:

Washington
Oregon
Illinois
South Dakota
Louisiana
Montana
Wisconsin

Merge says these states are also prohibited:
Kentucky
Maryland
Missouri
New York

I too feel the tremendous urge to "correct incorrect information".

From Louisiana State law:

§90.3. Gambling by computer
.
.
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D. Whoever commits the crime of gambling by computer shall be fined not more than five hundred dollars, or imprisoned for not more than six months, or both.

This is of course a very specific example of "incorrect information". More generally, most of your posts are completely devoid of logic and reason. They often rely on premises that come straight from the Twilight Zone; these premises are routinely refuted, and yet you continue to quote them as fact. And to top it off, your command of grammar is pathetic, even for an internet forum.

This statute would not appear to make playing illegal, as it specifically defines 'gambling by computer' as conducting or assisting in the conducting as a business.