Monthly Archives: October 2011

Routing Around Champion v. Ames

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Today’s Miami Herald presents a fun legal puzzle for the morning in You may be able to buy Powerball tickets online: Have the purveyors of LottoGopher managed to find a loophole in Champion v. Ames (“The Lottery Case”), 188 U. S. 321 (1903)? Champion famously held that Congress had the power to ban the sale of lottery tickets across state lines under the Commerce power. And the statute is still on the books. (Plus, most states ban online sales of their lottery tickets.)

Enter the intermediary. LottoGopher‘s pitch is that although you engage them to buy a ticket for you, the tickets stay in the state of origin. They don’t issue the ticket — they send someone to buy it from a licensed issuer. Plus, they say, they only sell tickets to people resident in the ticket’s state of origin. Thus, this, from the FAQ:

Is this legal?
Yes. We abide by all lottery commission regulations in each state. We are not engaged in the business of betting or wagering, and members of LottoGopher do not participate in unlawful Internet gambling. 28 U.S.C. 301 legally prohibits LottoGopher from offering its services to individuals and entities outside of the state of origin of the lottery game. The federal statute is aimed to curb that type of interstate activity, and we abide strictly by this interpretation. LottoGopher is registered to do business in every state we operate in. We follow all city, state and federal business registration and tax requirements. LottoGopher is not directly or indirectly, affiliated with any state lottery. We do not “sell” lottery tickets or participate in the earnings of any winnings nor do we receive any commissions from a lottery organization for rendering this service. In compliance with the state lottery we do not charge the consumer more or less than the $1 cost of each lottery ticket.

Indeed, LottoGopher’s description of its services seems drafted to route around Champion v. Ames:

LottoGopher is a messenger service that provides storage and handling of lottery tickets that our subscribers legally own. We are not affiliated with any state lottery and we do not participate in, nor offer, any type of lottery or gambling.

We abide by all lottery commission regulations in each state. LottoGopher is not engaged in the business of betting or wagering, and subscribers to LottoGopher do not participate in unlawful Internet gambling. 18 USC 1301 legally prohibits LottoGopher from offering its services to individuals and entities outside of the state of origin of the lottery game. The federal statute is aimed to curb that type of interstate activity, and LottoGopher abides strictly by this interpretation.

Our policy is to offer a cancellation at any time for any unused tickets up to 4 hours prior to the drawing. (Of course, there are no refunds for tickets in drawings that have already occurred). We are available by phone or email to answer any of your questions. You always have access to all of your account information online, and we strive to provide you with the most convenient customer service experience available.

Our headquarters are in Los Angeles, CA and we have representatives located across the U.S. to fulfill orders on behalf of our users in all the states that we offer our service. LottoGopher is registered to do business in every state we operate in. We follow all city, state and federal business registration and tax requirements. All of our transactions are reviewed by a Certified Public Accountant, and our secure credit card processing is provided by a domestic bank.

The messengers who purchase lottery tickets from official state lottery resellers are selected after a rigorous interview and background check process. They are insured and bonded before given extensive training to ensure the security of your tickets.

We guarantee in our Terms & Services that you are the legal owner of any lottery tickets you have requested. We maintain a sophisticated system that tracks your orders, ticket transportation and a secure storage method. We internally audit all procedures and follow Best Practices in all of our website functions, including:

  • Appropriate Safeguards to ensure age verification
  • Ensure user are physically located in a jurisdiction where lottery play is legal
  • Ensure all taxes due are collected
  • Safeguards to combat excessive or compulsive play
  • Privacy safeguards for subscribers

Our site does not provide any form of online gambling. We are a messenger and storage service for in-state residents only. LottoGopher has never broken Internet gaming laws and prohibits any version of online gambling or sports betting.

We never send unsolicited emails or advertisements targeted to minors or problem gamblers. We do not advertise in any way towards minors. LottoGopher is domestically owned, managed and registered in Los Angeles, CA, and has no affiliation with onshore or offshore sites that have illegally done business in the U.S.

All of our facilities are located in the US, and users must be at least 18 years of age (21 in certain states) as required by law. We verify the age and residence of all users of LottoGopher.com and post online the odds of winning at each lottery game as provided by the state lottery websites.

We also provide loss limits for each user who orders tickets for us to store on their behalf. We encourage our users to order services with prepaid cards and debit cards rather than credit cards, and discourage people who are delinquent on child support from using LottoGopher.com.

Looks like they may have a winning strategy — if they can police the state-by-state sales restrictions. What will happen, though, when a person falsely gives a local address? Or moves out state but doesn’t update the address? Or uses a friend as a mail drop? Or buys tickets while on vacation out of state?

Sounds like a student note topic, or at least a good Con Law I exam question.

Posted in Internet, Law: Constitutional Law | 3 Comments

Why the Rubio Biography Matters

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

David Frum lends his megaphone to Soviet escapee Andrew Pavelyev for Rubio’s False Biography – It Matters. Pavelyev’s not happy with Marco Rubio — or the media’s response to Rubio’s counter-offensive:

First of all, we need to recognize that Rubio lied. Until more than a day after the publication of the story, his biography on the Senate website contained this sentence: ”In 1971, Marco was born in Miami to Cuban-born parents who came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover.” It is not an embellishment or exaggeration – it’s a lie. There’s no way to spin it. At the time his parents came to America Castro was living in exile in Mexico. He had not even started his takeover yet. In his counter-attack Rubio suggests that he made an honest mistake rather than lied: “My understanding of my parents’ journey has always been based on what they told me about events that took place more than 50 years ago — more than a decade before I was born. What they described was not a timeline, or specific dates.” With all due respect, this tortured explanation is itself a lie.

I can tell you from personal experience that if you come to America as an immigrant you never forget the moment. I immigrated two decades ago. My first child was born just two weeks ago. But you can bet that when he’s old enough to understand dates he’ll know the “timeline” and “specific dates”. And Marco Rubio expects me to believe that his parents never told him anything and that he never ever was curious enough to ask them when they immigrated or how long they have lived in America?

As the child of two immigrants, I can report that the part about immigrants knowing exactly when they arrived rings very true. And we were always interested in the story.

Furthermore, the Cuban revolution was the central event for his family and families all around him when he was growing up. That event was constantly talked about, and Rubio himself admits that when he claims having a deep understanding of what it means to lose one’s country (never mind its total irrelevance to American politics). Yet he never asked his parents what it was like to live under Fidel Castro, or how long they lived under him, or what it was like to leave Cuba at that time, or any other question that might possibly give him a clue that his parents never actually lived in Communist Cuba?!

We also need to recognize that it was a substantial lie.

It’s especially substantial, Pavelyev argues, because identity politics has been at the root of Rubio’s march to power.

Rubio would not have become the Florida House speaker (especially at such a young age), let alone senator if his parents had immigrated from Ireland rather than Cuba.

He’s got a point.

Posted in Politics: The Party of Sleaze, The Media | 2 Comments

Wendy Grossman Wants Me to Fear My Printer

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Wendy is not an alarmist sort of person, and she has me scared. In Printers on Fire, she tells the tale of Columbia computer science professor Sal Stolfo and PhD student Ang Cui, who have figured out how to hack routers and set printers on fire by printing a suitably doctored c.v.

There’s an employment-related joke in there somewhere, I’m sure, but I’m still stuck on this part:

“In every LAN there are enormous numbers of embedded systems in every machine that can be penetrated for various purposes,” says Cui.

…

“We turned off the motor and turned up the fuser to maximum.” Result: browned paper and…smoke.

How? By embedding a firmware update in an apparently innocuous print job. This approach is familiar: embedding programs where they’re not expected is a vector for viruses in Word and PDFs.

“We can actually modify the firmware of the printer as part of a legitimate document. It renders correctly, and at the end of the job there’s a firmware update.”

Moral of the story: print more at work?

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 3 Comments

‘Has the US Defense Department killed a million Americans since 2001?’

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

John Quiggin crunches the numbers for us and puts the actual estimate of foregone domestic health and safety due to spending on armaments and war at somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 lives in the last decade:

The numbers are quite striking. The ‘peacetime’ defense budget is around $500 billion a year, and the various wars of choice have cost around $250 billion a year for the last decade (very round numbers here). Allocated to domestic risk reduction, that money would save 150000 American lives a year.

So, since 9/11, US defense spending has been chosen in preference to measures that would have saved 1.5 million American lives. That’s not a hypothetical number – it’s 1.5 million people who are now dead but who could have been saved.

…

More seriously, it’s not really plausible to think of eliminating defense spending altogether. But if the US spent 2 per cent of GDP like other rich countries (around $250 billion a year) and didn’t engage in wars of choice, it could have saved a million US lives over the past decade.

A still more serious objection is that money saved on defense wouldn’t be used to save lives anyway. …

First, even if the money was just handed back in tax cuts, around 15 per cent would probably be allocated to health care and more to things like education that are positively correlated with health status. Rounding to 20 per cent, that would still have saved something like 100,000 lives over a decade.

Just to put those numbers in context, that is somewhere between 27 and 274 lives at home per day. If you spent the money saving lives abroad, you get a lot more bang for the buck. Well, actually, less ‘bang’ as such since military spending is down, but it costs less — 100 time less he tells us — to save lives in poor countries, so the savings could have saved a million lives in a decade after all.

Posted in National Security | 3 Comments

Marco Rubio “Embellishes Facts”

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

I guess that’s as close to “lies” as the Washington Post will go about a Republican Senator.

During his rise to political prominence, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) frequently repeated a compelling version of his family’s history that had special resonance in South Florida. He was the “son of exiles,” he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took power.

But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that Rubio’s dramatic account of his family saga embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than 2 1/2 years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959.

via Marco Rubio’s compelling family story embellishes facts, documents show – The Washington Post

(Figured since I had one Marco-Rubio-related post already today, why not two?)

Posted in Florida, Politics: US | Comments Off on Marco Rubio “Embellishes Facts”

Ten tips for giving a job talk that doesn’t suck

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Howard Wasserman passes on Ten tips for giving a job talk that doesn't suck, written by FIU Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development Joelle Moreno.

It’s first-class advice.

(It also reminds me that I’m behind schedule on posting my annual commercial for why you should teach here.)

Posted in Law School | Comments Off on Ten tips for giving a job talk that doesn’t suck