Speaking in an entirely unqualified manner, I'd say no. Since IP addresses are assigned in blocks to different ISP's, this would require that either all Casinos use the same ISP. Beyond that, "underground" casinos, especially those in foreign countries would be able to circument this.

I'm sure someone after me who's actually qualified to answer can either confirm/deny this.

It strikes me that this is the same problem as with spammers - even if you can track down an IP address and block it, they'll just move to another one. If there's sufficient reward (and online gambling definitely falls into this category) then there's always someone willing to fund ways to outsmart the authorities.

If this was do-able, I'm sure many countries would have done it by now and slapped their own taxes all over national sites and/or banned foreign ones.

I hope it isn't possible; the next step could be censorship of all sorts of websites. The start of a very slippery slope.

Although (carrying on along the censorship theme) don't countries like China actually do this? Therefore it must be possible. :(

You can determine with pretty good accuracy which country a particular IP address belongs to. Google will find you a number of web sites that will do it for you, or sell you a service to do it in bulk.

So, as an ISP, you could certainly block on a country basis. In fact, some people (particularly those who run their own mailservers) advocate blocking all email from China, on the basis that you'll cut out a lot of spam, and (unless you have contacts in China) you won't lose anything good.

But it would be madness for a backbone ISP in the states to start blocking countries. You'd hit far too many legitimate users. And, remember the recent controversy over the EU's concerns about United States control of the root DNS servers? Imagine what would happen if the American government started messing around with traffic like that. Their "hands off" claim would fly out the window and the excrement would really hit the air conditioning...

Coming back to the original question — you hit the age-old problem:

UNITED STATES

We hereby pass a law making it illegal for online casinos to operate unless they are sanctioned by us!

FOREIGN CASINO

Oh no! I shall immediately— wait, I don't live in the States. Their law doesn't apply to me, so I don't have to do anything. Roll up! Roll up!

Well, it would work more like this:

US:
If you want to have an online casino that US citizens can play on, you must
1) submit to US jurisdiction
2) use a certain IP address
3) conduct yourselves honestly
4) post a bond
5) submit to audits


Them:
License? We don;t need on stinkin' license!

US:
Was that grain you said you needed? Oh yea, since you violate our criminal laws, we react with an embargo.


Besides, with the proliferation of internet gambling sites, only the ones who can afford to advertise will make any money. You have to have a regular base of people who can come back to the same place online to gamble. Also, most people would rather gamble with a legal site than an illegal site since a legal site will be policed for honesty and they won't get in legal trouble. This is why people don;t go to Vegas and then play unlicensed craps or poker. The house keeps the eye on the dealer and other players so you don;t get ripped off. They do this because they are being watched by you and the government. As soon as word got out that a casino ripped someone of, their name is mud and they go under. No one would play at a house that cheats. Anyone who thinks a casino cheats, just doesn;t know what happens in Vegas.

This would simply not happen. Whether there's a technological solution or not the international fallout would be phenonmenal, and the entire principle undermines the concept of the internet. I kinda question the provincalism of the school, and their motivations for asking you to write the paper.

The topic was my own choice. If you look at the trend, there are several people in congress trying to make internet gambling illegal. I am simply trying to beat them to the punch and ensure our rights under the Constitution, though I truly feel the fewer laws we have, the more freedom we have. But if there is a law to register online casinos and require a bond, etc., there may be a need to block non-compliant websites.

So you ensure your rights by blocking the international community?

Oh dear

Seems like, as a member of this community, you'd not say something so bereft of insight. Or did you mean to so completely misconstrue what I said?

Perhaps I oversimplified, but that seems to be the main thrust of your argument. You're dealing with international non-compliance with a domestic issue. Since the international community is NOT beholden to the USA, the only way to ensure that everyone plays by your laws is to deny access to anyone who doesn't. Hence my crack about provincialism.

The reason that you seem to have roused so much hostile sentiment is that this particular question seems to typify the American attitude to the international community. It goes: We'll do this and OH YEAH we can MAKE you comply, because we pwn the internet/copyright law/etc., yo.

Also, membership to this community unfortunately doesn't come with an IQ test. But perhaps you're just stretching those constitutionally granted rights again...

You are creating straw man arguments and you're off point. Badly. And I don't assent to it.

First, domestic gambling laws are a domestic issue. I wanted to know if we could keep other people from offering something in an illegal fashion on our soil. I wonder why this offends you. Also, the international community is beholden to the US, just like we are to it. And we are to respect the laws of other countries on their soil and we expect the same in return.

I didn't say we force anyone to do anything. But there's no reason to deal with countries that allow their citizens to subvert our laws. What in the world is wrong with that?

And what is your last crack supposed to mean? Do you even know? I worked under the assumption that most people here were intelligent and reasoned logically. What the hell are you on about?

US:
Was that grain you said you needed? Oh yea, since you violate our criminal laws, we react with an embargo.

I guess this is the attitude that has American lawyers send letters with big words around the world. But you know what, American law doesn't apply anywhere else than in the US. For real.

So far Hollywood hasn't been able to apply American copyright laws to other countries so why would internet gambling be any different?

I honestly don't get this. Even living in a country where gambling is under state monopoly we've had to accept the reality of the globalized world. Why is this such an issue in the US? Like you said, most people want to feel safe when they gamble and will seek out serious casinos, be they in the US or not.

Second, I've used the internet in China and the blocking they use is not accurate at all. Even harmless sites get blocked. I doubt it would be acceptable to use a wide range ban of IPs in any country with a democratic ambition. However, there are a few specific IPs relating to child pornography that practically every ISP here block.

Specific banning? Perhaps, but it's hardly worth it since they can move. Wide range ban? Not very likely.

Yes, yes... I know I will always incur the anti-attorney sentiment whether I am trying to help people or not. Since all lawyers are exactly the same and none have ever worked for the benefit of society, it's ok to malign them wide sweeping statements.

And US laws do apply in other countries where the other countries enforce US law bye treaty or comity.

I didn't, and wouldn't, say lawyers are ultimately bad. I was pointing out that your reasoning was in line with the American tendency to make their internal business global issues.

It is a matter of fact that American lawyers refer to American laws when dealing with content on the internet regardless of if it applies where the server is. Again, I'm not saying you are responsible for anyone else's actions, but you did refer to American criminal laws as a reason for embargo.

The point is that Americans are subject to American laws. We don't allow other countries to come into our country and subvert our laws. I think laws proscribing gambling are bullshit, but if we have a law we have soverignty and should be allowed to keep out those who want to provide our citizens a means to break out laws.

This doesn't have so much to do with the internet as it does with gambling. The web is just the casino. This isn't like a riverboat, where the person actually leave the jusrisdiction of the state with the anti-gambling law. While I don't like many laws, I'll do my part to make sure the rule of law is respected. Otherwise we work toward anarchy.

Actually, with over 5% of web sites registered with false information, it's anyone's guess what you can actually find out about site ownership. http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/12/govt_fake_web_s.html There's a link there to the actual report. A Google news search for "false registration" will bring up a whole lot of other articles.

If all internet casinos had to operate from a particular IP address range, could all ISP's cut of a particular IP address so that they couldn't reach US computers?

Theoretically in answer to your question, yes. In actuality, it would never work.

ISPs can quite easily cut off any IP they want. It doesn't matter who the IP is assigned to or any of that. If they don't want their users to access foo.com and its associated IPs, they can block it.

The problem is world compliance. Foreign web sites don't give a monkey's buttcrack about US laws. They will use what ever IP range they want to. And if ISPs start blocking them, they'll simply move to another. And if anyone starts blocking entire countries, then the site operators will simply move to other country's IP blocks.

You will never be able to make a dent in the problem with legislation unless you create a law that guarentees the death penalty for anyone caught using an off-shore gaming site. And even then, that wouldn't stop it all (even states with death penalties still have people who commit murder).

ISP DNS USA TLA

can US block an IP address from the whole country?
if I may quote davmoo(my hero this hour for stating this to perfection)
Theoretically in answer to your question, yes. In actuality, it would never work.
now supposing that it did the reverse is also a problem.
the us sets up an ip block for registered casinos and i dont want to register my ofshore casino with them but i want my ip address to appear as though it is within a given range(Active spoofing)

could all ISP's cut off a particular IP address?
this is akin to asking can all 7/11's carry jolt all the time? sure they can you expect them to still because of unforseen circumstances my 7/11 is joltless. take a look at the FBI's carnivore program and how it worked or didn't.
plus some isp's would simply disagree with such filtering like XS4ALL.


The closest thing currently to blocking on a massive scale like your talking about is what happened in china.

There was a great panel on How it all works and how it is circumvented that I saw at The Fifth H.O.P.E. that you can stream or download

"How the Great Firewall Works
-Bill Xia



</font>

China currently puts in the most effort to censor information on the Internet. Bill was first involved in freenet-china and started DynaWeb in 2002. He has developed a thorough understanding of China's Internet censorship technology ranging from IP blocking to DNS hijacking etc. Various techniques have been implemented to get around them. There will be an explanation of a censorship algorithm never before publicly released as well as a live demo on how it works. Time permitting, an analysis of how the Chinese government uses information control on its people will also be presented."

but i'm sure with the right words or backers you could convince the government to modify there existing isp boxes to add somthing that they would think would work or just convince the government that it all could be done thru the existing DNS system. Most of the people in places of power Judges, Congress,exc. Dont have the passion or time to know any better.

People are unhinged in learning that most all of it is "security theater" rather than the myth security. for example why have plastic knives on airplanes if your gonna give me a metal fork and do you know how to open your door non destructivly without a key?

theres 100's of hours of audio and video on all this stuff linked from 2600 for the latest news check out hackwire and the wikimedia projects

Re: ISP DNS USA TLA

Thank you very much for the info. I didn't think the idea would work, I just needed something more concrete than "I don't think it will work."

I don't know anything about your question (sorry), but I *love* your icon!

Thanks! I make all my own. I used to have a lot more until my paid subscription ran out. Feel free to grab any icon any time.

If the government was to legislate and make all ISP's block certain IP's, it's easily done.

HOWEVER, there are way too many reasons why this will not work, and _shouldn't_ work.

Do you really think that the government telling you what you can and cannot view is OK? No. No it is not. You sacrifice all of your freedom.

That is one point against it, from a non techincal virewpoint. (think China firewall)

On a more technical basis, ever heard or proxies? If someones proxying about they may very well be jumping from the states to an offshore IP, and then to their final destination, which means that that IP blocking won't work.

So, yes blocking an IP is possible from a technical viewpoint. However you can easily get around it, and it is also a big 'no frikken way should this be done' issue non technically.