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Raptile

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The on-the-ball lawmakers of the US state seem to have accidentally banned all PCs from Florida in one of the poorest cases of knee-jerk reaction seen in American politics.

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It all started after one of its local leading politicians, Florida Lieutenant Governor Jennifer Carroll, became involved in an online gambling scandal. It turned out that a charity which she was connected with was closed down on suspicion of being an online gambling front. Although Carroll resigned, her colleagues still wanted to make sure that nobody could gamble online ever again.

Thus, they drafted a law which meant to close down all Internet cafes in Florida (the idea was that if you go to an Internet cafe, you can gamble online). Nevertheless, the wording of the law did more than just shut down Internet cafes – it turned out so broad that it actually banned the use of all PCs and smartphones in the state.

Indeed, the bill signed into law by Florida governor back in April 2013 got about 1,000 cafes immediately closed in a Chinese-style crackdown. The main problem was that the bill defined a gambling slot machine as “any machine or device or system or network of devices” which could be used in games of chance. As such, taken into account that almost every computer can play poker, all computers can be considered illegal. At the moment, Consuelo Zapata, an owner of the Miami-Dade county Internet cafe Incredible Investments, is suing Florida and demanding to overturn the ban, because the definition in question is too broad and could be applied to any number of electronic devices.

It seems that the state will win the “most stupid IT law” award of the year. The other challengers are Arizona, which updated its telecommunications harassment bill to target cyberbullies while making it against the law to troll someone on a message board, and New York, which tried to ban anonymous Internet comments.

Industry experts point out that in case the legislation is allowed to stand, it would mean that every PC, smartphone, smart TV, and games console may be required to be shipped out of Florida just in case they could be used for gambling. As such, it would turn the state into a place that could be quite popular with the Amish but few others. Well, at least they won’t be gambling anymore.​
 
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i have nothing against this law,because it is made by the government,which is voted by the Floridian peoples.I hope someday amaricans will open their eyes,but maybe first they need to lose their devices and access to the free internet etc.
 
What happened in the United States was a brilliant racket. Here's how it went down.

A few years ago, new systems called "VS2", "Infinity" and "Fronteir" popped up. The largest being the VS2 gaming systems followed by the "Fronteir" line.

In the United States gambling outside of Casino's is illegal. So what they did was they created a Sweepstake based system where you would purchase "internet" time for browsing on the web with cash at the actual Sweepstakes and then you could play games and win cash prizes. It was a way around the wording of the law if you will.

Lot's of money was made. VS2 is a Russian Mafia Corporation that generated billions of dollars of profit in just a few short years.

The government claims that the systems were rigged and took advantage of elderly people. They might be right, but then again, it's up to the individuals choice to spend or not to spend. Nobody is forcing you to do anything you don't want to do here.

Another view is that these systems were banned because they take over business from the States Casinos which pays an incredible tax of their earnings - whereas the Sweepstakes were able to pay cash payouts without divulging much information in that regard and basically avoided taxes as did their winners. Even if someone won $5,000 they could come up every 24 hours and claim $599 until they reached their total earnings... All to avoid taxes.

The only problem I have with the shutdown of these is this.

Some small cities of say 30,000 residents had 5-10 of these. Each location has to pay a premium licensing fee per terminal per year to each city. There were at least 5-8 workers, security guards at these locations which created jobs. The people spending there money either would buy State Lottery or Gamble at the Casinos.

So what it all boils down to is this (as always). Money.

Greedy State Government who wants to shut down these businesses and avoid the fact that they are ending millions of employees in this fucking country.

Instead of looking out for us, they are just looking out for themselves.

The law is a dumb one only to serve the purpose of additional pocket padding self serving greedy bitches who get into office with average earnings and walk out with $20,000,000.

The average Congressman has $26,000,000 in his bank account by the time he leaves office. Insider trading, doing favors - just like this (Casino executives lean on state governments to close these facilities down).

The best part about it is... going back to what I said about - how individual small cities thrive off of these kinds of businesses is that these sweepstakes are still operating. Local governments are having a harder time than you realize to shut these places down, just like outlawying marijuana, it's not bothering anybody, it's making people money, so the city police look the other way.

Cities are forcing the FBI to come and do it themselves:
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2013/04/internet_cafes_in_greater_clev.html
 
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