A Franklin County Circuit judge last week ordered the transfer of the domain names of 141 illegal Internet gambling sites to the Commonwealth of Kentucky in an effort to stop illegal and unregulated online gaming. Kentucky is the first state to bring an action against Internet gambling operators that has resulted in the seizure of domain names.

While most hosting companies have TOS's, that prohibit illegal activities, I'm not sure that people looking for a host could envision more than a termination of their services. It seems that some, (although not all) of the domains were registered through their hosting provider. Also the location of the data center may have been a factor. It has not been confirmed whether the data centers were in Kentucy.

The order came Thursday in response to a suit filed by the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet on behalf of the Commonwealth seeking to force the sites to block access to Kentucky users, or relinquish control of their domains. Judge Thomas Wingate ordered a forfeiture hearing for Sept. 25th on the matter. The Justice Cabinet had asked the court to order Internet registrars to transfer control of the domain names to the Commonwealth, pending a hearing on whether forfeiture is required.

A whois of the sites in question now show the domains belong to Kentucky

Read the press release:

http://governor.ky.gov/pressrelease.htm?PostingGUID={6930A5AD-8BF6-499C-A4DB-70A3544BFF7D}