From an article in PokerNews online gaming and entertainment empire Bodog headed back into court last week to appeal against the default judgement imposed on them by a Nevada court last month.

A company called 1st Technology caught Bodog by surprise last month by claiming the downloadable casino software used by Bodog Casino was in breach of a patent held by 1st Tech. Bodog claims they were not served with notice of the proceedings and didn't appear at the hearing, resulting in the judge handing down a default judgement ordering the US-based domain name registrar to remove all Bodog-related websites from their servers and fining Bodog $49 million.

Calvin Ayre (Bodog's CEO) stated, "In addition to the inevitable appeal we are also intending to open up new legal fronts to ensure that this important issue is given proper judicial review in the US. This is the first time in history that a non-US company, with zero operations or assets in the US, has had its domain names seized with no prior notice simply because it was using a US-based domain-name registrar. We do not believe that domain names should be allowed to be defined as assets to be seized for purposes of collecting on a judgment."

The Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA] decided to up the stakes in going after college students who are sharing music and video files on the Internet. In the last eight months, the Association has sent out seven waves of letters to hundreds of colleges and universities across the country. The letters threaten students with cases demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars unless the students settle immediately on the site p2plawsuits.com for a flat sum of $3,000.

Just a few years ago all you had to worry about was fifty thousand dollars of tuition to pay off; today, some students may be liable for hundreds of thousands in damages from playing on the computer when they should have been studying, especially copywrite infringement.