> He sold gambling software while living in a state where gambling was illegal.
"He sold a Bugatti Veyron in a state where driving over 75mph was illegal."
"He sold a Bugatti Veyron in a state where driving over 75mph was illegal."
With gambling software, the only thing you can do is illegal gambling. With a Bugatti Veyron, well as long as its speed is not locked at 75mph+, you can drive it all your life without doing anything illegal.
That's a good part of my point.
> With gambling software, the only thing you can do is illegal gambling.
That's untrue.
You can also do legal gambling.
Absolutely. And that appears to be the context in which Laurent was using it. carbocation compared selling a sports car in a jurisdiction with a low speed limit to selling gambling software in a jurisdiction where gambling is illegal. Laurent replied that drivers of the sports car could still obey the law, while users of the gambling software would always be disobeying that jurisdiction's laws.
I'm not sure I find the argument all that compelling, but it seems to me that people are arguing with a premise that is tautologically true.
(1) Only if they are gambling with the gambling software. They could be using it for non-illegal gaming purposes (such as free online poker where no money is involved), for research, for education, etc. Gambling is illegal in this hypothetical jurisdiction, not software that allows one to gamble.
(2) Just as the Veyron can be produced in one jurisdiction and used elsewhere, gambling software can be produced in one jurisdiction and sold to people who then use it elsewhere. From the article, this is, indeed, what the software author claims to have done.
In other words, software that can be used for behavior that is illegal in one jurisdiction can quite possibly be used for legal purposes in that same jurisdiction (1) or for the same purpose in a jurisdiction where such behavior is legal (2).
Saying that you can't gamble in a place where gambling is illegal doesn't advance the discussion because nobody has yet disagreed with that explicitly or tacitly, as far as I can tell.