Good Paper Topic on Jurisdiction and Domain Names

The Register has an article about a Circuit Court Judge who ruled that confiscation of domain names was proper under Kentucky's anti-gambling laws.  The ruling is particularly interesting from a jurisdictional standpoint, because the judge confused/conflated the choice of the domain name with the functionality of the domain name system.

From the article:

The domain names "perform a critical role in creating and maintaining connection by way of the various interfaces to transact a game or play," he wrote. "Accordingly, but subject to further review during the forfeiture hearing, the court finds reasonable bases to conclude that the internet gambling operators and their property, the internet domain names, are present in Kentucky."

He went on to write that the domain names "are virtual keys for entering and creating virtual casinos from the desktop of a resident in Kentucky. The domain name is indispensable in maintaining the player's continuing access to the virtual casinos which serve as the internet gambling operators premises for conducting illegal gambling activity."

Hmmm....  Let's think about this.  First, the domain name system is used to translate Internet Protocol ("IP") addresses (e.g., 216.94.0.215) into human-rememberable phrases (e.g., absolutepoker.com).  Access to the virtual casino does not not hinge on the domain name.  Rather, the key is the IP address, which is what the Internet infrastructure uses for routing signals from one machine to another.  You could conduct the same activity with the IP addresses alone (albeit in a more cumbersome manner) without using a domain name.  This means the domain names are not "indispensable", in contradiction to the court's rationale.  Just have the users input http://216.94.0.215 instead of http://absolutepoker.com and get the identical result. 

If the court can confiscate the domain name (absolutepoker.com), couldn't it also confiscate the IP address 216.94.0.215?  Wouldn't it have to confiscate the IP address in order to uphold Kentucky's anti-gambling law?  However, since IP addresses are fungible, wouldn't the Kentucky court have to confiscate all 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (2 to the 128th power) IP addresses in order to interdict all the traffice between Kentucky residents and the online casinos?

Let's draw an analogy using the court's opinion.  Say that I start a mail-order casino in Texas (or use a real casino in Nevada).  Instead of electrons wizzing between computers, we use postcards and the Post Office.  Since the IP address is just that -- an address -- we could make a direct analogy from IP address to street address:

500 W. Main Street

Houston, TX 77002

Would we be subject to Kentucky's anti-gambling law at that point?  Would a Nevada casino be similary subject to the same law?  I doubt it.  Now let's say we secure a contract with the Post Office where they translate "TXCasino.com" into our street address (500 W. Main Street...) in order to route mail to our physical location.  Would that act suddenly invoke the confiscation provisions of their anti-gambling laws (intended for personal property located within the state) to confiscate the PO domain that was the "rented" from a third party (the Post Office)?  If so, why?   Wouldn't Kentucky really need to ensure that their residents never know our street address instead?  How could Kentucky do that without shutting down our otherwise legitimate business?