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> When will we start holding the people who found and operate companies whose sole purpose is to break the law accountable

You don’t even have to read the article, the headline says it all…

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"Facing felony charges" doesn't tell me much, and the current state of the world tells me those charges will be dismissed as soon as some money moves around.
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I dunno it sure seems to have worked for Uber and AirBnB…

I would amend your “breaking the law” comment to “willfully ignoring all regulation, taxes, and labor provisions” perhaps but, same sentiment.

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This is the old, "Easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission"

A lot of these companies have taken this approach. Break laws until someone finally notices AND does something about it. The runway to a slap on the wrist is often times more financially beneficial to companies - there is no incentive to stop if you run a billion dollar company and breaking the law gets you a $50M dollar fine you make back in a single month.

I thought SOX (Sarbanes–Oxley Act) was supposed to prevent a lot of this, but I guess companies just continue to find loopholes to exploit.

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I think sometimes people need a visceral demonstration of what bad laws are actually preventing. Uber was a pareto improvement in my view: we are in a better world both for consumers & for low-income wages having ridesharing as a backstop.

On the other hand, I've come around to the view that sports betting is a net unqualified bad -- and I didn't necessarily feel that way before the Kalshi/PM explosion.

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What behavior from Airbnb do you think compares in criminality to running an online bookie?
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> should be in prison for promoting illegal gambling

The problem lies in the legal gray area of what constitutes gambling, and therefore "illegal" gambling. That's what the courts have to decide.

I think most people would say this is gambling. But our legal system has to rule on that before we can start putting people in jail for it.

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If it is not gambling then it amounts to an unregulated futures market, which is also illegal. There is no way around this for Kalshi/Polymarket, they have broken the law and the only question is which law was broken.
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Right, but the point is that we don't just go from popular outrage about a shady business model to "straight to prison". The courts have to untangle the legalities of the shady business model before we can even determine what the charges would be. And that's what they're doing.
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> Right, but the point is that we don't just go from popular outrage about a shady business model to "straight to prison".

We should! Finally incentivize rich people to not screw over the rest of society for a quick buck.

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? But Kalshi is regulated by the CFTC
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The federal government has claimed Kalshi is a regulated futures market.

https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9281-26

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That is the federal government asserting that Kalshi is subject to federal regulation by the CFTC and not state regulation. It is not an assertion that Kalshi is actually in compliance with futures market regulations, nor is it an assertion that the contracts offered by Kalshi are actually legal (there are explicitly illegal futures contracts).
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The reason we have judges is that a thing that's 80% sports betting and 20% prediction market is still an online casino.
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Why is betting on risky 0DTE stock options legal in Utah but sports not legal?

Why are casinos operated by Native Americans legal but casinos operated by black people illegal?

I don't think "illegal gambling" is illegal for the reasons you want it to be illegal.

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Casinos of all kinds are banned in Utah.
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This would be a great post for Kalshi's lawyers to make. Hard to believe it though. To be clear it is a not a fundamental proposition of the legal system that every illegal activity be tested before it "actually" becomes illegal. It is a business' obligation to not violate the law, not the other way around.
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I'm not going to argue the merits of their business model. But the fact that numerous lawsuits have had mixed rulings indicates that there is at least some legal gray area here.

But if you know better then maybe you should just decree from the courtroom in your house and send your ruling to the AGs of all 50 states.

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I don't think there are "numerous lawsuits" which have had "mixed rulings" it's really only a subset of the cases that have had anything remotely construable as positive to these companies. And again, that doesn't excuse their behavior. Bold of you to point to one court saying "I'm not sure" when the vast majorities of the others have said "this is perfectly clear, and here's why the other court is wrong"

Like, do you have any actual argument as to why it's not gambling, or are you just going to hang it on this plausible deniability? It's not like they knew the 3rd circuit would decide in their favor anyway, so I don't really think your point is the slam dunk you're acting like it is. They knowingly engaged in activities that most states consider to be gambling. They aren't even really denying that. They are just saying it falls under federal regulation, but the argument for that is so shockingly poor, it's hard to imagine how the 3rd circuit's decision could stand, but its only on a preliminary injunction anyway, so it's still not quite a merits decision. The third circuit said that by its own logic, Congress must weigh in on whether or not "bingo" is a swap regulated by the CFTC. If you can't understand how facially stupid that is, I don't know what to say.

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Apparently having a legal discussion that requires nuance is impossible in this forum.

Yes I think what they are doing is illegal and they should not be permitted to operate outside the gaming regulations of individual states.

But it doesn't matter what I think. I was trying to have a conversation about the gray areas and why we don't just send people straight to jail for trying out a new, novel, (and potentially illegal), business model.

The courts are figuring it out.

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The point of my original post, which I think the one youre responding to aligns with, is that we shouldn't have to "wait for the courts to figure it out." Illegal things should be illegal as a matter of the written law, not dicta from jurists. To do that we need legislators that will write narrow laws not influenced by the industry they are regulating, not tied to a poison pill budget proposal, etc...
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You need to take a course in basic business.
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I think I understand the basics of business and business law in the US. It is disgusting how easy it is to hide behind a corporation or LLC to avoid criminal charges and civil liability.
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