Roger de Coverly wrote:Richard Bates wrote: That is not the same, however, as saying that they shouldn't encourage prosecuting authorities to take an interest where the laws of a country suggest a case can be made (cf. the Pakistani cricketers in England in 2010).
That's one example, the coughing Major would be another
But possibly not, since in the case of computer-assisted cheating
(a) the cheat has been caught before they have been awarded any prize money
(b) the amounts of money involved are at any rate piddling by Millionaire standards
(c) there's not much point in citing English law in relation to offences taking place in other jurisdictions.
Yes, of course "attempting to obtain..." might well apply and of course other jurisdictions may have similar legislation but unless we're sure how it works in any given instance we would be unwise to make too many assumptions.
I'm basically observing that if you want to go down the legal route you need to show what law has been broken, which may be harder than you think. You also need to explain who is going to go to law - who is the complainant? who, actually, has been cheated? - and if the answer to the first question is "the statutory legal authorities" then you have to ask why they're not going to say something like "look, your cheat's been caught..." (and maybe add "they'll be on a plane in twenty-four hours anyway and out of our hands") "...so do you really think we're going to consider it in the public interest to spend a lot of time and money detaining and prosecuting them?"
There's an awful lot of cheating in sport and yet incredibly little ever ends up in court, and there's many good practical reasons for this. What is normally far more effective is the ability of the quasi-legal sports authorities to impose sanctions. In this instance this ought to mean a proper response from FIDE, which as far as I can see we're not currently getting but which would need to meet tests both of enforceability (as per Jack above) and of the possibility of legal challenge. But the sooner this is faced up to, the better: in the mean time by all means discuss the potential legal options, but I suspect that it's not all that practical, more's the pity.