In Greece, a Torch Relay to Suppress Electronic Games

THE ringleader, Theodore Konstantinou, and his associates - a crew of chain-smoking good-for-nothings in scruffy T-shirts - set up shop last year in plain sight, smack in the middle of Panormou Street, one of Athens's main commercial strips.

The storefront was soon luring flocks of impressionable young people from nearby colleges, not to mention the occasional tourist eager to sample what the locals had to offer. So brazen were the perpetrators that they even posted a large sign outside: "Internet 24-7 Room."

The vice squad would not stand for it. Four times in recent months, it has swooped down on Mr. Konstantinou's business, which anywhere else might be considered an unremarkable Internet cafe with rows of computers, and arrested him for violating a two-year-old Greek anti-gambling law.

The last time, a dozen plainclothes officers arrived on a busy Saturday night and ordered everyone in the crowded cafe to leave. The officers carted off 49 computer terminals and rendered the video monitors connected to them unusable by attaching copies of legal complaints to the screens with hot red wax. Mr. Konstantinou was handcuffed and spent the night in jail with pickpockets and other undesirables before being taken to court.

He was acquitted, just as he was the previous three times.

Such is the life of the Internet cafe owner in Greece, where the police are using the anti-gambling law to go after businesses that offer any kind of electronic game on a public computer, including chess or checkers.

While Greece hopes to bask in the spotlight as host of the Summer Olympic Games in August, the crackdown has led some Internet users here to argue that the birthplace of democracy is acting as though it were an authoritarian state. Internet message boards for online game aficionados have posted warnings to travelers headed for Greece to avoid Internet cafes.

The crackdown suggests how the intersection of the law and the Internet can have unintended consequences even in a place like Greece, a European Union member ostensibly committed to free speech and other liberties, as demonstrated in March when the long-ruling Socialist Party was peacefully voted out of office.

"In the gaming world, when they find out that you are from Greece, they laugh at you and say, 'How can you live in a place like that?' '' said Christos Veves, 28, a Web designer who was playing the online role-playing game Dark Age of Camelot at Mr. Konstantinou's cafe the other day. "The rest of the world must think that we live in caves."

The law was adopted after a scandal in 2002 in which a Socialist Party lawmaker was filmed using a video gambling machine at an unlicensed parlor. (Gambling in Greece is allowed only in licensed casinos.) The politician, Alekos Chrisanthakopoulos, happened to be the head of a parliamentary committee on gambling.

Seeking to regain the moral high ground, the Socialist-led government approved a measure banning what was loosely described as public gaming. Some government and police officials subsequently interpreted the law as banning the public use of computers for any electronic games, whether they involved gambling or not.

The country's Internet cafe owners association says that so far this year, the authorities have raided more than 35 Internet cafes across the country, confiscating a total of 300 terminals. Judges have invariably acquitted the cafe owners, but the vice squads have not backed off, the association said.

In Mr. Konstantinou's case, the judge ruled that no one was gambling illegally at the Internet 24-7 Room. As always, the patrons were mostly young men paying $3 an hour for high-speed Internet access so they could play online games like Counter-Strike or Warcraft. Others had been checking e-mail or writing résumés or tinkering with spreadsheets - the humdrum commerce of Internet cafes everywhere.

"I told the officers that this was not illegal, that it was mad what they were doing, but it didn't matter," said Mr. Konstantinou, 28. "They said they didn't care. They treated us like criminals."

Although judges in Greece have repeatedly characterized the law as unduly broad, none have overturned it. But this spring the European Commission told the Greek government that the law must be overhauled because it essentially restricts the free trade of legitimate electronic games.

Still, it remains on the books, despite vague promises by the new government to modify or repeal it.

"We do not know yet at this point what we are going to do," the new minister of public order, George A. Voulgarakis, said in an interview.

Senior police officials who enforce the law have shown little interest in mulling over the distinction between video solitaire played for amusement and video poker played for money.

"So long as the law stands - and it does - we will continue making busts and confiscating computers," said Nikos Sgouros, a vice squad officer. "That Mr. Konstantinou was acquitted means nothing, given that the law is still in effect."

Although Mr. Konstantinou was cleared, his latest trip through the criminal justice system had its costs: he said he had to shut down for a month after the raid and spend $60,000 to replace the computer terminals and $4,200 on legal fees.

His old terminals have not been returned because the court's decision has not yet been made official. Meanwhile, the police are charging him $20 a day to store the terminals in what he suspects are less than ideal conditions.

The Internet cafe owners are also incensed by the arbitrary way in which the law has been enforced. Some owners, like Mr. Konstantinou, have been arrested. Others have not. (Some vice squads clearly approach their mission with gusto: Mr. Konstantinou was also charged with operating three coffee and snack vending machines without licenses.)

For now, owners and tourism officials are wondering how foreigners visiting during the Olympic Games will react when they try to check their e-mail at an Internet cafe and discover that it has been raided as if it were a drug den.

"They just play games here," said Orpheus Mavrommatis, 24, who works at Mr. Konstantinou's cafe. "This is not for money! There is no gambling here in any form. It just doesn't make any sense."