U.S. Congresses Passes I-gaming Prohibition

[dhayman]

You will get different answers from different attorneys about the risks here. The department of justice has said advertising could be aiding and abetting and has advised consultation with attorneys. However, there is no case law consistent with that viewpoint. In the response to our First Amendment case, the DOJ stated that mere advertising did not meet the criteria for aiding and abetting.

OK Michael, I have a (selfish) question to ask of you:

In your opinion (I would never hold you to it , do you think the following scenario is LEGAL within the context of this new law:

- Advertising of Poker Sites that may or may not accept US customers

- My site is hosted in US, in my home.

- I am NOT an ISP

- My links, which are wrapped in a CGI wrapper (for the purposes of
recording click information in a DB) are hosted on my local webserver

- I receive payment from NETeller

Bonus Question # 1: If NOT legal, which of the above steps violate the law ?

Bonus Question # 2: Are your attorneys willing to work for a smaller Operator for a smaller fee ???

Thanks in advance !

[MichaelCorfman]

OK Michael, I have a (selfish) question to ask of you:

In your opinion (I would never hold you to it , do you think the following scenario is LEGAL within the context of this new law:

- Advertising of Poker Sites that may or may not accept US customers

- My site is hosted in US, in my home.

- I am NOT an ISP

- My links, which are wrapped in a CGI wrapper (for the purposes of
recording click information in a DB) are hosted on my local webserver

- I receive payment from NETeller

Bonus Question # 1: If NOT legal, which of the above steps violate the law ?

Bonus Question # 2: Are your attorneys willing to work for a smaller Operator for a smaller fee ???

Thanks in advance !

My personal belief is that nothing you are doing is illegal on the federal level. If you are in a state with specific state statutes, then you would need to worry about what they say. I know it is OK in Louisiana (our advertising subsidiary is incorporated there). If you were in Washington state, then I would read the law very carefully - I have not. Most states do not have statutes that would be relevant.

Also, I believe if you are operating a web server on your own premises (rather than on a server located on premises that are not your own) then I believe you are an ISP for purposes of the statutes since you do provide web hosting services to yourself. You are the ISP that would need to remove links if you received an injunction to do so since your upstream provider would not have access to the server to make such a change, although they could prevent access to your site if you refused.

In terms of legal fees, I don't believe my lawyers would charge a smaller firm less. Rather, they might require payment in advance if your business does not have an acceptable credit history - something that is frequently the case with smaller businesses.

Michael

[OffshorePrivacy]

As a new member I joined for the purpose of understand the needs of the online gambling community. With that said, my experience with the US Govt is such that they do not always go by the letter of the law.

Case in point, the online pharmacy industry. The US trial lawyers association says there is no federal law that prohibits this. This fact has not stopped the US from prosecuting many online pharmacies and sending the owners, staff and in some cases the affiliates to prison.

Those that are prosecuted in my opinion will have done something overt AND made themselves an easy target.

[dhayman]

My personal belief is that nothing you are doing is illegal on the federal level. If you are in a state with specific state statutes, then you would need to worry about what they say. I know it is OK in Louisiana (our advertising subsidiary is incorporated there). If you were in Washington state, then I would read the law very carefully - I have not. Most states do not have statutes that would be relevant.

Also, I believe if you are operating a web server on your own premises (rather than on a server located on premises that are not your own) then I believe you are an ISP for purposes of the statutes since you do provide web hosting services to yourself. You are the ISP that would need to remove links if you received an injunction to do so since your upstream provider would not have access to the server to make such a change, although they could prevent access to your site if you refused.

In terms of legal fees, I don't believe my lawyers would charge a smaller firm less. Rather, they might require payment in advance if your business does not have an acceptable credit history - something that is frequently the case with smaller businesses.

Michael

Thank you for your opinion, Michael. I will take a wait and see approach to everything in the short-term, although I'm leaning to removing the links from my website, since I don't look good in stripes . I don't want to be made a test case, but I will follow the legal interpretations, once the bill is signed into law, with much scrutiny. Any way you slice it, this law is crippling to the industry as we know it today. By the way, I'm in NY, and don't think the statutes there are all that relevant.

[MichaelBluejay]

Okay, I've pored over the law and read a bunch of articles and I think I have a decent summary of how this law potentially affects webmasters:

http://GamblingAds.com/legal-advertising.html

In very brief summary:

(1) Carrying ads for online gambling isn't specifically outlawed, anywhere.

(2) If the feds want to get you, they have to charge you with being a *partner* to the illegal activity (i.e., if you're an affiliate getting paid by revenue-share), or that you're aiding & abetting the illegal activity by simply linking to the gambling site (no matter how you're getting paid).

(3) #2 only matters if the sites you're advertising are violating U.S. law. That would mean they either accept bets on sports from U.S. players (sports bets violate the Wire Act, but casino/poker bets don't) or they take player money directly through the U.S. banking system (the new Safe Ports UIGEA bill). If the casino/poker room isn't breaking U.S. law, then neither are you.

(4) The charge of partnering or aiding & abetting is probably a stretch. As Michael Corfman said earlier, when Casino City sued the Dept. of Justice a while back and the court said that merely carrying advertising wasn't aiding & abetting. To my knowledge, no U.S. webmaster has ever been charged for simply accepting ads for online gambling. When the DoJ targeted some major media outlets in 2003 (e.g., Google, Yahoo, print magazines), they sent them warning letters first. Nobody got charged. One magazine did get fined, for taking six months to remove its ads, and the fine was limited to the revenue they received from the ads.

So it looks like the risk to webmasters is small. Though be warned: I am not an attorney and god help you if you rely on this without proper legal counsel.

[WebMeisterQ]

He signed it this AM