Legality Question

[Billygoat]

Hi All,

I live in Canada and I'm considering incorporating a small business with a couple partners to begin affiliate marketing. Being that one of my partners is a very successful poker player with a great deal of knowledge to share, our site is going to be his blog and many of our initial readers will likely be locals. One thing that I'm worried about is whether or not it is legal for us to promote online gaming.

I've searched the web high and low and can't for the life of me find any kind of definitive answer. On one hand, I see the rationale that we would not be offering any gaming services, simply advertising them, but on the other hand, the poker site commercials that we get here advertise the .net sites as opposed to the .com sites and obviously there's a reason for that.

Does anyone have any kind of helpful information they can share about this? I don't want to shell out a ton of money for a legal opinion just to get a document saying that it's illegal.

Thanks in advance for any helpful replies!

[Billygoat]

Nobody has any info on this? I will not construe any info or insight anyone is able to provide as legal advice. Any viewpoints you're able to provide would be greatly appreciated.

If there's another forum where this question would get more appropriate attention, please point me in the right direction.

Thanks

[mojo]

Welcome billygoat. Good question and I don't know the answer myself.

I can't answer this but my understanding is that major media outlets when advertising offshore gambling sites must use a .net as an informational tool that does not link in any way to a .com gambling site that takes bets. However, the major media outlets stopped advertising altogether.

It seems to apply to poker. This was several years ago and I do not know the current information on this.

[thepokerkeep]

There are many Canadian sites promoting online poker. As far as I know, no one has ever been arrested or even told to take down their site other than one member here who had a University poker league type site.

Just Google "poker canada" for a list of Canadian based forums and portals. I'm from Canada and I have a Canadian landing page on my poker portal. Never had any reason to be concerned.

[Nandakishore]

I just received this:

Dear Affiliate-Partner,

Due to the new regulations of the British Columbia Lottery Corporation,
Loto-Québec, and the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, online gaming products
in Canada have been prohibited. As a result, players from Canada will no
longer be permitted at CasinoClub and other gaming sites represented by
AffilliateClub.com, from September 24th, 2010.

[OPSR]

There are only a handful of sites that will do anything about it, and those sites are likely involved in it in one way or another. You have nothing to worry about.