Isn't this illegal?

[The_Talent]

My friend owns a company who is registed with Google adsense and has adsense on his site. Cool, I hope he earns a million bucks(haha). But above his ads it says "Help Us!
Click our sponsor..."

I tried to tell him this is illegal but he said he is sponsored by them so it's legal.

Here is some bits and pieces from our chat...

"we are official sponsored by google...we pay them for having that stuff up"

"we pay them...they say it's fine...we have adsense business..we had to get accepted and I went through a week of acceptance letters"

"all websites registered with my adsense for business(i got adsense from the beta version, cause (COMPANY NAME) was invited by google to use it)"

Anyways, is it illegal or not?

If it is I win a hundred bucks, if not... well he goes on my block list! =)

[BillyS]

It's not illegal, but it is against the terms of service - which means Google could attempt to recover the money in civil court.

If you think it's illegal, you'd have to be able to prove something like fraud.

[The_Talent]

He turned himself in. LOL, he emailed Google to prove to me he's allowed to do this. He is going to foward me the email to prove that he is right.

By illegal I ment against TOS.

Thanks for all the replys(even tho half of them are a little off topic).

[andrea99]

Fraud is illegal and a crime in every jurisdiction, but fraud is so pervasive and widespread in our society and daily life that only the most outrageous occurances are prosecuted as crimes, mostly the state allows these to be settled as civil matters because the fraud is difficult to prove and often too petty to bring the state's resources to bear.

Stealing and fraud are always crimes, but are not always prosecuted by the state for practical reasons.

[jomaxx]

Sorry, but having a website that Google interprets as not conforming to its multiplicity of program policies is NOT a crime. This whole thread started by someone having "Click our sponsor" on his website. Not good, but not a criminal act by any stretch of the imagination.

[david_uk]

I agree. Much as we don't like the practice it's a TOS violation - not something that can be tried at the old Bailey.

[andrea99]

Fraud is defined as deception for gain, monetary or otherwise and is always a crime.

Violating a contractual agreement may or may not be fraud, but if it is deception for gain it is indeed fraud. Whether or not it is prosceuted by the state is discretionary.

In this particular case it is not clear that calling attention to an ad in violation of the terms is actually deception. Often it is this type of murkiness that allows fraud to occur.

But fraud as defined in the law is always illegal no matter how petty.

But my previous post was more a general statement than applying to this particular contract. It was off-topic, a crime punishable by pitchfork bot.

[andrea99]

Splitting philosophical hairs like this does have value for those concerned about morality in daily life and such distinctions can safely be applied to larger matters.

Simply because one can cheat in certain ways with impunity does not make the cheating any less onerous, just less dangerous.

I would like to apply Kant's moral imperative to even life's smallest decisions: behave as though each action were the standard by which all people should live.

The internet unfortunately seems to be morality's cesspool. I do not claim to be a paragon of morality but do pride myself on at least knowing when I'm being immoral.

[incrediBILL]

Anyone else feel like we've been trolled?

[andrea99]

I think you should be more specific with that accusation BILL. A lot of what humans call "conversation" is just a response to an ugly guy under a bridge...

[Khensu]

Trolled the verb or Trolled the noun?