Forum Moderators: phranque
Some regional laws may be different, which may make selective regional control of SERP results an issue.
A quick look at this search shows no Adwords, but a multitude of SERP's : [google.co.uk...]
Web giants settle gambling claimsOnline gambling is illegal in the US but still widespread Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have agreed to pay a total of $31.5m (£15.7m) to settle claims that they accepted online ads promoting illegal gambling. None of the three firms have accepted any wrongdoing as part of the civil settlement, which concludes an investigation dating back to 2000.
The US authorities claimed the trio illegally accepted payments from online gaming firms between 1997 and 2007.The companies said they stopped taking such adverts several years ago.
[news.bbc.co.uk...]
Any thoughts?
[edited by: Whitey at 3:04 am (utc) on Dec. 20, 2007]
...
Google, the world's most-used search engine, is to pay $3 million.
...
"Google voluntarily discontinued running such ads, which were a very small part of our AdWords business, in April 2004," [Jon Murchinson] said by e-mail.
[boston.com...]
"While we did not admit any wrongdoing, the Department of Justice has advised that online gambling is illegal in the United States and ads to promote it are improper," Murchinson said in a statement. "
Improper? Either its illegal or its not. Why the
hell did they give in to the government again.
[edited by: TheGuyAboveYou at 3:42 pm (utc) on Dec. 20, 2007]
I hear ads all the time on my radio telling me to come to a neighboring state to play poker, while I live in a state where table gaming is illegal. So in the same logic as applied in this case, it is "improper" for this neighboring state to advertise to me in my state.
Whilst laws differ around the world, I think there are probably few places where adverts that promote illegal activity are deemed acceptable - that is the essence of the case here.
To recap, online gambling at home - illegal, travelling to another state to gamble - legal.
Kaled (in the UK).
There is no law that currently makes it illegal for a player to gamble online (aside from sports wagering which has been illegal since 1961 when the Wire Act was signed into law). Additionally it's worth mentioning that google is only responsible for any ads that it accepted in the past that were sports wagering related. Poker, Casino and Bingo to this day could be accepted by them if they so wished.
Kind regards and Happy Holidays,
Reaxion
[govtrack.us...]
For example, I get blasted with Las Vegas ads on the
radio. I am not in Vegas. Fine them too. Its just advertising. We can not be responsible for policing who
gambles where on the interenet.
Just another example of the US wanting to keep the real money for themselves.
Taxes, and Gambling are huge moneymakers. Why do you think
they allow themselves to run lotteries but not us.
Online gambling is illegal in the US
Actually the law states that it is illegal for credit card companies to process the payment. But it is perfectly legal for the united states citizen to play "lets say poker" at fulltiltpoker.com
Plus the law was past about a year or two ago. Don't you guys remember the "party poker" ads on TV?
Gov't should stop limiting our freedoms and go do their job:
Fix medicare
Improve social security
Pump some money in to education
Another thing they could do - close down youtube for copyright infringement.
Some states have laws that make gambling online illegal and many (perhaps all) states have specific laws regarding the advertising of gambling.
This is why you'll see poker ads point to the .net free site rather than the .com gambling site. It's their little way of getting around the law.
See your state's statutes for more information. And if you live in the USA and advertise gambling in any way, you should already have an attorney that specializes in the field to advise you. If not, you're playing with fire.
