Warning - Affiliate Casinos and Gambling Links Can Get you Busted
I often warn affiliates about promoting PPC - Pills, Porn and Casinos - due to current and pending legislation. A question I often get asked is: can affiliates get in trouble directly for promoting an affiliate program in these dicey spaces? Well the answer is now Yes - if you live in Washington and promote or even just write about and link to any type of gambling. According to yesterday’s Seattle Times Story, “writing about online gambling in a way that seems promotional can earn a cease-and-desist order, and potentially, a criminal charge.”
The 1st victim in this new Washington law got a cease and desist and was forced to take his site down. Funny thing is this normally liberal state that actively promotes horse racing and the lottery is the 1st to crack down. Also noteworthy is the fact that they are not just after online gamblers or casinos, but any web site that links to them and that includes affiliates. The hosting company has suspended the “offending” site - but here is a link to IntegrityCasinoGuide.com from the WayBackMachine. Looks like a standard affiliate site and all the work effort and money that went into building it just went out the window. Don’t go there, it’s not worth it. These laws could be coming to your state soon.
“What a Bellingham man did on his site was write about online gambling. He reviewed Internet casinos. He had links to them, and ran ads by them. He fancied himself a guide to an uncharted frontier, even compiling a list of “rogue casinos” that had bilked gamblers.
All that, says the state — the ads, the linking, even the discussing — violates a new state law barring online wagering or using the Internet to transmit “gambling information.”
“It’s what the feds would call ‘aiding and abetting,’ ” says the director of the state’s gambling commission, Rick Day. “Telling people how to gamble online, where to do it, giving a link to it — that’s all obviously enabling something that is illegal.”
Orininal Source: Jacqueline Passey: This blog would be illegal if I still lived in Washington
#1 Carsten Cumbrowski wrote on Friday, June 16th, 2006:
That is the reason why I did remove all Online Casino and Gambling Sites from our Directory.
The Question is, what about promoting a location and all the stuff you can do there without promoting the fact that you can gamble there as well.
Speaking of Vegas Mega Resorts. They are all Casinos, thats the nature of the beast, but not everybody goes to Vegas because of the Gambling. Shows, Atractions, Dining, Shopping, Entertainment in all shapes and colors are a huge part of Vegas.
I am not a big gambler myself. I only gamble if my friends like it. The fact that you gamble is secondary. Having a good time with friends is the important part.
I think it’s a borderline issue. Where you link to exactly will probably also play a role.
What happens, if I am writing about Casinos and Gambling and link to a site without affiliate link? How about talking about changing current state laws to legalize gambling like other states did (such as Nevada, which is still a state of this country when I last checked).
I am not aware of any changes to the US Constitution with the Freedom of Speech being removed. Correction, State Constitution change.
This smells like a supreme court decision, who should abolish the whole set of laws and regulations that created the mess, while they are at it.