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WA Law Means Linking to Gambling Websites Illegal
tpoker writes "Following a previous story on Washington State making online gambling a felony, the Seattle Times reports that the first legal salvos have begun. 'The first casualty in the state's war on Internet gambling is a local Web site where nobody was actually doing any gambling. 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. 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 ... Telling people how to gamble online, where to do it, giving a link to it -- that's all obviously enabling something that is illegal.'"
Maybe this will provide some legal leverage to go after people who spam blogs and forums with adds for online poker, etc?
The same Seattle Times printed my letter to the editor on the same subject today.
...any discussion whatsoever of rape, incest, murder, drug use, etc. must also be illegal.
Reminds me of when AOL added the word "breast" to their filters without thinking through the consequences. All the members of a breast cancer group suddenly had to start referring to themselves as survivors of "hooter cancer".
not to mention common sense. As much of the information (other than reviews) on his site could be easily found using a search engine, I'm not really sure how collecting it on one site could be illegal. It's a lot like someone putting up a website reviewing various types of marijuana they have purchased in the area, and where they purchased it. It may be an illegal activity, but writing about doing it is hardly a crime.
That's using the internet to transmit gambling information.
Why not make it illegal to link to a page that links to a page that links to gambling?
I can actually see how the legislators could see a reason to do that. Taxpayer X wants to link to a gambling site, but knows that that's illegal. So he links to a site that has links to gambling sites, and tells you to click through. (Even worse, maybe that link redirects to the gambling site!) So clearly this needs to be stopped as well.
And what about linking to a page that links to a page that links to a page that links to gambling?
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
The current paradigm is throw a wide net, round them all up, and let prosecutors sort them out afterwards. It's the new-and-improved shotgun methodology of law enforcement. And it works! They are almost guaranteed to catch somebody doing something naughty. Once I was arrested during a protest at a university, and charged with 'Disturbing the Peace' along with several other folks. Only later did they realize that in the great state that I live in, the statute forbids them from using DtP for civil disobedience cases. So, after the arrest, they cast about for some other statutory violation to make stick (they failed). I imagine most of the system operates approximately as sloppily.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Something tells me that the Washington State Lottery will still get to promote itself online... apparently they also were even going to sell lottery tickets online but I can't find evidence of them still doing it.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.