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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.'"
For some reason I'm thinking that precedent from MPAA vs 2600 Magazine might be a contributor, as they were successfully barred from even linking to DeCSS, even though they were no longer hosting it. And at that point, there was no ruling on the legality of DeCSS, either...
I know, there are some differences, but still, I don't think that referencing something should necessarily be a crime. I'm sure that there are exceptions, where people are being made victims by directing others to certain places, but this just seems extreme.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
What do you mean? If we allow online gambling, the terrorists have won! Won't you Think Of The Children(tm)?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
That's using the internet to transmit gambling information.
That'll show the Chinese who can censor better.
What?
Vice laws are a big fat waste of time really, they have never worked, and several thousand years of human history shows that the collective *we* enjoy various vices. Governments all over should just admit reality and move on to something constructive.