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Hey All –
I own a small affiliate business which mainly promotes poker sites. My question is… is it legal to run this business from inside the US? I just saw that google and yahoo were forced to pay millions because they received $ for advertising online gambling sites. This makes me nervous to continue to do business from inside the US. Any thoughts out there?
Thanks
Easy question. Tricky answer.
What do we know?
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We know that it IS NOT illegal in the United States to PLAY poker online. This question was directly asked in the house and eventually the federal prosecuter had to give a straight answer. No players have ever been prosecuted.
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We know that it IS illegal in the United States to OFFER AND RUN poker play for money online. This is why all poker sites are run offshore.
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As far as I know though NO AFFILIATE has ever been prosecuted for offering poker yet. In this case google and microsoft “agreed” to this $31m settlement rather than try to actually test the law in court.
It was simply “chump change” for these organisations – and the cheapest option. Corporates are good at working out the costs.
So I think that we still don’t know about affiliates status – but if big companies don’t want to fight it – then it doesn’t sound good for the little guy.
They are accused of promoting sportsbetting. The judgemet came on the basis of the wireact, which is all about sportsbetting.
It is definitely illegal to do anything with sportsbetting in the US.
There is no resident lawyer here, and no one can give you advice.
There is a lawyer who specializes in this: http://www.gameattorneys.com/
You might also take the time to read the posts here in the legal section and the industry news section.
I am not in the US but this legal question is on my mind almost all the time.
There are so many people enjoying gambling online so online gambling can’t be wrong.
Gambling is ok in many countries but online gambling is new.
Our competition will have to respect us and agree to let us do our business and pay the taxes rather in the countries that we are from than in the places we can be to get our share.
