DOJ settles with Microsoft, Google and Yahoo for $31.5 mill to settle gambling claims

**chano** · 12-26-07, 11:22 AM

What a Joke. A total embarassment to be American...

**bigboydan** · 12-26-07, 01:58 PM

The government has to get the money from somewhere to pay off that WTO ruling.

**SBR_John** · 12-26-07, 02:36 PM

Originally posted by jon13009

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have agreed to pay a total of $31.5 million to resolve claims that they promoted illegal gambling, the U.S. Department of Justice announced today.

Who is next? SBR?

source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122000047.html

So far their efforts have focused on search engines and radio stations. Will they come after forums, stats and lines sites, portals and the rest some day? Very possible. Still, think about it. If a huge company like Yahoo is settling for $7 million what would a forum have to settle for that has a million times less reach than a search engine? $1,000 or $10,000? What if they were to go after a portal and the portal decided to fight instead of settle? Does the DoJ want to risk losing a first amendment battle over a $10k shakedown?

**The HG** · 12-26-07, 03:18 PM

They need to go after the NY Post and USA Today, and I think USAtoday.com as well. THE NY POST PRINTS GAMBLING LINES FOR ALL MAJOR PRO AND COLLEGE SPORTS! DOES THE DOJ KNOW THIS?? SOMEONE TELL THEM ABOUT IT ASAP!

**jobee** · 12-26-07, 05:02 PM

It's ok guys, punting on sports may be illegal, but you can still buy assault rifles.

**louis** · 12-26-07, 05:26 PM

Forums running on U.S. hosts are taking a chance

The best thing forums and portals like SBR can do is run on foreign hosts.

If they do that, there is really not much the Justice Department can do if a Costa Rican hosted site wants to promote sportsbetting in English.

Yahoo and Google were running on hosts here in the U.S.

The amounts they settled for were a drop in the bucket for these companies. These are not big fines for them.

**bigboydan** · 12-26-07, 05:41 PM

Originally posted by SBR_John

So far their efforts have focused on search engines and radio stations. Will they come after forums, stats and lines sites, portals and the rest some day? Very possible. Still, think about it. If a huge company like Yahoo is settling for $7 million what would a forum have to settle for that has a million times less reach than a search engine? $1,000 or $10,000? What if they were to go after a portal and the portal decided to fight instead of settle? Does the DoJ want to risk losing a first amendment battle over a $10k shakedown?

Like I was telling about a year or so ago though John. I mentioned to you what happened to a few of my Canadian friends that happen to fall under this type of situation back in 2003. Anyways, they eventually lost that freedom of speech battle in the courts up there. I don't know if that would be the same result here in the U.S., however it would be a very similar type situation IMO.

**SBR_John** · 12-26-07, 05:59 PM

I'm fairly sure no legit operators of online portals have ever even been cotacted. Casino City sued the US and the US got it thrown out by saying they had no intention of going after them or like sites. Did they argue that to simply squash the case? Probably. But so far the US has not wanted to risk losing unless its a very high value target with deep pockets.