Aiding and betting: online gambling crackdown.IF YOU LIKE to gamble, you might want to go to 888.com, where you can play blackjack blackjack, one of the world's most widely played gambling card games; also known as twenty-one or vingt-et-un. Despite contesting claims between the French and Italians, its origins are unknown. , poker, craps craps: see dice. craps Gambling game in which each player in turn throws two dice, attempting to roll a winning combination. The term derives from a Louisiana French word, crabs, which means “losing throw. , slots, and roulette. If you prefer sports betting Sports betting is the general activity of predicting sports results by making a wager on the outcome of a sporting event. Perhaps more so than other forms of gambling, the legality and general acceptance of sports betting varies from nation to nation. , try betonsports.com. According to the U.S. Justice Department, publishing the previous paragraph may be a felony. Federal prosecutors say helping Americans find online casinos or sports betting operations could amount to "aiding and abetting a·bet tr.v. a·bet·ted, a·bet·ting, a·bets 1. To approve, encourage, and support (an action or a plan of action); urge and help on. 2. " illegal gambling, a crime punishable by up to two years in prison. Last year, Deputy Assistant Attorney General John G. Malcolm sent a letter to media trade groups warning that their members could be breaking the law by accepting ads for gambling sites. Meanwhile, Raymond W. Gruender, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, convened a grand jury in St. Louis that started issuing subpoenas to companies that do business with the online gambling industry. This campaign of intimidation already has yielded results. Since last fall several media companies, including infinity Broadcasting, Viacom Outdoor, Discovery Networks, and Clear Channel Communications Not to be confused with clear channel radio stations, which are AM radio stations with certain technical parameters. Clear Channel Communications (NYSE: CCU) is a media conglomerate company based in the United States. , have stopped running ads for online casinos and betting services. In April, Google and Yahoo!, two of the most widely used Web search engines A Web site that maintains an index and short summaries of billions of pages on the Web, Google being the world's largest. Most search engine sites are free and paid for by advertising banners, while others charge for the service. , also caved. Although Googie was vague about its motivation, Yahoo! said "a lack of" clarity in the environment" made gambling ads "too risky." The Justice Department maintains that online gambling is illegal under the 1961 Wire Act, even when the casino or betting parlor is located overseas. But since it's hard to prosecute gambling operations based in other countries (and since placing a bet is not necessarily illegal, depending upon the state where the gambler lives), the government is threatening middlemen instead. Given how broadly the Justice Department seems to be interpreting "aiding and abetting," it could bring charges against not just ad carriers but marketing consultants, banks, Internet service providers Internet service provider (ISP) Company that provides Internet connections and services to individuals and organizations. For a monthly fee, ISPs provide computer users with a connection to their site (see data transmission), as well as a log-in name and password. , telecommunications companies, computer professionals, and anyone else who facilitates online betting. But middlemen can be offshored too. A few weeks after Google and Yahoo! said they would stop accepting gambling ads, the U.K.-based AskWinner.com, a casino information site, announced that it was stepping into the breach with "a new pay-per-visitor advertising solution." |
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