Washington State: Writing About Online Gambling is Illegal

Washington’s new Internet gambling law is being enforced and the results are frightening. Be careful who you link to:

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. He fancied himself a guide to an uncharted frontier, even compiling a list of “rogue casinos” that had bilked gamblers.

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.”

“It’s what the feds would call ‘aiding and abetting,’ ” says the director of the state’s gambling commission, Rick Day. “Telling people how to gamble online, where to do it, giving a link to it — that’s all obviously enabling something that is illegal.”

Uh-oh. This is starting to get a little creepy.

It turns out that The Seattle Times may be in trouble as well:

Gambling officials told me The Seattle Times may be afoul of the law because we print a poker how-to column, “Card Shark,” by gambler Daniel Negreanu. He sometimes tells readers to hone their skills at online casinos. And at the end of each column is a Web address, fullcontactpoker.com, where readers can comment.

It’s just unbelievable that laws like this even exist in a country that constantly preaches the virtues of freedom to the rest of the world. At least one Washington State blogger has posted a link in protest. I’m no fan of Internet gambling but every resident of the state with a website, and Washington state based media, should do the same in my opinion.

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