Legality of being an affliate post-UIGEA

[ShakeZula06]

Not sure if I should put this in A/R or here, gonna go with this one, if mods want to move I'll trust your judgement.

Title says it all, what's the legality of being an affliate for a poker room or any gambling site after the bill? I remember some type of language in the bill going something like "In the business of accepting wagers..." or something to that effect, and not sure if that would include affliates or not. I mean, aflliates are by definiton, affliated with those businesses.

Thanks in advance.

[TheJokerIsWild]

I've seen this question asked a few times now since the bill passed. I have yet to see a straight answer from somebody that really knew what they were talking about but I did hear from a few credible sources that they believed that if you were a US citizen promoting non-US sites, then that wasn't illegal since you aren't really breaking any laws (you aren't servicing Americans and you aren't breaking any laws of the country the site is located in).

Personally, I wouldn't worry about it until you started hearing of affiliates getting arrested. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any poker affiliates arrested to date.

We'll see....

[StellarWind]

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Personally, I wouldn't worry about it until you started hearing of affiliates getting arrested. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any poker affiliates arrested to date.

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That could be entirely too late if trouble develops. The Neteller founders were retired from the business by the time they were arrested.

[hollaballa]

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Personally, I wouldn't worry about it until you started hearing of affiliates getting arrested. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any poker affiliates arrested to date.

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That could be entirely too late if trouble develops. The Neteller founders were retired from the business by the time they were arrested.

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Yeah, there haven't been any affiliates arrested to date.....but there hadn't been any payment processors arrested until a couple months ago.

I think the likelihood of getting targeted by the DOJ is really low, but, that's just my guess.

If I was a big affiliate, i.e. making $20k a month or more, I'd move to a nice sunny beach somewhere.

[Our House]

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If I was a big affiliate, i.e. making $20k a month or more, I'd move to a nice sunny beach somewhere.

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Can a small affiliate, i.e. making much < $20k a month move to a cold, cloudy Canadian mountaintop?

[Sniper]

Shake... there was previous discussion in the A/R forum...

As I understand it, the Major Rakeback affiliates all reviewed their situation with lawyers, and what occurred was that the major RB affiliates were or are now all located outside the US, or closed up shop (The biggest to sell his business, was RakebackRUs).

You can draw some conclusions from this...

There has been very little conclusive statements that I have seen, with regard to non-RB affiliates and those flying banners (like 2+2). I know BonusWhores added a state filter. This may be due to most of the small afiliates not taking this issue to lawyers (Maybe someone will chime in).

I presume that 2+2 has reviewed the issue with their lawyers (though 2+2 isn't an affiliate, banners do fly here).

[hollaballa]

This is a topic I've discussed with some of the best lawyers in the internet gaming business.

As sniper hints at because of the major affiliates moving out of the US....no reasonable attorney would tell you it's legal to run an affiliate business in the US for poker sites that accept US players.

Additionally, most advertisers, such as 2+2, Cardplayer, etc hang their hat on Freedom of Speech.

I have to hang my hat on hoping freedom on speech will pass mustard as well, although I'm pretty sure it wouldn't. Just ask the Travel Channel and the Sporting News.

[Little_Luck]

What if you were an affiliate and did not have any US customers under your affiliate account? Are you still in violation, even if some of the sites would accept US players?

[hollaballa]

if you don't have any US players, you're probably ok.

[ShakeZula06]

Sniper,
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Shake... there was previous discussion in the A/R forum...

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Do you have any links? I looked around a little bit in both forums and couldn't find much.
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I presume that 2+2 has reviewed the issue with their lawyers (though 2+2 isn't an affiliate, banners do fly here).

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Yeah, I heard in the zoo that there is no advertising for even .net sites in the WSOP now, but this was put down by management, not say the DoJ, although it's hard to come up with a reason for doing that other then they were scared of the legal ramifications. I don't pay much attention to the banners, (like most here I'd pressume) is 2p2 still advertising sites that accept US players? Hell, I haven't played much poker since the bill so I probably couldn't even tell you which sites are US and which aren't.

Hollaballa,
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If I was a big affiliate, i.e. making $20k a month or more, I'd move to a nice sunny beach somewhere.

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Yeah, the good thing would be that the bigger affliates would move out of country, and the small affliates that can't afford it may be fine just because they aren't big enough to go after/fly under the radar.

All,

Thanks for the very informative responses thus far.