by Hillary LaClair, Senior Editor
December 1, 2008
The lawsuit brought against search engines Yahoo!, Jupitermedia, CNET Networks, Alta Vista and Google was dismissed last week, when Judge Richard Kramer from the San Fransisco Supreme Court claimed that these sites were “immune from liability.”
The litigation began when two California residents, Maria Cisneros and Michael Voight lost $100,000 gambling online in 2004. The individuals claimed that the fault lay with search engines for displaying internet gambling advertisements.
The Class Action Complaint suit, deemed Cisneros v. Yahoo et al, was filed on behalf of the “California public,” with the allegation that the search engines ad violated the California Unfair Business Practices statute, Section 17200.
The ‘UCL’ prohibits business practices that are “unlawful,” “unfair” and “fraudulent” as well as false and misleading advertising. Section 17204 permits “any person,” even someone who suffers no injury to act as a “private attorney general” to press charges on behalf of the general public to enforce its provisions.
The lawsuit declared that online poker rooms and gambling websites used geotracking to target their advertisements to the California area, and that the websites profit from illegal gaming adverts. Cisneros and Voight sought monetary recompense; however the court ruled that an injunction was all they would get should they win the case.
The case was dismissed under the Federal Communications Decency Act which states that internet website operators will not be held accountable for third party organizations say in their advertisements or web content.
Because the search engines in question had stopped running online gaming ads in the United States, Kramer ruled against an injunction. He stated, “Without comment on whether defendants’ sponsoring online gambling sites in the past was wrongful, it is clear from the evidence that each defendant has ceased such sponsorship.
“It is likely not possible for the defendants to avoid the posting of every online gambling site. Once a site is posted, it will exist for some period of time despite defendant’s persistent search and destroy practices.”
Some of the search engines were penalized in the past for running online gambling ads. Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google were already forced to pay $31,500,000 last year for this reason. The US Justice Department ruled that Microsoft pay $21 million, Yahoo! pay $7.5 million and Google pay $3 million.
Google’s official position on the posting of online gambling ads states, “Google Adwords allows online gambling advertisements to target Great Britain (England, Scotland or Wales) as long as the advertiser is registered with the Gambling Commission and provides a valid operating license number. Advertisers based outside the UK and within the European Economic Area who wish to target online gambling ads to England, Scotland or Wales must be license to advertise online gambling in their respective country.”
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