similar stuff as the discussions in germany some time ago , now the US want to have a law to to arrest and prosecute persons who are affiliates and live inside the US and link to online gambling offers… that’s tough, eh?

There’s a great post about the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act posted on that blog by Bill – and he certainly is right if he calls it Black Friday For Online Gambling

As to the impacts on poker and sportsbetting, this new law is going to be DEVASTATING. Especially for poker. . .

C. Online betting sites will likely not be able to post banner ads and links to gaming sites, especially those based inside the US. “Aiding and abetting” laws could result in arrest and prosecution for those who provide links to US residents. Poker magazines, online betting forums, and even MadJacks could suffer. I remain uncertain as to how severe this impact will be, especially at MadJacks. But for the hundreds of poker sites/sports sties and blogs out there that are dependent upon online poker and sportsbook advertising, many will go out of business. Once again, this might not seem a big issue to everyone, but these are the pioneers who are bringing in new poker players and sports bettors and when they dry up, the market shrinks and everyone is adversely affected.

D. Many sites use what are called affiliates. Persons who are affiliates and live inside the US will now be subject to arrest and prosecution, particularly those who do not block financial transactions from the US.

Pretty scary stuff IMHO for all those poker affiliates… but the general attitude of the US regime to put more control, “home security” and now – using the right word from the Act’s title PROHIBITION continues an ever lasting trend of happenings in the US that put even more control and observation on the public as we might have expected that only FIVE years ago… frighening…

I just wonder how they would like to enforce that – fully automated by the help of the search engines? Thanks – big brother is watching.

More posts at SEO Blackhat and this monkey blog

I’m happy not doing Gambling business, and even more happy not living in the US – honestly!

I used that number just like I use skype for calling out and getting called – and it was the “local” number here. Being printed in Businesscards, email footers, websites, etc.

What I love about having a VOIP number for business is that I can take it with me – just as I do with my email and my efax.

Then months ago that service was obviously sold from the then swiss operations company to that weird german company called “BetaMax Gmbh & Co. KG”

Then they simply disabled the VOIP number – Without notice to the subsribers. I even paid them a few days before for more credit.

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

This service is now also known under tons of other different names and sites like internetcalls, voipcheap, voipstunt, freecall, sparvoip as they seem to be duplicating their product sales site under different terms and domains to spam the search engines with them (see below for a bigger, probably not full list)

Well, as you can judge from the service disabling, search engine spamming, it seems the take over wasn’t all good – so I thought let’s call them up and get them at least re-establish my number that I got on 2000+ business cards out there…

All I heard was a voice message saying that I shall call the number on the website I got the service from (which I did) and fill out their simple web form to get called back…

right – for example calling 123 I heard “please call 123…”

Well – I’m now unreachable on MY number that I paid for and I even called up the local Telco provider “Austrian Telekom” as well as a second provider Inode and both said that take over of that business number would only be possible if the company (BetaMax Gmbh) would be cooperative and agree to that take over.

Now what do you except from a company that

• disabled their subscriber lines that are in good credit without notice
• doesn’t have a human person answering the phone, especially with 1000s of customers
• tell you on their voice message that you shall call the number that you just called … are they nuts?

I tell you – this is big term SCAM - Betrug – Abzocke – plain and simple.

A friend today who also used to use VOIPBuster by BetaMax Gmbh & Co. Kg told me

Well, I don’t care about them… they suck anyway… when they disabled my line I just stopped using them…

Well – and that’s what everyone will do… or already did? Am I the last one leaving the sinking boat?

But still – I don’t get it… how much ignorance must one have to buy a company with subscribers – an established brand, an established customer base to just waste it with such a crappy service? with such an offense?

Betamax was founded in 2005 in Germany by a group of marketing experts

LOL - that’s what I call marketing experts, I would love to hire such “experts” for consulting my competitors.

—cut—-

This was another lesson in the “how to not operate a business” lessons… we can learn a lot from negative examples.. unfortunately (or is it a fortune?) there are still so many out there…

ps: if you try to research a bit about these companies and services you read about FBI investigations, increased rates (prev. free calls to USA), etc.etc.etc…. seems like a long history of bad consumer experiences and maybe even fraud…

PPS: here’s the full list

internetcalls.com
netappel.com
poivy.com
sparvoip.de
voipbuster.com
voipcheap.com
voipcheap.co.uk
voipdiscount.com
voipstunt.com
freecall.com

(yes I confess, because I’m a big boy already and I want to see those adult pics if they come up for mainstream searches

Then I saw this:

Note: You have selected the least restrictive filter for your results. Images not compliant with German law will still be filtered. You may, however, see some images that you consider inappropriate for minors. If minors are using your browser we suggest enabling strict filtering.

Now this is interesting, because

a) I am from Austria – and don’t give a damn about german law here (just like everone else in Austria)
b) I setup my language preferences to english
c) I was not aware that Google freaks about linking to illegal content – which might be seen as shady, but then it’s still a search engine, not a censor engine as in China

Or did Google start to obey some specific local laws in Germany, as they did in China some time ago filtering out anti-governmental sites?

Definately there are a lot of different opinions on these practices lately – and IMHO it’s a bad thing if Google starts filtering results based on local law… well – but then it already started filtering stuff based on US law (i.e. the DMCA, even if that DOES NOT apply to anyone in Europe)

On the other hand crimes like child pornography are worth filtering… I understand Google not wanting to be evil – but the discussion already arised last February – WHO defines what is child porn – google or the experts?

I don’t really like Google applying foreign laws to me.
But obiviously they started to do so since February… and I support any traffic filters that protect children… but again – who “validates” Google’s decisions on what to censor?

It’s pretty much “George W. Bush”-Like, who applies – well, not law, but anything – to any foreign countries in his stupid to pose as a good president and save the world from all the terror except the US terror…

What do you think?

Late last year, US states Michigan and Utah passed a law creating a Child Protection Registry protecting minors from receiving or viewing illegal products and services.


Illegal items include e.g. Tobacco, Alcohol, Gambling, Prescription Drugs, Illegal Drugs, Adult Content, Guns/Knives/Weapons, Lotteries, Sweepstakes … well – you can continue at will.

All mailers – even if the mailing list constists only of adult opt-ins or active clients – have the problem now that they have to check the content of their mails against such a blacklist where parents specified their email as accessible by their kids as well

Michigan and Utah will be setting up registries that permit minors and parents to add their email address to a "Do Not Email" type list. Organizations who serve minors may register entire domains.

Businesses will be required to monthly submit their encrypted subscriber lists to Michigan and Utah who will give your list back minus anyone who appears on the registry… WOW… what a nice administrative task….

The ISIPP - the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy has copies of both laws reprinted on their website as well as links to relevant news articles.

They also have some teleseminars up about what businesses are affected, and how businesses should comply.

more at http://www.isipp.com/child-protection-email-address-registries.php
News Coverage:

Clickz
News.com

Forbes

Newstarget

Oh my god! can't the guys in government – instead of this overly administrative overkill – create a law that every person in the US must have a distinct mail account? if parents let their mail accessed by the kids, it's the same as leaving the Porn tape in the VCR when leaving to work… or?