At first, I didn’t think much of Washington’s new anti-online gambling law. Since the state said that it wouldn’t prosecute small-time gamblers, I thought it was a pretty innocuous piece of legislation designed to make folks on the religious right and irritated gambling widows sleep a little easier.
Then I read Danny Westneat’s Seattle Times column about Todd Boutte. Boutte is a blogger based in Bellingham. He was recently forced to shut down his site because of the new law. It turns out that in addition to a ban on Web-based gambling, the law also prohibits distributing gambling information using the Web. Since Boutte was using his blog to give readers tips about dishonest casinos and information about online gambling, he was committing a crime.
“1984 has finally arrived, I can’t believe this is happening in a liberal place like Washington,” Boute told the Times.
Boute’s blog was a small business for him. He hosted advertising and links to online poker sites, which provided a steady income for the former Wal-Mart employee. He is now trying to sell it out of state.
Sure, this law applies only to a small fraction of the current business bloggers out there. Most of us aren’t based in Washington, and most of us aren’t writing about online gaming. But if this law holds up in court - which I’m almost certain it won’t - it means that states could begin to ban online speech about all kinds of things. That’s an issue we’ve all got fair reason to be concerned about.
{ 0 comments… add one now }