Judge Richard Kramer from the San Francisco Supreme court declared Yahoo!, Google and a number of other sites “immune from liability” when dismissing a lawsuit filed against these sites for displaying advertisements for online gaming.

In 2004, two California residents sued a conglomeration of websites for displaying gaming ads, after one of the plaintiffs allegedly lost over $100,000 gambling online. This lawsuit targeted a dozen of high-profile websites including Jupitermedia, CNET Networks, Alta Vista and Overture along with Yahoo! and Google.

The Class Action Complaint suit – called Cisneros v. Yahoo et al – was filed by Mario Cisneros and Michael Voight on behalf of the California public, on the basis of an alleged violation of the California Unfair Business Practices statute (“UCL”) Section 17200. The lawsuit claimed illegal online gaming businesses used geotracking to target their ads to the California area, and that the websites were profiting from this advertising of illegal services. The plaintiffs requested monetary damages, but the court rejected this and said an injunction was all they could get in the case of an eventual win.

Last week, Judge Kramer absolved Google, Yahoo! and all other accused sites from the charges, based on the Federal Communications Decency Act (CDA,) which states in section 230 that internet site operators will not be held liable for what third parties choose to say while using their services – this means that, for example, Poker News Daily is not liable for any comments that readers make about news articles.

Since the defendant companies stopped accepting gambling ads in the US a long time ago, Judge Kramer ruled against an injunction saying: “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.” Google’s Policy Manager and Yahoo’s Senior Director of Network Quality testified about the measures taken by both sites to enforce the ban on gambling advertisement. The plaintiffs claimed that some gambling advertisements were occasionally featured on these sites, but Judge Kramer dismissed their claim: “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.”

The sites do not walk off scot-free, though – Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google had already been made to pay a combined $31,500,000 last year as a penalty for running online gaming ads. The US Justice Department took all three companies to task in different degrees: Microsoft paid $21 million, Yahoo! paid $7.5 million and Google was fined $3 million. The fines include donating free ad space for educating children on the dangers of underage gambling.

The ruling has cleared the online sites on which the advertisements were posted, but it is not clear if the advertisers themselves are liable for prosecution.

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