Dear Reader,

Yeah, I know, I'm a day late...but I felt the urge to play a little hookey, and I zipped over to London for a few days - thus the lack of timeliness.

Anyway, I was just checking the archives, and found a tidbit of knowledge from last year's edition that I thought I would regurgitate:

"Ahh, the dog days of August are here. This is when the heat lingers and sometimes we have to deal with the muggiest, hottest days of the summer. But what does this have to do with dogs? Well I'll tell ya. It has to do with the "dog star" Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere. It belongs to the constellation Canus Major (the Big Dog, it's his nose), and he is one of Orion's hunting dogs which appears overhead in the winter nighttime skies. About a thousand years ago, it rose about an hour before the sun at the beginning of August. People believed the combined light of Sirius and the sun caused hot weather; thus the term "the dog days of August". In these modern times, one would have to wait until late August or early September for the Sun and Sirius to line up like that. "

Looking for an icebreaker at the nearest grill party? Now you have it. And if anyone asks you where you receive such astonishing fascinating little tidbits, you can point them into this direction...and convince them to subscribe.

All-knowingly yours,

Bryan

California class action goes after advertising revenues

The big story this week appeared on CNET and reported that some gambling ads on Google, Yahoo and other major web sites are alleged to be illegal in California, according to a lawsuit filed early in the week.

The 60-page filing, presented in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that the companies sell rights to Web advertisements based on searches for terms such as "illegal gambling," "Internet gambling" and "California gambling."

The online businesses also use geotracking software to target particular regions, including California, for illegal gambling ads, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit demands that the companies stop accepting the advertisements and give California "millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains," said attorney Ira Rothken, one of several attorneys from firms involved in the class-action lawsuit.

Yahoo and Google rake in a majority of the millions of dollars gambling firms spend on advertising, according to the lawsuit. Representatives from the two companies did not return a call seeking comment.

In all, about a dozen high-profile web companies are named as defendants.

Subsequent enquiries by InfoPowa reveal that several law firms in addition to Ira Rothken's company seem to be involved in the suit, which is available in detail here:

http://www.techfirm.com/yahoocomplaint.pdf

It appears that the two main listed plaintiffs are Mario Cisneros of Marin County (San Francisco area) and Michael Voight of Scotts Valley. who is described as having personal knowledge of finding Internet gambling sites via the defendant search engines, and as having lost circa $100 000 on Internet gambling.

However, the allegations are also made as a "Private Attorney General action brought as a Class Action and on behalf of the California general public against the major Internet search engine websites which advertise illegal gambling in California".

The document is a wide attack on Internet gambling generally, listing many references and authorities.

The following are listed as defendants:

Yahoo
Google
Overture
Ask Jeeves
Looksmart
AltaVista
Terra Lycos
Jupiter Media
CNET Networks
FindWhat
Kanoodle
Business.com
Sex.com

Broadly speaking the allegations cover:

"Defendant's advertisements have resulted in substantial illegal Internet gambling in California during the past 4 years, substantial unlawful profits by defendants and their co-conspirators, and substantial gambling losses to California residents.

"Defendant's conduct has also resulted in the depletion of substantial tax resources for the State of California as Internet gambling evades Californian regulation and taxation contrary to the laws and public policy of of the state.

"The general public has also been harmed, as the net effect of of defendant's actions has been to extract resources out of legitimate sectors of the Californian economy and has created financial ruin with it's attendant social costs to Californians"

The plaintiffs want the advertising activity declared illegal, they want to stop it and they seek to have the defendants, "....disgorge and forfeit all revenues and profits" to a fund to be used for purposes to be directed by the Court, to be given to licensed Californian gambling entities as restitution, to be given to spouses of gamblers who have suffered community of property losses or to go to the state treasury as restitution for lost taxation.

News courtesy of Infopowa news service. 
More news here.