Betfair Forum Wins Court Case
Date Added: June 23, 2009
Betfair is a popular online casino. It is the recipient of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for 2008. Betfair runs a forum where its members can post messages and interact with each other. Recently an unsavory incident took place on the forum. Derogatory comments were posted about Ellen Martin and Seamus Mulvaney.
Martin and Mulvaney took Betfair to court in Ireland. They thought that they had the law on their side. Usually European Union law exempts Internet sites from responsibility for messages posted by their members. However in the case of online gambling sites this protection has been withdrawn. Therefore it appeared to be an open and shut case against Betfair. However the court ignored the clause withdrawing the protection. It held that the clause was irrelevant because the forum was not related to Betfair’s core gambling business. The court averred that Betfair had acted as a host and had stored information provided by third parties. It could not be held responsible for that information.
The online gaming industry is hailing this as a landmark judgment. Feidhlimidh Wrafter, an attorney representing Betfair, said “That’s really what the judgment’s saying, that gambling companies that operate a chatroom are now considered to be protected by the EU directive.” The online gambling industry is relieved. They now do not have to worry about controlling public comments. Had the decision gone the other way they would have been in serious trouble and the only practical option might have been to shut down the forums.
That would have been sad because the forums serve a very useful function as a recent incident concerning Rome Casino showed. In the last few days of May players at Rome Casino noticed an unusual glitch. Wild symbols stopped appearing on the reels in some of the online slot games like Diablo 13, Wild Sevens and Douguies Delights. As a result of that players stopped hitting winning combinations. It is conceivable that one player can be unlucky; two can be unlucky but not the whole community. Because of the large number of Internet forums available the players were able to communicate with each other and thus confirm that it was not bad luck but a software glitch. Webmasters were contacted. They too tried the games and confirmed the fault. A formal complaint was lodged with Rome Casino and the online gaming software providers, Top Game. More important the online casino player community was warned that there was something wrong with the games at Rome Casino. Casinomeister, who was involved in the issue, commented, “If not for the message boards, how long would have this gone on?” It was because of the message boards that the damage was severely restricted.
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