Lee:

That was just a court ruling by the WTO. All that technically does immediately is give the country of Antigua the right to impose hefty tarrifs on US imports into their tiny island nation. Can you see the quaking in the boots?

Not exactly. The US Congress still needs to pass legislation that clarifies or reforms the federal laws regarding gambling. (stranger things have happened)

Corey - does your friend want to be a webmsater for a casino portal site... or actually operate a full-blown casino? You made it sound like the second option -- which would definitely be a handfull.

If you want to operate a casino portal, or some kind of site that promotes gambling I'd say there is a legal risk. We all know how byzentine federal pornography laws (2257) are. Imagine federal gambling laws, all written way before the Internet. They are intended probably for the Mob to not operate a ring of casinos around the country.

I realistically doubt that is something the D.O.J. is prepared to enforce on a webmaster. But there is the spectre of the law, so that is enough to scare ESPN or Google from running ads on their networks about it, as they are publically traded companys with too much at risk.

I've had my eye on casino affiliate programs for awhile. I'd love to give one a serious try. There are a number of them available on Commission Junction. Look there. The ones located in the U.K. and Ireland are often impressively sized companys which have their books audited by Big5 Accounting firms with publically traded stock on the London stock exchange. Those are probably worthwhile ones to start with.

Like the adult affiliate world, it is a whole different ball of wax, and needs some investigation.

Steve