Second Life presents its residents with many unique opportunities for social interaction, commerce, and entertainment. Could virtual gambling be the next “feature” to be offered in Linden’s online world? If so, what would the offline legal ramifications look like?

It’s snake-eyes for the top ten gambling sites as visits plummet in the wake of US legislation passed and signed into law banning online gambling.

A gambling website that takes bets on anything from poker to sports to celebrity news is taking bets on which of Technorati’s top 100 blogs will take the #1 spot at the end of the year. But is that legal? Well, sort of.

The US Justice Department is making clear that only certain types of gambling are okay online and there’s no exception for advertising agencies running campaigns for offshore sports betting companies. The penalty for running that campaign: a charge of racketeering and up to 20 years in prison.

Gambling is big business, and in the so-called “lawless land” of the Internet, it’s on the rise. Online gambling generated around $12 billion last year, spread out over roughly 2,300 gaming sites. Some studies indicate that the rise in gambling is being accompanied by an increase in gambling addiction.

I was reading an article called Catch Me If You Can in which Forbes discusses the success of Calvin Ayre and his Costa Rica based Internet gambling business:

In Australia, it’s illegal to display gambling advertisements on Australian web sites, and Google Australia may be in violation.

A lawsuit filed last year against a number of search engines concerning their displaying of gambling related ads has been given the go ahead by a San Francisco court.

Move by British lawmakers to legalize and regulate online gambling businesses sure to anger American counterparts.

A plan to legalize casino gambling in Singapore has been approved by the country’s government.

A recent lawsuit that was filed on behalf of Mario Cisneros, Michael Voight, and the general public called out a number of search engines for displaying ads for online gambling establishments. The suit claimed the defendants displayed these ads for within the state of California, where Internet gambling is illegal.

As reported in WebProNews earlier, search engines Google and Yahoo have decided to ban online casino ads from appearing on SERPs. The ban was to go into effect at the end of April. However, it appears that some of the casinos have found a way to “cheat” the filters Google has put in place.

A decision by Yahoo and Google to ban online gambling ads has created expected repercussions from some of the casino site owners. Understandably, the owners who commented are not pleased with the gambling ad ban by the two search engine giants.

In a move likely to hurt online gambling sites, search engine giants Yahoo and Google have announced that they will no longer serve ads from online casinos. The two search engines expect the ads to stop running by the end of April.