Australian ISP’s may block prohibited online casinos

In a strange move that could place Australian ISP’s in a position of effectively policing it’s users actions, the communications watchdog is investigating the possibility of forcing them to block access to illegal or unlicensed online gambling websites. If the recommendations are accepted ISP’s could be forced to redirect users who attempt to access blacklisted online casinos to a landing page identifying the casino as an unlicensed casino. The recommendation was contained in the Department of Broadband’s interim report on its review of the Interactive Gambling Act.

The Australian government has for a long time had a somewhat weird stance on online gambling with laws allowing residents to use online casinos that are based overseas but not any that are operated from within the country. It is also illegal to promote casinos directly to Australian residents but almost impossible for the Australian government to pursue any that operate outside the borders of the country who do promote to Australian’s. This essentially means an Australian citizen cannot operate a casino from within Australia and promote directly to Australian’s, but it is perfectly legal for an Australian citizen to gamble at online casinos operated outside of the country.

The recommendation by the communications watchdog places ISP’s in a very strange position of essentially enforcing prohibition onto their users when there is no law in existence which actually prohibits Australian residents from accessing online casinos. For those with any technical knowledge bypassing these filters would not be hard by utilising proxy servers so the potential impact of this restriction would be quite limited.

Australian’s spend approximately a billion dollars per year on online gambling and this is sure to continue to grow as mobile gambling becomes more popular and online casinos continue to develop their mobile gaming platforms. The new rules are designed to protect users from accessing unlicensed casinos but place the ISP’s themselves in a position of enforcing them.

Recently the government has also recommended introducing mandatory pre commitment technology onto pokie machine in pubs and clubs while also possibly relaxing the rules on online sports betting allowing live betting to take place on sporting events.

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