« Banning Advertising of Gambling Sites for 1/1,000,000th of the Internet »

All bets are off, if Ontario has its way
RICHARD BLACKWELL
Globe and Mail Update
The Ontario government is expected to introduce legislation today that will ban advertisements of illegal Internet gambling websites.But the new law — part of a broad package of consumer legislation — could create a huge headache for media companies that will have to closely examine advertisements to make sure they don’t include indirect links to illegal sites.The legislation will not stop advertising of free poker sites or similar sites where no money changes hands, unless those sites have links to betting sites, said Paul de Zara, a spokesman for Ontario’s Minister of Government Services, Gerry Phillips.

globeandmail.com: All bets are off, if Ontario has its way

I say it again, can I become a consultant for Internet for the Ontario Governmnet? Apparently the underlying compelling event is that there are too many good Canadian kids trying to gamble on the internet….

If you follow the whole article, the gov’t is going to make it illegal to have a website in ontario that has an advertisement for a gambling site, or even an ad for a site that has ads to gambling sites. Hmmm, how many websites are there in Ontario? And wait, what about sites that are hosted OUTSIDE of Ontario? Do they have to follow the rules? This site is hosted in America, can I still advertise gambling sites?

The larger issue at stake, the internet doesn’t have any boundaries - if i’m feeling like gambling, i’ll simply go to my favourite hacker site in germany and check out the advertising. Sheesh.

This isn’t the first time the gov’t has set its sights on something silly, it likely won’t be the last. They would find far better traction throwing in with the US government on this one; to eradicate SPAM and child porn.

Martin Geddes makes an interesting comment about what the US is doing to push online gambling away, and by extention, pushing the profits outside of the US by forcing credit card companies to disallow payment to gambling sites…. martin sggests that the fnancial focus will simply migrate to a pre-paid model, and will merrily continue.  Imagine, going down to your local variety store, picking up a pre-paid calling card, but being able to use it to play blackjack on the ‘net.  Those card distributors who make deals with the gambling associations are going to be set for life. Allready the pre-paid card distribution network is seedy and difficult to police or monitor…. adding one more variable to the pot is not going to make a serious impact.

technorati tags:Silly Canada, Gambling Advertisements

Blogged with Flock